Page:New Poems by James I.djvu/96

 which I think very well done ; I had done the same, long before it came, but he [James] prefers his own to all else, tho' perchance, when you see it, you will think it the worst of the Three. No man must meddle with that Subject, and therefore I advise you to take no more Pains therein." Opinions so frank as this Alexander probably did not express in the presence of majesty.

The paraphrase on which they were engaged seems to have been intended by James as a supplement to the King James version of the Bible an undertaking which (it may be noted) he had broached before the General Assembly at Burntisland as early as 1601. On coming to England, according to Spottiswoode, he "set the most learned divines of that church a-work for the translation of the Bible . . . but the revising of the Psalms he made his own labour, and . . . went through a number of them, commending the rest to a faithful and learned servant, who hath therein answered his M. expectation."

Having obtained a privilege from Charles in 1627, Alex- ander published in that year and reissued in 1631 what purported to be King James's paraphrase, and another entirely different version in i636. Neither of these is at all like the MS. paraphrase in the British Museum, which contains rough drafts in the King's hand (with fair copies in some cases) of Psalms 1-7, 9-21, 29, 47, 100, 125, 128, 133, 148, 150, Eccles. xii, the Lord's Prayer (cf. App. II, IX) and Deut. xxxii. The initials J. D. R. S. (Jacobus Dominus Rex Scotia?), frequently signed to the rough drafts, indicate that they were made before the King left Scotland. It is not impossible, therefore, that Alexander's first edition was based on a later paraphrase in which he and James collaborated; the royal recommendation opposite the title-page of the 1631 edition testifies explicitly to James's authorship.