THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF JAMES I. 281 



science of medicine, in those days, been sufficiently advanced to have 

 treated fevers by cold affusion ;* instead of which, " Sir Theodore 

 Mayerne, a French physician, and in great esteem, would have let 

 blood." These continual bleedings, therefore, destroyed a prince 

 " whose sun went down while it was yet day." 



Higgons again grossly calumniates the bishop in the following 

 sentence : — " I should not have laid so much stress on this matter 

 if the author had been speaking of any other person but King 

 James, against whom he had so inveterate a malice, as is evident by 

 the barbarous, unjust character which he gives of that prince."t 

 But if this were the deep and abiding feeling in the mind of the 

 bishop, we must find it altogether impossible to reconcile ourselves, 

 among other remarkable omissions in support of James's reputation, 

 to his silence respecting the prosecution of Peacham, a clergyman in 

 Somersetshire, which, above all this king's iniquitous acts, breathes 

 the odious principles of pure, unmingled despotism. Here was 

 the happiest opportunity presented to our historian of showing, what 

 sounds like a monstrous and shocking exaggeration, that the British 

 Solomon had a heart as weak as it was obdurate and wicked. A 

 more wily tactic could not have been attributed to the most eulo- 

 gistic biographer of " the pedant reign,":j: than to have treated that 



" See Dr. Currie's Medical Reports on the effects of Water, cold and warm, as 

 a remedy in Feuer ; a performance which is strikingly indicative of the 

 general ability of this eminent man in his profession. 



+ Remarks, p. 23. 



J Bolingbroke has justly observed, " that his pedantry was too much even 

 for the age in which he Uved," and perhaps it would have been almost found 

 repugnant Academical Discipline. Lord Dartmouth on the information of 

 the Earl of Mar thinks proper to assert, " that King .James's pedantic edu- 

 cation was designedly given him to make him contemptible both at home and 

 abroad." Notes upon Burnett's History of his own Time, vol. i., p. 12. But 

 this opinion does not harmonize with our convictions. It was one of the 

 chief concerns of the Scottish state to provide suitable preceptors for their 

 future monarch. Under that highly gifted man, George Buchanan, the 

 young king was instructed in the liberal studies, rhetoric, logic, history, par- 

 ticularly modern history; also in the learned languages, and in geography 

 and astronomy. Moreover, to inspire his royal pupil with views and senti- 

 ments fitted for his exalted station, and to enable him to play a higher part 

 tlian " the wisest fool in Europe," as he was styled by Sally, Buchanan 

 endeavoured with emphatic enforcement to make history one continued 

 comment and exemjilification of this now acknowledged principle, that princes 

 govern not for their own advantage, but for that of their people. Scehis famous 

 treatise De Jure Rcf/ni a/wl Scolos. If there had been, then, the disgracefiil 

 project to dwarf the intellectual growth of James, to stunt his energies, to 

 disable liis understanding, Buchanan could never be fairly accused of becom- 



