Monarchs have seldom time to parley with their hearts, or to
meditate their minds into poetry; and had James been brought up amidst
the adulation and gayety of a court, we should never, in all
probability, have had such a poem as the Quair.
I have been particularly interested by those parts of the poem which
breathe his immediate thoughts concerning his situation, or which
are connected with the apartment in the tower. They have thus a
personal and local charm, and are given with such circumstantial
truth, as to make the reader present with the captive in his prison,
and the companion of his meditations.
Such is the account which he gives of his weariness of spirit, and
of the incident which first suggested the idea of writing the poem. It
was the still midwatch of a clear moonlight night; the stars, he says,
were twinkling as fire in the high vault of heaven: and "Cynthia
rinsing her golden locks in Aquarius." He lay in bed wakeful and
restless, and took a book to beguile the tedious hours. The book he
chose was Boetius' Consolations of Philosophy, a work popular among
the writers of that day, and which had been translated by his great
prototype Chaucer.
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