His hearty enjoyment of the sport he was engaged in; his familiarity with all around him, even with the meanest varlets by whom he was attended, and for whom he had generally some droll nickname; his complete abandonment of all the etiquette which either he or his master of the ceremonies observed elsewhere; his good-tempered vanity and boasting about his skill as a woodsman,--all these things created an impression in his favour, which was not diminished in those who were not brought much into contact with him in other ways.

When hunting or hawking, James was nothing more than a hearty country gentleman engaged in the like sports.
The cavalcade came leisurely on, for the King proceeded no faster than would allow the falconers to keep easily up with those on horseback.

He was in high good humour, and laughed and jested sometimes with one ambassador, sometimes with the other, and having finished a learned discussion on the manner of fleeing a hawk at the river and on the field, as taught by the great French authorities, Martin, Malopin, and Aime Cassian, with the Marquis de Tremouille, had just begun a similar conversation with Giustiniano as to the Italian mode of manning, hooding, and reclaiming a falcon, as practised by Messer Francesco Sforzino Vicentino, when he caught sight of the Conde de Gondomar, standing where we left him at the side of the avenue, on which he came to a sudden halt, and the whole cavalcade stopped at the same time.
"Salud! Conde magnifico!" exclaimed King James, as the Spaniard advanced to make his obeisance to him; "how is it that we find you standing under the shade of the tree friendly to the vine,--_amictoe vitibus ulmi_ as Ovid hath it?
Is it that yon blooming Chloe," he continued, leering significantly at Gillian, "hath more attraction for you than our court dames?
Troth! the quean is not ill-favoured; but ye ha' lost a gude day's sport, Count, forbye ither losses which we sall na particularize.
We hae had a noble flight at the heron, and anither just as guid after the bustard.

God's santy! the run the lang-leggit loon gave us.

Lady Exeter, on her braw Spanish barb--we ken whose gift it is--was the only one able to keep with us; and it was her leddyship's ain peregrine falcon that checked the fleeing carle at last.