QUEEN MARY'S B001K.*
A SINCERE admirer and defender of the unhappy Queen of Scots has here collected together every morsel of literary work that has ever been known or supposed to be hers ; has translated them, in most cases very successfully, and has prefaced them with an interesting introduction of thirty-eight pages. The book is plentifully furnished with notes, and the French and Latin originals, both of prose and verse, are added in appendices. It would be untrue, we think, to say that the editor throws much new light on the mysteries of Mary Stuart's life and character. All she can do is to bring prominently forward every scrap of favourable evidence as to the Queen's natural nobility of mind, her constant affections, the sincerity of her religious faith, her courageous patience in adversity, as shown in the writings by which her literary talent may also be judged. Mrs. Stewart-Mackenzie Arbuthnot does not pretend to be an historian or a. critic of eminence. Her part, we may say, is to show her couvictione by laying a flower on Mary's grave, by adding a stone to the wall of defence against her enemies. And her work is done in a candid spirit. She does not refuse to accept the verdict
* Queen Mary's Book: a Collection of Poems and Essays hy Mary Queen of Scots. Edited by Mrs. P. Stewart-Mackenzie Arbuthnot. London : G. Boll and Sons. tlOs. 6d. net.]
gf thoee critics, fpr instance, who have insisted on depriving Mary of the credit of two of the best-known, and certainly the most charmIng, of the poems attributed to her. The first of these is the pathetic "Adieu, plaisant Pays de France !" The other is the poem on the death of her young husband, Francois IT., beginning "En mon triste et doux chant, D'un ton fort lamentable,
Je jette un coil tranchant, De perte incomparable, Et en soupirs cuisans Passe mes meilleurs ans."
The lines, which have a singular charm, and of which the editor gives Miss Strickland's pretty translation, were attri- buted to Queen Mary by her contemporary Brantome, and we on only hope with Mrs. Arbuthnot that the modern critics ere not justified in questioning her authorship. Without
these, however, there is enough in the book to prove that the Queen had considerable claims to literary distinction. It was hardly necessary, perhaps, to reprint the Latin exercises of a girl of twelve, except as showing that Mary was an excellent scholar and, to judge by the faceimile, wrote a beautifully clear band; for we cannot avoid the conviction that these learned little addresses to Elisabeth de Valois were not com- posed by the Princess herself, but translated from the French of her tutor. One must welcome, however, every scrap of evidence as to the character and the studies of a personage so absorbingly interesting.
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