The most interesting of monarchs

When an honest citizen was shown into King James I’s room in Whitehall, the scene of confusion amid which he found the King was no bad picture of the state and quality of James’s own mind. Walter Scott, in The Fortunes of Nigel, tells the story and he explains how valuable ornaments were arranged in a slovenly manner, covered with dust; the table was loaded with huge folios, amongst which lay light books of jest and ribaldry; the King was dressed in a doublet of green velvet, over which he wore a sad-coloured nightgown, out of the pocket of which peeped his hunting horn. But such inconsistencies in dress and appointments, Scott explains, were mere outward types of those which existed in the royal character. He says that James was deeply learned, without possessing any useful knowledge; sagacious without having real wisdom; fond of his power, yet willing to resign the direction of that, and of himself, to the most unworthy favourites.