It is curious, too, to get
at the history of a monarch's heart, and to find the simple
affections of human nature throbbing under the ermine. But James
had learnt to be a poet before he was a king; he was schooled in
adversity, and reared in the company of his own thoughts.
Monarchs have seldom time to parley with their hearts or to
meditate their minds into poetry; and had James been brought up
amidst the adulation and gayety of a court, we should never, in
all probability, have had such a poem as the Quair.
* Quair, an old term for book.
I have been particularly interested by those parts of the poem
which breathe his immediate thoughts concerning his situation, or
which are connected with the apartment in the Tower. They have
thus a personal and local charm, and are given with such
circumstantial truth as to make the reader present with the
captive in his prison and the companion of his meditations.
Such is the account which he gives of his weariness of spirit,
and of the incident which first suggested the idea of writing the
poem. It was the still mid-watch of a clear moonlight night; the
stars, he says, were twinkling as fire in the high vault of
heaven, and "Cynthia rinsing her golden locks in Aquarius.
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