It has been remarked that nothing can explain the almost universal mediocrity of royal compositions, despite the great and manifest advantages enjoyed by their authors. The superior value set upon martial qualities in days gone by prevented, it is said, the rulers and leading men of the State from cultivating letters, although, it would seem, the reverse was the case in the old days of the Roman Empire, when, of the first twenty emperors, above one-half were authors.

But in modern times literary habits have been comparatively rare among princes, and of those who turned their attention in this direction—- more as a pastime than a study—few names would have survived in the literary world had it not been for their connection with Royalty.

On the other hand, many of our queens have interested themselves in literature, and it is recorded how Adelicia of Louvaine—surnamed “The Fair Maid of Brabant”—second queen of Henry I., employed her days of widowhood in collecting materials for the history of her mighty lord; and Eleanora of Aquitaine was a popular troubadour{358} poet, her chansons having been famous long after her death. By hereditary right, too, she was reviewer of the poets of Provence, and at the “Courts of Love,” when chansons were sung or recited before her by the troubadours, she sat in judgment, and passed sentence on their literary merits.

Richard I. was a troubadour poet, and Matthew Paris tells how, when he was imprisoned at Tenebreuse, he composed a poem, preserved in the Bibliothèque Royal. Eleanor of Provence, queen of Henry III., almost before she entered her teens, had written an heroic poem in her native Proven?al tongue, and her taste for literature she seems to have imparted to her husband, for his reign affords the first example of a poet-laureate, in the person of one Master Henry, to whom by the name of “our beloved versificator” his Majesty ordered “one hundred shillings to be given in payment of his arrears;” and several romances are said to have been written under this monarch’s supervision.

Eleanora of Castile, in addition to her many other accomplishments, was fond of literature, and gave it every encouragement. According to Warton, she paid forty shillings to one Richard du Marche for illuminating a psalter, and at her request John de Pentham translated from Latin into French a treatise of religion, called “Hierarchy,” which is preserved in the library of St. Geneviève in Paris. Adversity appears to have had a sobering and hallowing influence on Edward II., the follow{359}ing lines having been written by him in Latin during his captivity:—
“On my devoted head
Her bitterest showers,
All from a wintry cloud,
Stern Fortune pours.
View but her favourite,
Sage and discerning,
Graced with fair comeliness,
Famed for his learning;
Should she withdraw her smiles,
Each grace she banishes,
Wisdom and wit are flown,
And beauty vanishes.”

It was, however, a different motive that prompted a royal Plantagenet poet, Edward, Duke of York, cousin-german to King Henry IV., to write the following amatory stanzas in praise of the attractive Joanna of Navarre:—
“Excellent sovereign! seemly to see,
Proved prudence, peerless of price;
Bright blossom of benignity,
Of figure fairest, and freshest of days!
Your womanly beauty delicious
Hath me all bent unto its chain;
But grant to me your love gracious,
My heart will melt as snow in rain.
If ye but wist my life, and knew
Of all the pains that I y-feel,
I wis ye would upon me rue,
Although your heart were made of steel.
And though ye be of high renown,
Let mercy rule your heart so free;
From you, lady, this is my boon,
To grant me grace in some degree.”
{360}

But this act of indiscretion seems to have aroused the personal jealousy of King Henry, for, on a very frivolous pretence, the Duke of York was imprisoned in Pevensey Castle for three months, in the course of which interval his Majesty’s displeasure had time to abate.

The following touching verses, which have been attributed to Henry VI., were probably written during his long imprisonment in the Tower:—
“Kingdoms are but cares;
State is devoid of stay;
Riches are ready snares,
And hasten to decay.
Who meaneth to remove the rock
Out of the slimy mud,
Shall mire himself and hardly ’ scape
The swelling of the flood.”

And there are preserved two sentences said to have been written and given by his Majesty to a knight who had the care of him. “Patience is the armour and conquest of the godly; this meriteth mercy, when causeless is suffered sorrow.” “Nought else is war but fury and madness, wherein is not advice, but rashness; not right, but rage, ruleth and reigneth.”

Henry VIII. prided himself on his literary attainments, a boast which was by no means unfounded. In 1536, offended at the manifesto of the pilgrims, he compounded a reply in which he expressed his astonishment that “ignorant people should go about to instruct him in matters of theology, who somewhat had been noted to be learned in what the{361} faith should be,” indirectly referring to his own book against Luther, which had procured for him from the Pope the title of “Defender of the Faith.” Indeed, his Majesty is said not only to have been a great reader, but to have been conversant with several languages; and, whatever his other defects, he was an accomplished student—his work “The Glass of Truth” alone being another proof of his theological attainments. He was among the best physicians of his time, and he acted as “his own engineer, inventing improvements in artillery, and new constructions in shipbuilding.”

Anne Boleyn is said to have composed her own dirge after her condemnation:—
“Oh, death! rock me asleep,
Bring on my quiet rest,
Let pass my very guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast.
Ring out the doleful knell;
Let its sound my death tell—
For I must die,
There is no remedy,
For now I die.
My pains who can express?
Alas! they are so strong,
My dolour will not suffer strength
My life for to prolong!
Alone in prison strange,
I wail my destiny;
Woe worth this cruel hap, that I
Should taste this misery!
Farewell my pleasures past,
Welcome my present pain,
I feel my torments so increase
That life cannot remain.{362}
Sound now the passing bell;
Rung is my doleful knell,
For its sound my death doth tell:
Death doth draw nigh,
Sound the knell dolefully,
For now I die.”

But passing from this queen’s tragic death to Henry VIII.’s last wife, Catherine Parr, it may be remembered that the celebrated devotional work, “The Lamentation of a Sinner,” obtained great popularity, and has been adjudged to be one of the finest specimens of English composition of that era. Within the limits of about 120 miniature pages, it comprises an elegant treatise “On the imperfection of human nature in its unassisted state, and the utter vanity of all earthly grandeur and distinction,” at the same time an uncompromising attitude being taken up against papal supremacy; for, as her Majesty tells us in the volume, she deplored her former attachment to the ceremonials of the Church of Rome. Hence the royal writer does not forget to compliment Henry on having emancipated the kingdom from this domination; and adds, “Our Moses, and most godly wise governor and king hath delivered us out of the captivity and spiritual bondage of Pharaoh: I mean by this Moses, King Henry VIII., my most sovereign favourable lord and husband.” Catherine Parr was no doubt gifted by nature with fine talents, for she both read and wrote Latin with facility, and possessed some knowledge of Greek.

It was also through the influence of Catherine{363} Parr that the Princess Mary was induced to undertake the translation of the Latin paraphrase of St. John, by Erasmus. She did not append her name to the translation, but Dr. Udall in his preface thus refers to her labours: “England can never be able to render thanks sufficient; so it never will be able—as her deserts require—enough to praise the most noble, the most virtuous, and the most studious Lady Mary’s grace, for taking such pains and travail in translating this paraphrase of Erasmus on the Gospel of St. John.” And when Mary was doubtful as to whether the work should be published in her name or anonymously, Catherine Parr wrote “that in her opinion she would do a wrong to the work, if she should refuse to send it to posterity with the advantage of her name; because in her accurate translation she had gone through much pains for the public good.” Mary, however, did not append her name to the translation, but granted Dr. Udall permission to mention her labours in the preface.

Elizabeth’s knowledge and acquirements from an early age made her famous, and Hentzner, the German traveller, mentions having seen a little volume in the royal library at Whitehall, written in French by her, when a child, on vellum, and which was thus inscribed: “A tres haut, et tres puissant, et redoubté Prince Henry VIII. de ce nom, roy d’Angleterre, de France, et de Irelande, defendeur de la foy. Elizabeth, sa tres humble fille, rend salut et obedience.” When imprisoned by her sister Mary, she wrote several poems, and it is said that Mary Queen of Scots during her long incarceration{364} by Elizabeth produced many pleasing poetic compositions.

When Henry IV. of France abjured the Protestant faith and joined the Church of Rome, Elizabeth was greatly troubled at his apostasy, and to divert her mind she entered into a course of theological studies, and finally occupied her time by reading “Boethius on the Consolations of Philosophy,” of the first five books of which she made a very elegant English translation. Her Majesty, too, showed her sympathy for the literary characters of her day, and when the antiquary Lambarde waited upon her at Greenwich Palace to present his “Pandecta of the Tower Records,” she received him most graciously, and after looking through the volume, “she commended the work,” writes Lambarde, “not only for the pains therein taken,” but also “for that she had not received, since her first coming to the crown, any one thing that brought therewith so great a delectation to her”; and Walpole[151] has chronicled her various other contributions to literature.

James I. was fond of literature, and was an industrious reader, but as an author “he was only possessed of that mediocrity of talent which in a private person had never raised him to notice.” In 1599 was published his “Basilicon Doron,” containing advice to his son respecting his moral and political conduct; and in his work on “D?monologie” we find his Majesty inveighing against the “damnable opinions of one Scott, an Englishman, who is not ashamed to deny in public print that{365} there be such a thing as witchcraft, and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of Spirits;”[152] and one of his first acts on ascending the English throne was to order all copies of Scott’s “Discoverie of Witchcraft” to be burnt. His translation of the Psalms was never finished, and as a poet it is generally agreed he was a failure. His collected works were published in 1616 by Bishop Montagu, together with earlier speeches and State Papers. Walpole, speaking of his literary abilities, says, “It is well for the arts that King James had no disposition for them: he let them take their own course. Had he felt for them any inclination, he would have probably introduced as bad taste as he did in literature.” His unpublished correspondence with Buckingham is described by Wellwood as too disgusting to be read by a modest eye. The claims of Charles, his son, have been ranked very high as an author; and if the “Eikon Basilike” had been his composition, this famous production—which is full of piety and wisdom, and in style pure and graceful—would give him a prominent place in the catalogue of royal authors. But, as it has been observed, “the silence of Clarendon upon the subject in his History, and the explicit denial by both Charles II. and James II., as vouched by two unconnected witnesses, Bishop Burnet and Lord Anglesey, would be decisive of the question, even if we could overlook the evidence of Bishop Patrick and Dr. Walker.” During his imprisonment at Carisbrooke{366} Charles expressed his feelings in poetry; the subjoined stanzas amongst many others having been attributed to him at this period, although they have been suspected to be a pious fraud:—
“Tyranny bears the title of taxation,
Revenge and robbery are reformation,
Oppression gains the name of sequestration.
My loyal subjects, who in this bad season,
Attend (by the law of God and reason),
They dare impeach and punish for high treason.
Next at the clergy do their furies frown,
Pious Episcopacy must go down,
They will destroy the crosier and the crown.
Churchmen are chained, and schismatics are freed,
Mechanics preach, and holy fathers bleed,
The crown is crucified with the Creed.
The Church of England doth all faction foster,
The pulpit i............