Since fool-haste is not greatest speed, I would thou shouldest learne to know How to make vertue of a need, Since that necessitie hath no law. With patience, then, see thow attend, And hope to vanquishe in the end.[259] James was still, as he puts it himself, in his "verie young and tender yeares: wherein nature (except shee were a monster) can admit no perfection", when he wrote his "Lepanto", which his contemporaries seem to have looked upon as the best of his poems, and to which Du Bartas paid the compliment of translating it into French. It is no masterpiece, but Mr. Westcott, the editor of the _New Poems by James I of England_, does not exaggerate the author's merit when he says that "his style in the description of the battle between the Christian and the Turkish navies is concrete and lively, and at times achieves an almost ballad-like simplicity". This seems to us to be justified by such lines as those which describe the gathering of the Christian forces:-- There came eight thousand Spaniards brave From hotte and barren Spaine, Good order kepars, cold in fight, With proud disdainfull braine. From pleasant, fertill Italie There came twelve thousand als, With subtill spreites bent to revenge, By craftie meanes and fals. Three thousande Almans also came, From Countries colde and wide; These monney men with awfull cheare The chok will dourelie bide.[260] James did not make frequent use of this metre, but he adopted it for another poem of a very different kind, "A Dreame on his Mistris my Ladie Glammes", in which he displays some ingenuity and inventive skill. Interpreting one of the tokens that have been left him--an amethyst--he says: The secret vertues that are hidd Into this pretious stone Indues me with meete qualities For serving such a one; For as this stone by secret force Can soveraignlie remeade These daizeled braines whome Bacchus' strength Ou'rcomes as they were deade, And can preserve us from the harme Of the envenomed sting, Of poysoned cuppes, that to our tombe Untymelie does us bring, So shall my hart be still preserved By vertue from above, From staggering like a drunken man Or wavering into love: Bot by this soveraigne antidote Of her whom still I serve, In spite of all the poysoned lookes, Of Dames I shall not swerve.[261] There are 268 lines altogether, and the discovery of them ought to contribute in some degree to the poetical rehabilitation of the author.