inite, and always a relative one.

The age of James I. was a controversial age, of unsettled opinions and
contested principles; an age, in which authority was considered as
stronger than opinion; but the vigour of that age of genius was infused
into their writings, and those citers, who thus perpetually crowded their
margins, were profound and original thinkers. When the learning of a
preceding age becomes less recondite, and those principles general which
were at first peculiar, are the ungrateful heirs of all this knowledge to
reproach the fathers of their literature with pedantry? Lord Bolingbroke
has pointedly said of James I. that "his pedantry was too much even for
the age in which he lived." His lordship knew little of that glorious age
when the founders of our literature flourished. It had been over-clouded
by the French court of Charles II., a race of unprincipled wits, and the
revolution-court of William, heated by a new faction, too impatient to
discuss those principles of government which they had established. It was
easy to ridicule what they did not always understand, and very rarely met
with. But men of far higher genius than this monarch, Selden, Usher, and
Milton, must first be condemned before this odium of pedantry can attach
itself to the plain and unostentatious writings of James I., who, it is
remarkable, has not scattered in them those oratorical periods, and
elaborate fancies, which he indulged in his speeches and proclamations.
These loud accusers of the pedantry of James were little aware that the
king has expressed himself with energy and distinctness on this very
topic. His majesty cautions Prince Henry against the use of any "corrupt
leide, as _book-language_, and _pen-and-inkhorn termes_, and, least of
all, nignard and effeminate ones." One passage may be given entire as
completely refuting a charge so general, yet so unfounded. "I would also
advise you to write in _your own language_, for there is _nothing left to
be said in Greek and Latine already_; and, ynewe (enough) of poore
schollers would match you in these languages; and besides that it best
becometh a _King_, to purifie and make famous _his owne tongue_;
therein he may goe before all his subjects, as it setteth him well to doe
in all honest and lawful things." No scholar of a pedantic taste could
have dared so complete an emancipation from ancient, yet not obsolete
prejudices, at a time when many of our own great authors yet imagine