The Democratic Whig

Character of James I.—To sum up the character of James in the most charitable manner, he was really after all, and notwithstanding a good deal of positive acuteness and scholarship, nothing but a 'great lubberly boy' from first to last; and it should be added, that no human being, from his infancy, appears to have been more the creature of circumstances. In the murder of Rizzio before his mother's face his constitution probably received a shock before he was born; his mother was of the same self-indulgent temperament, notwithstanding her attainments; his father, Lord Darnley, was a foolish dissolute lad; and the very wet-nurse of the future maudlin Solomon was a drunkard. Buchanan then took the child and flogged him into a pedant; the religious Reformers perplexed him with alternate homage and insult; and when Elizabeth died. this victim of birth, parentage, and education, with rickety limbs, sensual temperament, and just talents enough to make him vain and self-satisfied, walked out of a poor kingdom into a rich one, half mad with his joy, and flattered into the most ridiculous notions on all points, by some of the greatest wits in Europe.