Never, perhaps, was the influence of woman on a poetic temperament more beautifully illustrated, than in the story of James the First of Scotland, and Lady Jane Beaufort. It has been so elegantly told by Washington Irving in the Sketch-Book, that it is only necessary to refer to it.--James, while a prisoner, was confined in Windsor Castle, and immediately under his window there was a fair garden, in which the Lady Jane was accustomed to walk with her attendants, distinguished above them all by her beauty and dignity, even more than by her state and the richness of her attire. The young monarch beheld her accidentally, his imagination was fired, his heart captivated, and from that moment his prison was no longer a dungeon, but a palace of light and love. As he was the best poet and musician of his time, he composed songs in her praise, set them to music, and sang them to his lute. He also wrote the history of his love, with all its circumstances, in a long poem[57] still extant; and though the language be now obsolete, it is described, by those who have studied it, as not only full of beauties both of sentiment and expression, but unpolluted by a single thought or allusion which the most refined age, or the most fastidious delicacy, could reject;--a singular distinction, when we consider that James's only models must have been Gower and Chaucer, to whom no such praise is due: we must rather suppose that he was no imitator, but that he owed his inspiration to modest and queenly beauty, and to the genuine tenderness of his own heart. His description of the fair apparition who came to bless his solitary hours, is so minute and peculiar, that it must have been drawn from the life:--the net of pearls, in which her light tresses were gathered up; the chain of fine-wrought gold about her neck; the heart-shaped ruby suspended from it, which glowed on her snowy bosom like a spark of fire; her white vest looped up to facilitate her movements; her graceful damsels who followed at a respectful distance; and her little dog gambolling round her with its collar of silver bells,--these, and other picturesque circumstances, were all noted in the lover's memory, and have been recorded by the poet's verse. And he sums up her perfections thus: In her was youth, beauty, and numble port, Bountee, richesse, and womanly feature. God better knows than my pen can report, Wisdom, largesse,[58] estate,[59] and cunning[60] sure: In every point so guided her measure, In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance, That nature could no more her child advance. The account of his own feelings as she disappears from his charmed gaze,--his lingering at the window of his tower, till Phoebus Had bid farewell to every leaf and flower,--