V
ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND: PATRONAGE OF PROSE
AND THE DRAMA
James's reputation as a poet and patron reached England long before his accession to the throne, and heightened the chorus of welcome on his actual arrival. Sidney's mention of "King James of Scotland"[1] as patron of poetry undoubtedly refers to the author of The Kingis Quair, though if the Apology were written as late as 1583 Sidney must have been aware of the younger Stuart's scholarly accomplishments. Ten years later both of James's early volumes of verse were evidently familiar to Harvey, who devotes a paragraph of Pierce's Supererogation to euphuistic praise of Du Bartas and the King — "the woorthy Prince that is a Homer to himselfe, a Golden spurre to Nobility, a Scepter to Vertue, a verdure to the Spring, a Sunne to the day, and hath not onely translated the two diuine Poems of Salustius du Bartas, his Heavenly Vrany, and his hellish Furies, but hath readd a most valorous Martial Lecture unto himself in his owne victorious Lepanto, a short, but heroicall worke, in meeter, but royall meeter, fitt for a Dauids harpe."[2] Barnfield, in 1598, makes the King's love of poetry the point of the second sonnet at the opening of his Poems: in divers Humors:[3]—
"And you, that discommend sweet Poesie,
(So that the Subject of the same be good)
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