The "bagage littéraire" of James VI is but slight, and if the profound indifference of all and the absolute ignorance of most as to its very existence be taken as representing a fair estimate of its merit it must in truth be worthless. But if, on the other hand, we consult his contemporaries we must, unless we are prepared to dismiss them all as more shamelessly fulsome in their adulation than the average of courtly flatterers, at least recognize the possibility of his having been a little better than posterity has been taught to believe. Long before James VI became James I his reputation as a poet had reached England, and helped to swell the chorus of welcome that greeted him on his arrival. In 1598 Barnfield made the King's love of poetry the point of one of his sonnets:-- And you, that discommend sweet Poesie, (So that the Subject of the same be good) Here may you see your fond simplicitie, Sith Kings have favored it, of royal Blood. The King of Scots--now living--is a poet, As his "Lepanto" and his "Furies" show it.[251] Before this, Harvey in his _Pierce's Supererogation_, had already proclaimed the poetical merit of "Lepanto", declaring it, in his high-flown style, to be "a short, but heroicall worke, in meeter, but royall meeter, fitt for a David's harpe".[252] Two years later the judgment of Vaughan was that "James is a notable Poet, and daily setteth out most learned poems, to the admiration of all his subjects".[253] In 1600 Allott gave ten quotations from James in his _England's Parnassus_, and Bodenham claims that in "The Garden of the Muses", from "what workes of Poetrie have been put to the world's eye by that learned and right royall King and Poet, James King of Scotland, no one sentence of worth has escaped".[254] After the accession to the English throne, Jonson addressed "To King James" an epigram of ten lines, in which he expanded the idea of the monarch's excellence as both prince and poet:-- "How, best of kings, dost thou a scepter bear? How, best of poets, dost thou the laurel wear? But two things rare the Fates had in their store, And gave thee both, to show they could no more. For such a poet, while thy days were green, Thou wert, as chief of them are said t'have been. And such a prince thou art, we daily see, As chief of those still promise they will be. Whom should my Muse then fly to, but the best Of Kings, for grace; of poets, for my test?"[255]