the
use of writing materials allowed. After twelve months, however, some
relaxation was gained, through the good offices of Sir James Sempill of
Beltrees, the Balladist, who was a warm friend of Melville, and
sympathised with him in his struggle to maintain Presbyterianism,
although he himself had been brought up at Court--his mother having been
maid-in-honour to Queen Mary--and educated along with the King under
George Buchanan. He was transferred to a comfortable room in the Tower:
he was now permitted to see friends, and also to write. It was in
literary labour he occupied his time. He wrote at least one
controversial pamphlet, a reply to a Defence of Episcopacy written by a
dignitary of the English Church, and circulated _gratis_ in Scotland
among the ministers; he also translated many of the Psalms. It was in
poetical composition, however, that he found his chief recreation and
solace. When he quitted the apartment in which he was first confined,
the walls were found covered with verses written by him in finely formed
characters with the tongue of his shoe-buckle. Every letter he sent to
James Melville contained a number of verses 'warm from the anvil.' His
nephew, in one of his letters enclosing a remittance of money, had
remarked: 'I shall send you money, and you shall send me songs. I have
good hope that you will run short of verses for my use before I run
short of gold for yours,' to which he replied: 'So you have the
confidence to say that the fountain of the Muses from which I draw will
be exhausted sooner than the vein of that gold mine, whence you extract
the treasures with which you supply me so liberally. Hold, prithee! take
care what you say, especially to poets like me, who when I do sing, sing
at the invitation of the Muses and under their inspiration.' One of his
compositions did not owe its origin to 'the imperative breath of song';
it was an ode to the King, written on the advice of friends, in the hope
that such an appeal to his better nature might lead James to grant him
his liberty. The ode failed of its purpose; and Melville might have
applied to the King with curious fitness the words addressed by the
Border outlaw in the ballad to the King's grandfather, James V.:

'To seik het water beneith cauld ice,
Surelie it is a greit follie.
I have asked grace at a graceless face,
But there is nane for my men and me.

But had I kenn'd ere I cam frae hame
How thou unkind wadst