Page:The Queens of England.djvu/471

 ANNE OF DENMARK. 425 power of Satan in matter of witchcraft ; and asked me, with much gravity, if I did truly understand why the devil did work more with ancient women than others." That he had really a fair share of what the world agrees to call learning is nevertheless not to be denied. But it never profited or bore generous fruit with .him. When his great teacher was reproached for having made him a pedant he answered that it was the- best he could make of him. He was probably the most ignorant man that was ever esteemed a learned one. When it was proposed to him to marry a daugh- ter of Denmark, he had to ask where Denmark was, and what its kings were, and whether they were not but a better sort of merchants, and if they were really held in esteem by any- body but only such as could speak Dutch. He scrambled into a reputation for worldly cleverness by a species of low natural cunning and the vulgar art of circumventing an adversary. Henri Quatre referred to this when he called him the wisest fool in Christendom. It was in no respect his learning that obtained it for him. His learning never helped him to a useful thought or a suggestion of practical benefit. Its high- est achievements were, mystically to define the prerogative as a thing set above the law, to exhibit king-craft as his own particular gift from heaven, to denounce presbytery as the offspring of the devil, to blow furious counterblasts to tobacco, to deal damnation to the unbelievers of witchcraft, and to pour out the wraths of the Apocalypse upon popery. Before he was twenty he had proved the descendant of Saint Peter to be Anti-Christ ; and when he now had finished libeling and burning the witches, he secretly set as eagerly to work against seditious priests that should attempt rebellion against Anti-Christ himself, or on any pretense make resistance to set- tled authority. His young wife had soon found wit enough to see, however, that to such seditious priests he entirely owed his throne ; and she had no lack of spirit to feel that he should either have had courage to take open part against them, or honesty to refrain from intrigues with his mother's turbulent faction. But it was the peculiarity and privilege of James to entitle himself to contempt from every party in the state, and he had not been slow to merit it from his queen. Selfishness, in truth, he seldom scrupled to avow as the only allegiance he owned. By the instinct'of self-preservation he tried and tested everything. Nor, however odious in itself,