BOOKS ABOUT THE STUARTS.*
FROM Robert Stuart (more properly, perhaps, Stewart), who mounted the Scottish throne in 1371 as Robert II., to James VII. and IL, whose tenure of the English throne ended in 1688, are to be counted eleven generations in a period of three hundred and seventeen years. Reckoning up the same number from the accession of James V. (1513) to the death of Queen Victoria, We get a period of
.. three hundred and eighty-three. The figures represent a fact. The Stuarts were breves et infausti. If we take the whole line from Robert II. to Charles Edward, what a record of trouble we get! Three were slain in battle, two perished on the ecaffold, one was assassinated, three died in - exile, one was killed by an accident. From James I. (of Scotland) to the last of the line two only, James I. (of
. • (L) The Stuarts. By 3.3. Foster. London : Dickinson's. [11.0 10s. net.] —(2.) The Life and Adventures of Prince Charles "Edward Stuart. By W. Drummond None. First Volume. London : The Caxton Publishing Company. . [as. per voL]—(3.) The Young_ Pretender. By Charles Sanford Terry. London : Methuen and -Co. r3s. ed. J—(4-.) Stuart Tracts, 1803.1698: • With .an Introduction by C. H. Firth. London A. Constable and Co. [4s. net.] -England) and Charles Hs came to a natural end. Such, the* is the family whose personal history Mr. Foster sets himself to relate, and no one can read his book without a touch of "the sense of tears in mortal things." This is all the stronger, firstly, because of its wide range, for it takes in the fortunes of the race from Mary of Scots to the Cardinal of York. secondly, from its vivid presentment of these luckless Princes "in their habit as they lived."
Mr. Foster professedly begins with Mary Queen of Scots, but be has given a brief outline of facts relating to the earlier Stuarts, with portraits of James I., III., IV., V.; of James II. no authentic memorial seems to exist. When we come to Maly herself we are embarrassed by the multitude of rival representations of her face and figure. Appendix C, with its catalogue of "Portraits of Mary Stuart," occupies twelve of Mr. Foster's folio pages, and gives us particulars of twenty. one full-lengths, six three-quarter-lengths, nineteen half. lengths, eighteen head and bust, and twenty miniatures. To these must be added eight portraits in foreign galleries, twenty-four other undescribed miniatures, a cameo, a gem, and the effigy in Westminster Abbey. The total exceeds one hundred; and there is also a crowd of picturings of various articles that belonged to or were connected with her. We have, among other things, her cradle, her book of hours, her clock, a piece of tapestry which she worked, the warrant which consigned her to the scaffold, and a lock of her hair. And. then there are her palaces and her prisons. Mr. Foster, who has given seven of the portraits among the illustrations of his book, and has made a careful study of many others, thinks that the likeness of the real Mary can be made out of this multiplicity of representations. Tall, golden-haired, with radiant eyes of changing hues of brown, and singular vivacity of expression,—such was the Queen, "whose very wrinkles were Love's deadliest lair," as Plato wrote of Archianassa of Colophon. The reader should specially note Mr. Foster's remarks on this subject (pp. 89-99). We cannot follow our author as he tells the story of the five generations of Mary's successors. We may say generally that he has told it well. He holds himself aloof from politics, but it is easy to see that he is not a Jacobite. It is, indeed, in the personalities of the Stuart Princes that the adherents of the Jacobite faith must find their chief difficulty. The doctrines of Divine Right and of Absolutism may be plausibly defended. As far as authorities go, from the words of Holy 'Writ down- ward, they can claim some very powerful support. But when we come to consider the actual men and woman, the case becomes complicated with difficulties which meat embarrass the most ingenious of advocates. The awful suspicions of murder and unehastity that darken the fair fame of Mary Stuart, the miasmatic atmosphere which stifles us in the sur- roundings of James I., the falseness of the First Charles, the shameless profligacy and treachery of the Second, the bigotry of James II. unrelieved by the one virtue that can redeem it, an irreproachable life, the stupidity and narrowness of the Old Pretender, the miserable decadence of the Young,—these are simply overpowering. Mr. Foster does not enlarge on these ungracious topics, but he does not ignore them ; in fact, he is not a partisan. The strong point of his book is, as it is meant to be, in the illustrations. Well chosen, admirably executed, they form a collection such as could not be matched else- where. It would be possible, perhaps, to find a more com- plete series of portraits of Mary Stuart or of one or other of her descendants. But when we take the two volumes as a whole, and consider how numerous are the personages and how large the period they contain, we must allow that they rightly claim a first place. Mr. Foster's narratives and descriptions inevitably have the less distinguished character of the letter- press accompanying a set of pictures. But there is nothing of inadequacy about them.
Mr. Drummond None gives us one volume only of The Life and Adventures of Prince Charles Edward Stuart; three more are to follow. In this we do not get beyond the early days of the '45. The Prince landed on July 23rd, and we leave him at Perth about six weeks later. The subject does not, we think, justify so copious a narrative. The sense of proportion is lacking. There were just about fourteen months (July 23rd, 1745, to September 20th, 1746) which deserve to be told in detail; for the rest a brief narrative should suffice. The last volume of Mr. None's book, if it is to relate the years that followed the Prince's departure from Scotland, can scarcely fail to be diem], not to say tedious. Mr. None frankly avows that his book is written from a Jacobite and Highland point of view. He speaks of "legitimate Kings" whom it was impossible, he thinks, for real patriots to desert. He is aware, we presume, that there are "legitimate Kings" with exactly the same title now. To this claim "nullity& ternpus occurrit" ; if "Dutch and Hanoverian rulers" were usurpers then, their successor is a usurper now. Mr. None's position, logically regarded, must be a mass of inconsistencies. This, however, is of the very slightest importance. But he would be wise not to make comparisons. A legitimate Monarch is legitimate, and there is an end of it. But to compare the " rightful " with the " usurping " Kings as rulers is too absurd. The Georges were not attractive or in any way admirable, but they were incapable of the unspeakable degradation to which Charles IL, accepting French gold to spend it on harlots, was willing to descend. Mr. None has taken considerable pains in collect- ing illustrations for his book. These are interesting, but somewhat commonplace. Artistically viewed, they do not come into comparison with what Mr. Foster has given us. Six coloured plates supply in a corrected form the patterns of various clan tartans, three Macdonalds (Clanranald, Keppoch, and Glengarry), Drummond, Cameron, and Robertson. We should have preferred the tartans simply without the figures, which are of the stagey type which pleased the taste of youth years ago.
Mr. Terry's Young Pretender, one of the series of "Little Biographies," is an excellent piece of work. In a couple of hundred pages he tells the story with quite as much detail as will suffice ninety-nine readers out of a hundred. He is not a Jacobite; he is certainly not an Anti-Jacobite. We might even say that he stretches a point when he says that "few men have been given more devoted love; few men have more happily inspired it," with the necessary proviso, "did the curtain fall here,"—i.e., when "the great adventure was ended." But then comes the dismal story of the last forty-two years of his life. It was not, we must remember, after years of dis- appointment that he fell into "baser courses, children of despair." His life had become a disgrace, hardly to his name, but certainly to his position, before he was thirty. It is a painful task to tell such a tale, but Mr. Terry does it with dignity and restraint.
The Stuart Tracts supply something of a commentary on the volumes already noticed. Appropriately enough, the most important " tract " of the sixteen here published, and the one which an Englishman may read with the most pleasure, is that which has the least to do with the Stuarts,—" The Commen- taries of Sir Francis Vere." Sir Francis Vero was for some sixteen years in the service of the United Provinces, and wrote, not for publication, but as a military text-book, an account of his campaigns. But he was a Tudor, not a Stuart hero. His treatise remained in manuscript for many years, not being printed till 1657. Not the least interesting part is Vere's account of the expedition to Cadiz, containing, as it does, a vivid portraiture of Essex, who, whatever his valour, had but little of the virtues of a commander. He seems'to have been ignorant and headstrong. Another important document is Archbishop Abbot's account of his suspension in 1627 (not the manslaughter affair, but on the occasion of his refusing to license an absolutist sermon). All the volume is interesting, and Mr. Firth has furnished an excellent introduction.
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