A ROYAL POET.

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Though your body be ed

 And soft love a prisoner bound,

 Yet the beauty of your mind

 her cheor hath found.

 Look out nobly, then, and dare

 Eveters that you wear.

 FLETCHER.

 ON a soft sunny m in the genial month of May I made an excursion to Windsor Castle. It is a place full of storied and poetical associations. The very external aspect of the proud old pile is enough to inspire high thought. It rears its irregular walls and massive towers, like a mural around the brow of a lofty ridge, waves its royal banner in the clouds, and looks down with a lordly air upon the surrounding world.

 On this m, the weather was of that voluptuous vernal kind which calls forth all the latent romance of a mans temperament, ?lling his mind with musid disposing him to quote poetry and dream of beauty. In wandering through the mag saloons and long eg galleries of the castle I passed with indifference by whole rows of portraits of warriors and statesmen, but lingered in the chamber where hang the likenesses of the beauties which graced the gay court of Charles the Sed; and as I gazed upon them, depicted with amorous, half-dishevelled tresses, and the sleepy eye of love, I blessed the pencil of Sir Peter Lely, which bad thus enabled me to bask in the re?ected rays of beauty. In traversing also the "large green courts," with sunshine beaming on the gray walls and glang along the velvet turf, my mind was engrossed with the image of the tehe gallant, but hapless Surrey, and his at of his ls about them in his stripling days, when enamoured of the Lady Geraldine--

 "With eyes cast up unto the maidens tower,

 With easie sighs, such as men draw in love."

 In this mood of mere poetical susceptibility, I visited the a keep of the castle, where James the First of Scotland, the pride and theme of Scottish poets and historians, was for many years of his youth detained a prisoner of state. It is a large gray tower, that has stood the brunt of ages, and is still in good preservation. It stands on a mound which elevates it above the other parts of the castle, and a great ?ight of steps leads to the interior. In the armory, a Gothic hall furnished with ons of various kinds and ages, I was shown a coat of armor hanging against the wall, which had once beloo James.

 Hence I was ducted up a staircase to a suite of apartments, of faded magni?ce, hung with storied tapestry, whied his prison, and the se of that passionate and fanciful amour, which has woven into the web of his story the magical hues of poetry and ?.

 The whole history of this amiable but unfortunate prince is highly romantic. At the tender age of eleven, he was sent from home by his father, Robert III., ained for the French court, to be reared uhe eye of the French monarch, secure from the treachery and dahat surrouhe royal house of Scotland. It was his mishap, in the course of his voyage, to fall into the hands of the English, and he was detained prisoner by Henry IV., notwithstanding that a truce existed betweewo tries.

 The intelligence of his capture, ing irain of many sorrows and disasters, proved fatal to his unhappy father. "The news," we are told, "was brought to him while at supper, and did so overwhelm him with grief that he was almost ready to give up the ghost into the hands of the servants that attended him. But being carried to his bedchamber, he abstained from all food, and in three days died of hunger and grief at Rothesay."*

 * Buan.

 James was detained in captivity above eighteen years; but, though deprived of personal liberty, he was treated with the respect due to his rank. Care was taken to instruct him in all the branches of useful knowledge cultivated at that period, and to give him those mental and personal aplishments deemed proper for a prince. Perhaps in this respect his impriso was an advantage, as it enabled him to apply himself the more exclusively to his improvement, and quietly to imbibe that rich fund of knowledge and to cherish those elegant tastes which have given such a lustre to his memory. The picture drawn of him in early life by the Scottish historians is highly captivating, and seems rather the description of a hero of romahan of a character in real history. He was well learnt, we are told, "to ?ght with the sword, to joust, to touro wrestle, to sing and dance; he was an expert medier, right crafty in playing both of lute and harp, and sundry other instruments of musid was expert in grammar, oratory, and poetry."*

 * Balleranslation of Hector Boyce.

 With this bination of manly and delicate aplishments, ?tting him to shih in active and elegant life, and calculated to give him an intense relish for joyous existe must have been a severe trial, in an age of bustle and chivalry, to pass the spring-time of his years in monotonous captivity. It was the good fortune of James, however, to be gifted with a powerful poeticy, and to be visited in his prison by the choicest inspirations of the muse. Some minds corrode, and grow inactive, uhe loss of personal liberty; row morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to bee tender and imaginative in the loneliness of ement. He bas upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.

 Have you not seen the nightingale,

 A pilgrim coopd into a cage,

 How doth she t her woale,

 In that her lonely hermitage!

 Even there her charming melody doth prove

 That all her boughs are trees, her cage a grove.+ + Roger LEstrange.

 Indeed, it is the diviribute of the imagination, that it is irrepressible, unable--that when the real world is shut out, it create a world for itself, and, with a neantic power, jure up glorious shapes and forms and brilliant visions, to make solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of the dungeon. Such was the world of pomp and pageant that lived round Tasso in his dismal cell at Ferrara, when he ceived the splendid ses of his Jerusalem; and we may sider The Kings Quair,* posed by James during his captivity at Windsor, as another of those beautiful breakings forth of the soul from the restraint and gloom of the prison-house.

 The subject of the poem is his love for the lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and a princess of the blood-royal of England, of whom he became enamoured in the course of his captivity. What gives it a peculiar value, is, that it may be sidered a transcript of the royal bards true feelings, and the story of his real loves and fortunes. It is not often that sns write poetry or that poets deal in fact. It is gratifying to the pride of a an, to ?nd a monarch thus suing, as it were, for admission into his closet, and seeking to win his favor by administering to his pleasures. It is a proof of the ho equality of intellectual petition, which strips off all the trappings of factitious dignity, brings the didate down to a level with his fellow-men, and obliges him to depend on his own native powers for distin. It is curious, too, to get at the history of a monarchs heart, and to ?nd the simple affes of human nature throbbing uhe ermine. But James had learnt to be a poet before he was a king; he was schooled in adversity, and reared in the pany 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 ied by those parts of the poem which breathe his immediate thoughts ing his situation, or which are ected with the apartment iower. 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 panion of his meditations.

 Such is the at which he gives of his weariness of spirit, and of the i which ?rst 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 ?re in the high vault of heaven, and "thia rinsing her golden locks in Aquarius." He lay in bed wakeful aless, and took a book to beguile the tedious hours. The book he chose was Boetius solations of Philosophy, a work popular among the writers of that day, and which had been translated by his great prototype, Chaucer. From the high eulogium in which he indulges, it is evident this was one of his favorite volumes while in prison; and i is an admirable text-book for meditation under adversity. It is the legacy of a noble and enduring spirit, puri?ed by sorrow and suffering, bequeathing to its successors in calamity the maxims of sweet morality, and the trains of eloquent but simple reasoning, by which it was eo bear up against the various ills of life. It is a talisman, which the unfortunate may treasure up in his bosom, or, like the good King James, lay upon his nightly pillow.

 After closing the volume he turns its tents over in his mind, and gradually falls into a ?t of musing on the ?ess of fortuhe vicissitudes of his own life, and the evils that had overtaken him even in his tender youth. Suddenly he hears the bell ringing to matins, but its sound, chiming in with his melancholy fancies, seems to him like a voice exh him to write his story. In the spirit of poetic errantry he determio ply with this intimatioherefore takes pen in hand, makes with it a sign of the cross to implore a beion, and sallies forth into the fairy-land of poetry. There is somethiremely fanciful in all this, and it is iing as furnishing a striking aiful instance of the simple manner in which whole trains of poetical thought are sometimes awakened and literary enterprises suggested to the mind.

 In the course of his poem, he more than once bewails the peculiar hardness of his fate, thus doomed to lonely and inactive life, and shut up from the freedom and pleasure of the world in which the mea animal indulges uraihere is a sweetness, however, in his very plaints; they are the lamentations of an amiable and social spirit at being dehe indulgence of its kind and generous propensities; there is nothing in them harsh nor exaggerated; they ?ow with a natural and toug pathos, and are perhaps rendered more toug by their simple brevity.

 They trast ?nely with those elaborate and iterated repinings which we sometimes meet with iry, the effusions of morbid minds siing under miseries of their owing, aing their bitterness upon an unoffending world. James speaks of his privations with acute sensibility, but haviiohem passes on, as if his manlv mind disdaio brood over unavoidable calamities. When such a spirit breaks forth into plaint, however brief, we are aware how great must be the suffering that extorts the murmur. We sympathize with James, a romantic, active, and aplished prince, cut off in the lustihood of youth from all the enterprise, the noble uses, and vigorous delights of life, as we do with Milton, alive to all the beauties of nature and glories of art, when he breathes forth brief but deep-toned lamentations over his perpetual blindness.

 Had not James evinced a de?cy of poetic arti?ce, we might almost have suspected that these ls of gloomy re?e were meant as preparative to the brightest se of his story, and to trast with that refulgence of light and loveliness, that exhilarating apa of bird and song, and foliage and ?ower, and all the revel of, the year, with which he ushers in the lady of his heart. It is this se, in particular, which throws all the magic of romance about the old castle keep. He had risen, he says, at daybreak, acc to , to escape from the dreary meditations of a sleepless pillow. "Bewailing in his chamber thus alone," despairing of all joy and remedy, "for, tired of thought, and woe-begone," he had wao the window to indulge the captives miserable solace, of gazing wistfully upon the world from which he is excluded. The window looked forth upon a small garden which lay at the foot of the tower. It was a quiet, sheltered spot, adorned with arbors and green alleys, and protected from the passing gaze by trees and hawthorn hedges.

 Now was there made fast by the towers wall,

 A garden faire, and in the ers set

 An arbreen with wandis long and small

 Railed about, and so with leaves beset

 Was all the plad hawthorn hedges k,

 That lyf* was none, walkyng there forbye,

 That might within scary wight espye.

 So thick the branches and the leves grene,

 Beshaded all the alleys that there were,

 And midst of every arbht be seen,

 The sharpe, grene, swete juniper,

 Growing so fair with branches here and there,

 That as it seemed to a lyf without,

 The boughs did spread the arbour all about.

 And on the small grewistis+ set

 The lytel swete nightingales, and sung

 So loud and clear, the hymnis secrate

 Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,

 That all the garden and the wallis rung

 Right of their song----

 * Lyf, Person. + Twistis, small boughs or twigs.

 he language of the quotations is generally modernized.

 It was the month of May, whehing was in bloom, aerprets the song of the nightio the language of his enamoured feeling:

 Worship, all ye that lovers be, this May;

 For of your bliss the kalends are begun,

 And sing with us, Away, winter, away.

 e, summer, e, the sweet season and sun.

 As he gazes on the se, and listens to the notes of the birds, he gradually relapses into one of those tender and unde?nable reveries, which ?ll the youthful bosom in this delicious season.

 He wonders what this love may be of which he has so often read, and which thus seems breathed forth in the quiing breath of May, aing all nature iasy and song. If it really be so great a felicity, and if it be a boon thus generally dispeo the most insigni?t beings, why is he alo off from its enjoyments?

 Oft would I think, O Lord, what may this be,

 That love is of suoble myght and kynde?

 Loving his folke, and such prosperitee,

 Is it of him, as we in books do ?nd;

 May he oure hertes setten* and unbynd:

 Hath he upon oure hertes such maistrye?

 Or is all this but feynit fantasye?

 Fiff he be of so grete excellence

 That he of every wight hath care and charge,

 What have I gilt+ to him, or done offense,

 That I am thrald, and birdis go at large?

 * Setten, ine.

 + Gilt, what injury have I doc.

 In the midst of his musing, as he casts his eye downward, he beholds "the fairest and the freshest young ?oure" that ever he had seen. It is the lovely Lady Jane, walking in the garden to enjoy the beauty of that "fresh May morrowe." Breaking thus suddenly upon his sight in a moment of loneliness aed susceptibility, she at once captivates the fancy of the romantic prince, and bees the object of his wandering wishes, the sn of his ideal world.

 There is, in this charming se, an evident resemblao the early part of Chaucers Knights Tale, where Palamon and Arcite fall in love with Emilia, whom they see walking in the garden of their prison. Perhaps the similarity of the actual fact to the i which he had read in Chaucer may have induced James to dwell on it in his poem. His description of the Lady Jane is given in the picturesque and minute manner of his master, and, being doubtless taken from the life, is a perfect portrait of a beauty of that day. He dwells with the fondness of a lover on every article of her apparel, from the of pearl, sple with emeralds and sapphires, that ed her golden hair, even to the "goodly e of small orfeverye"* about her neck, whereby there hung a ruby in shape of a heart, that seemed, he says, like a spark of ?re burning upon her white bosom. Her dress of white tissue was looped up to enable her to <bdi>..</bdi>walk with more freedom. She was apanied by two female attendants, and about her sported a little hound decorated with bells, probably the small Italian hound of exquisite symmetry which arlor favorite a among the fashionable dames of aimes.

 James closes his description by a burst of general eulogium:

 In her was youth, beauty, with humble port,

 Bounty, richesse, and womanly feature:

 God better knows than my pen report,

 Wisdom, largesse,+ estate,++ and ing& sure.

 In every point so guided her measure,

 In word, in deed, in shape, in tenance,

 That nature might no more her child advance.

 * Wrought gold.

 + Largesse, bounty.

 ++ Estate, dignity.

 & ing, discretion.

 The departure of the Lady Jane from the garden puts ao this tra riot of the heart. With her departs the amorous illusion that had shed a temporary charm over the se of his captivity, and he relapses into loneliness, now reenfold more intolerable by this passing beam of unattainable beauty.

 Through the long and weary day he repi his unhappy lot, and when evening approaches, and Phoebus, as he beautifully expresses it, had "bade farewell to every leaf and ?ower," he still lingers at the window, and, laying his head upon the cold stone, gives vent to a mingled ?ow of love and sorrow, until, gradually lulled by the mute melancholy of the twilight hour, he lapses, "half-sleeping, half swoon," into a vision, which occupies the remainder of the poem, and in which is allegorically shadowed out the history of his passion.

 When he wakes from his trance, he rises from his stony pillow, and, pag his apartment, full of dreary re?es, questions his spirit, whither it has been wandering; whether, indeed, all that has passed before his dreaming fancy has been jured up by preg circumstances, or whether it is a vision inteo fort and assure him in his despondency. If the latter, he prays that some token may be sent to the promise of happier days, given him in his slumbers. Suddenly, a turtledove of the purest whiteness es ?ying in at the window, and alights upon his hand, bearing in her bill a branch illi?ower, on the leaves of which is written, iers of gold, the followience:

 Awake! Awake! I bring, lover, I bring

 The newis glad, that blissful is and sure

 Of thy fort; now laugh, and play, and sing,

 For in the heaveit is thy cure.

 He receives the branch with mingled hope and dread; reads it with rapture; and this he says was the ?rst token of his succeeding happiness. Whether this is a mere poetic ?, or whether the Lady Jane did actually send him a token of her favor in this romantic way, remains to be determined acc to the fate or fancy of the reader. He cludes his poem by intimating that the promise veyed in the vision and by the ?ower, is ful?lled by his beiored to liberty, and made happy in the possession of the sn of his heart.

 Such is the poetical at given by James of his love adventures in Windsor Castle. How much of it is absolute fact, and how much the embellishment of fancy, it is fruitless to jecture; let us not, however, reject every romantit as inpatible with real life, but let us sometimes take a poet at his word. I have noticed merely those parts of the poem immediately ected with the tower, and have passed over a large part which was in the allegorical vein, so much cultivated at that day. The language, of course, is quaint and antiquated, so that the beauty of many of its golden phrases will scarcely be perceived at the present day, but it is impossible not to be charmed with the genuiiment, the delightful artlessness and urbanity, which prevail throughout it. The descriptions of Nature too, with which it is embellished, are given with a truth, a discrimination, and a freshness, worthy of the most cultivated periods of the art.

 As an amatory poem, it is edifying, in these days of coarser thinking, to notice the nature, re?, and exquisite delicacy which pervade it; banishing every gross thought, or immodest expression, and presenting female loveliness, clothed in all its chivalrous attributes of almost supernatural purity and grace.

 James ?ourished nearly about the time of Chaucer and Gower, and was evidently an admirer and studier of their writings. Indeed, in one of his stanzas he aowledges them as his masters; and in some parts of his poem we ?nd traces of similarity to their produs, more especially to those of Chaucer. There are always, however, general features of resemblan the works of porary authors, which are not so much borrowed from each other as from the times. Writers, like bees, toll their sweets in the wide world; they incorporate with their own ceptions, the aes and thoughts current in society; and thus each geion has some features in on, characteristic of the age in which it lives.

 James belongs to one of the most brilliant eras of our literary history, aablishes the claims of his co<tt>９9ｌｉｂ?t>untry to a participation in its primitive honors. Whilst a small cluster of English writers are stantly cited as the fathers of our verse, the name of their great Scottish peer is apt to be passed over in silence; but he is evidently worthy of being enrolled in that little stellation of remote but never-failing luminaries who shine in the highest ?rmament of literature, and who, like m stars, sang together at the bright dawning of British poesy.

 Suy readers as may not be familiar with Scottish history (though the manner in which it has of late been woven with captivating ? has made it a universal study) may be curious to learn something of the subsequent history of James and the fortunes of his love. His passion for the Lady Jane, as it was the solace of his captivity, so it facilitated his release, it being imagined by the Court that a e with the blood-royal of England would attach him to its own is. He was ultimately restored to his liberty and , having previously espoused the Lady Jane, who apanied him to Scotland, and made him a most tender aed wife.

 He found his kingdom i fusion, the feudal chieftains having taken advantage of the troubles and irregularities of a long interregnum, tthen themselves in their possessions, and place themselves above the power of the laws. James sought to found the basis of his power in the affes of his people. He attached the lower orders to him by the reformation of abuses, the temperate and equable administration of justice, the encement of the arts of peace, and the promotion of every thing that could diffuse fort, petency, and i enjoyment through the humblest ranks of society. He mingled occasionally among the on people in disguise; visited their ?resides; entered into their cares, their pursuits, and their amusements; informed himself of the meical arts, and how they could best be patronized and improved; and was thus an all-pervading spirit, watg with a benevolent eye over the mea of his subjects. Having in this generous manner made himself strong in the hearts of the on people, he turned himself to curb the power of the factious nobility; to strip them of those dangerous immunities which they had usurp<bdo>..</bdo>ed; to punish such as had been guilty of ?agrant offences; and t the whole into proper obedieo the . For some time they bore this with outward submission, but with secret impatiend broodiment. A spiracy was at length formed against his life, at the head of which was his own uncle, Robert Stewart, Earl of Athol, who, being too old himself for the perpetration of the deed of blood, instigated his grandson, Sir Robert Stewart, together with Sir Rraham, and others of less o it the deed. They broke into his bedchamber at the Domini vent near Perth, where he was residing, and barbarously murdered him by oft-repeated wounds. His faithful queen, rushing to throw her tender body between him and the sword, was twice wounded in the iual attempt to shield him from the assassin; and it was not until she had been forcibly torn from his person, that the murder was aplished.

 It was the recolle of this romantic tale of former times, and of the golden little poem, which had its birthpla this tower, that made me visit the old pile with more than on i. The suit of armor hanging up in the hall, richly gilt and embellished, as if to ?gure iourney, brought the image of the gallant and romantic prince vividly before my imagination. I paced the deserted chambers where he had posed his poem; I leaned upon the window, and endeavored to persuade myself it was the very one where he had been visited by his vision; I looked out upon the spot where he had ?rst seen the Lady Ja was the same genial and joyous month; the birds were again vying with each other in strains of liquid melody; every thing was bursting into vegetation, and budding forth the tender promise of the year. Time, which delights to obliterate the sterner memorials of human pride, seems to have passed lightly over this little se of poetry and love, and to have withheld his desolating hand. Several turies have gone by, yet the garden still ?ourishes at the foot of the tower. It occupies what was ohe moat of the keep; and, though some parts have been separated by dividing walls, yet others have still their arbors and shaded walks, as in the days of James, and the whole is sheltered, blooming, aired. There is a charm about the spot that has been printed by the footsteps of departed beauty, and secrated by the inspirations of the poet, which is heightened, rather than impaired, by the lapse of ages. It is, ihe gift of poetry, to hallow every pla which it moves; to breathe around nature an odor more exquisite than the perfume of the rose, and to shed over it a tint more magical than the blush of m.

 Others may dwell on the illustrious deeds of James as a warrior and a legislator; but I have delighted to view him merely as the panion of his fellow-men, the beor of the huma, stooping from his high estate to sow the sweet ?owers of poetry and song ihs of on life. He was the ?rst to cultivate the vigorous and hardy plant of Scottish genius, which has since bee so proli?c of the most wholesome and highly ?avored fruit. He carried with him into the sterner regions of the north, all the fertilizing arts of southern re?. He did every thing in his power to win his trymen to the gay, the elegant, ale arts, which soften and re?he character of a people, and wreathe a grace round the loftiness of a proud and warlike spirit. He wrote many poems, which, unfortunately for the fulness of his fame, are now lost to the world; one, which is still preserved, called "Christs Kirk of the Green," shows how diligently he had made himself acquainted with the rustic sports and pastimes, which stitute such a source of kind and social feeling among the Scottish peasantry; and with what simple and happy humor he could enter into their enjoyments. He tributed greatly to improve the national musid traces of his tender se and elegant taste are said to exist in those witg airs, still piped among the wild mountains and lonely glens of Scotland. He has thus ected his image with whatever is most gracious and endearing iional character; he has embalmed his memory in song, and ?oated his o after-ages in the rich streams of Scottish melody. The recolle of these things was kindling at my heart, as I paced the silent se of his impriso. I have visited Vaucluse with as muthusiasm as a pilgrim would visit the shri Loretto; but I have never felt more poetical devotion than when plating the old tower and the little garden at Windsor, and musing over the romantic loves of the Lady Jane, and the Royal Poet of Scotland.

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