MARY STUART'S LOVE AFFAIRS.* NUMEROUS and valuable as have been

the additions recently made to Marian literature, this volume by Major Hume is

certain to occupy a position of its own in virtue of what we' can only call the " practicality " of its romance. He terms

his book a "political history," and although he is quite alive• to the ever-abiding and ever-mysterious charm of Mary Stuart's beauty and the fatal fascination of her chequered life, he regards her and her affairs of the heart—which latterly degenerated into the coldest affairs of the head— chiefly in connection with the great game of politics which was played during her time in Europe, with matrimony and murder among its chief agencies. Major Hume evidently- comes to the conclusion that Mary was, unlike Elizabeth, too much of a woman and too little of a man :— " The deplorable errors and the follies that led her downwards from freedom to life-long imprisonment, from happiness to misery, from a throne to a scaffold, that warped her goodness, 'made her a helpless plaything for her conniving enemies, and ruined tha religious cause she loved better than her life, were the outcome, not of deliberate wickedness, or even of habitual political un- wisdom, but of fits of undisciplined sexual passion, amounting in certain instances to temporary mania, combined with the un- quenchable ambition inherited from her mother's house."

Major Hume believes that Mary was absolutely infatuate& both by Darnley and by Bothwell, and though she discovered' that in both cases she had made a great mistake, the know- ledge came too late:— "If she had not been precipitated blindly by her love she would have seen, as Elizabeth always did, the enormous advantage of keeping herself free and shifting the balance as required by circumstances. Murray, Argyle, and the Protestants might have been made to counteract Athol, Glencairn, the Gordons, and the Catholics. The Hamiltons and the Lennoxes might by hatred of each other all have been made humble servants of the Queen,. and, following the example of Elizabeth, Mary might have attracted one suitor after another, whilst the plan of the capture of England by the Catholics with the aid of Spain was fully matured and all the parties pledged, the trump-card in Mary's hand, her own marriage, being kept =played until everything was ready for decisive action."

Mary Stuart's love affairs, regarded from Major Hume's. standpoint of "political history," began with the death of her father immediately after the disgraceful rout of the Scots at Solway Moss, when Henry VIII. and Regent Arran sought. each to marry her to his son. Before she was six she had been three times disposed of in marriage,—to Edward Tudor, to James Hamilton, and to Francis of France. The " tiny Mary Stuart, with her dazzling fair • skin and her shining yellow hair, sweet and demure in her baby grace," was not quite six when she sailed out of the Clyde in the first days

of August, 1548, the betrothed bride of the heir of France.

The most charitable, as well as the safest, thing to say of Mary is that she was the sport of what is loosely termed "evolution" :—

"It is a curious consideration that the sixteenth century was sharply divided into two well-marked periods, the virile first half when Charles V., Henry VIII., and Francis I.—three men if ever such existed—made circumstances and originated policies ; and the feminine latter half when Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, Catharine de Medici, and the cautious, timid, narrow, almost • The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots: a Political History. By Martin. Hume. London: Eveleigh Nash. [1U. 6d.]

-womanish Philip II. had to deal, as best they could, according to their lights, with the circumstances and problems that had been set for them by others. The whole of the policy of these four most prominent personages of their time was consistently femi- nine, if not feline. The chicane of political courtship and marriage proceeded without interruption for many years as a main branch of European diplomacy. If a rival was becoming too strong, his neighbours did not attempt to beat him in the field, but developed a languishing desire to marry another rival, who was dropped as soon as the object of the wooing was served. With bewildering mutations in the persons of her suitors, Elizabeth managed to keep the ball rolling until she could snap her aged fingers at the world, and boasted that, after all, she died a virgin; whilst Catharine practically ruined France for twenty years by her dexterous manipulation of the matrimonial affairs of her children."

Poor Mary, apart from the weaknesses in her own character, never had such chances as fell to Elizabeth and Catharine.

When she arrived at the French Court, still but a child, she lad, of course, the Guises to guide her and advance her interests, and weak as the Dauphin was both in body and in mind, he was at least in truth her lover. They and she had to contend not only against Catharine de Medici, but against such powerful families as the Bourbons and the Montmorencies. Yet the marriage was accomplished, and it seemed to be "the final triumph of the Guise and Papal party in France, and the death-blow to English Protestant hopes of redressing th3 possible union of the Catholic Powers against the Reformation by ranging Scotland permanently on the side

of the anti-Papal party." But Francis u. died in 1560, and Catharine came into power as Regent, while the death of Mary of Guise in Scotland and Elizabeth's ascent of the throne of England told once more against Mary's dearest desire. For these events she could not be prepared; they were the " bludgeonings of chance."

Major Hume evidently thinks—and he is probably right in thinking—that the first conscious blunders of Mary were made in Scotland. She had not lost her hopes, much less her ambitions, when she returned to Scotland no longer Queen of France, but simply Queen of Scots. She aimed at two things,—the establishment of Roman Catholic ascendency north of the Tweed, and the assertion of her right to the throne of England. Had she entered into a great Roman Catholic marriage, or if, like Elizabeth, she had astutely refused all proposals for marriage, she might, in spite of Knox, have accomplished her object. But her passion for Darnley and her hasty marriage were the undoing of her ambition. Major Hume has little to say of Darnley and his miserable life as King Consort that can properly be described as new. He

has, indeed, a proper contempt for one who was perhaps the most wretched man that ever crossed Mary's path. Of the Rizzio affair Major Hume contents himself with arguing:— "The great balance of probability is that Darnley's suspicions against his wife were deliberately aroused and fostered in order that they might be turned to political advantage by those who wished to upset Mary's great Catholic scheme. With the whole evidence before us, it is impossible to condemn Mary of flagrant immorality with Rizzi° ; though it must be admitted that the imprudence and perversity of her favour towards him provided her enemies with the means they sought for injuring her."

Of the murder of Darnley and the revelations of the much- discussed Casket Letters he says almost cynically :— " If Mary wrote every one of the letters, it would prove that she was a heartless, lascivious wanton, who had forgotten mercy and humanity in her adulterous passion ; but it world not make her one whit more morally guilty of Darnley's death than we know her to have been from the irresistible logic of facts and probabilities. It must be admitted in extenuation that, even if she had wished to do so, she could not for very long have pre- vented the removal of the man who was in everybody's way, and who had succeeded in alienating every individual intesest."

The Bothwell infatuation was, however, the fatal blot on

Mary's reputation and the true frustration of her ambition. Major Hume says, half in extenuation of her conduct, that it is a "not improbable event that Mary had, as she after- wards alleged, been forcibly induced to cede to Bothwell's lust in the first place "; but he is also compelled to allow that,

"carried away by the passion with which Bothwell had been able to inspire her, perhaps for the first time in her life, she was ready temporarily to place in the background even the great aims that had hitherto been the absorbing interest of her existence." Carberry, Lochleven, Langside, and imprison- ment in England were all the results of the Bothwell madness. Mary's love affairs did not cease with imprisonment. There was the proposal to marry her to the Duke of Norfolk. "A

semblance of sentiment was imported into it by Mary, probably in order to inflame her suitor with spirit and deter- mination to go through with the dangerous business for the sake of her love, if for no other reason." Don John of Austria was also suggested. But Norfolk was brought to the scaffold and Don John died prematurely, and Mary did not really care for either. Yet she never lost her tenacity of purpose :—

" It was almost as if a malison accompanied the matrimonial regards of Mary Stuart. One after the other her husbands and suitors had died prematurely : Francis in his early youth, Darnley cruelly murdered, Bothwell a prisoner in exile, Norfolk on the scaffold, and Don John of a broken heart ; all dead but Mary and her great ambition, which could never die whilst she breathed."

It will thus be seen that Major Hume has no strikingly fresh views to give of Mary. He may be said to be one of the Anti-Marians so far as the murder of Darnley is con- cerned. But he does not work himself into a state of indigna- tion; one is almost inclined to infer that he feels, though he does not quite say, "Serve him right !" Nor does he supply much in the way of original elucidatory documents, although the Spanish State papers, of which translations were lately published under his editorship, have enabled some fresh light to be thrown on the part taken by Philip of Spain in con- nection with various incidents in Mary's life, such as her pro- posed union with Don Carlos, the Darnley and Bothwell marriages, and the plots identified with the names of Ridolfi and Norfolk. Next to " practicality " of aim, the chief charm of this book is the masculine vigour of its style. Here is how Bothwell and Chastelard first appear on the scene accompany- ing Mary from France to Scotland :— " There were two men who perhaps at the time but little attracted her attention, but who nevertheless were in the dim future to sway her fats and die miserably for love or lust of her. One of them, broad of shoulders, stout of limb, was a young Scotsman of five and twenty, whose characteristic was strength rather than beauty. Stubborn red hair, cropped close, covered his massive head, and a great warlike beak of a nose over- shadowed a mouth of enormous width and a heavy jaw. But yet James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, was no boor. He had been reared at the French Court, and was fully conversant with all the graces of his time; his hands and feet were fine and aristocratic, his bearing was elegant, and though violent passions overbearing resistance marred his elegance, the magnetic force of him domi- nated the love of many women. The other man was cast in different mould. A Frenchman Chastelard, a mere lad, a dangling courtier of the newer school that had become fashion- able in the last two years in France ; bearing a sword by his side, but oftener toying with his lute; sweet of voice, languish- ing os lovelorn friebfbltewetoeelonotk at as hesighed 11 demeanour, little llpre e

hiding beneath his soft gentleness more profligacy and vice than a dozen rough soldiers might."

Major Hume's picture of Knox is not so successful, although it may please Mr. Andrew Lang and those who take his view of

the Reformer :—

" Knox we know as embodying what has since become a recog- nised type of religious Scotsman. To him the only righteousness, the only salvation, was to be found within the narrow limits of his own view of his own creed. All else was anathema ; and with beauty and sweetness and mercy, with kindly pity for the erring, with humble recognition of the frailty of human judgment, with tender trust in God's goodness even to the guilty, John Knox would hold no parley. Arrogant as a swashbuckler, consciously righteous as an archangel might be, and inflexible as a judge upon the bench he stood before the Queen."

Here we have rather a picture of an irreconcilable Covenanter than of Knox, who, although he was earnest and tenacious of purpose, and although he treated a woman occupying a man's positio,, as if she were a man, nevertheless was not devoid of humanity or of tenderness for human weakness. Fronde's estimate of the mission of Knox and the Reforming party in Scotland should be read as a corrective to Major Hume's.