lxxxix
Another of Alexander's letters, dated February 4, 1616, contains the King's sonnet Against the Could that was in January 1616, and his own verses suggested by it. The letter deals also with a literary discussion in which they had engaged: "The last Day being private with his Majesty, after other Things, we fortuned to discourse of English Poesy, and I told one Rule that he did like of exceedingly, which was this; That, to make a good Sound there must still be first a short Syllable, and then a long, which is not positively long of itself, but comparatively, when it followeth a shorter; so that one Syllable may be long in one Place and short in another, according as it is matched; for a Syllable seems short when it is as it were born down with a longer."[1]
With this comment on a point of prosody may be joined James's sonnet (XLVI) on Sir William Alexander's Harshe Verses after the Ingliche Fasone, the clearest expression of his distaste for the rough obscurity of the metaphysical poets:
". . . Although your neighbours have conspir'd to spill
That art which did the Laurel crowne obtaine
And borrowing from the raven there ragged quill
Bewray there harsh, hard trotting tumbling wayne
Such hamringe hard the metalls hard require
Our songs are fil'd with smoothly flowing fire."
This may have no definite reference, but it is in keeping with James's views elsewhere disclosed, and would be an appropriate condemnation of the unconventionally affected by Donne and his followers. In a letter to Arthur Johnston, one of the royal physicians, Drummond voices still more explicitly the views of the older school. The letter is undated, but Johnston was physician to James for some time before the latter's death. The writer speaks first of the eminence and permanence of poetry. "In vain," he continues, "have some Men of late, (Transformers of
- ↑ Drummond's Works, p. 149. For the first part of the letter, cf . XL VII, note.
