MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON.*
Mn. SKELTON'S new volume must have been looked for with pleasant anticipation by the many readers to whom the first portion of his brilliant picture of Scotland under Mary Stuart is familiar. We have now the conipletion of that picture, with all its tragic shadows and stormy lights, and the impression left upon the mind, whether we agree with the view taken or not, cannot fail to be a strong and vivid one. The importance of the crisis, the intricacy of the intrigues, and the violence of those sudden popular impulses and movements which broke the webs of statecraft from time to time, sometimes working out in their rude way the schemes of the diplomatist, some- times shattering them in pieces, have made it one of the favourite epochs of the historical student ; while the romantic elements involved, the curious juxtaposition of the two women, whom popular fancy has obstinately posed as rivals with somethi g of the same feeling with which the more usual feminine rivalry in love or beauty is regarded, though the question was so much more serious—has lent it a never-failing attraction. And yet we do not know that any history exists in • Maitland of Lethingten: the Scotland of Mary Stuart. By John Shelton. Vol. II. Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood and Sono.
which the plain facts of the case—if such an expression can be used in reference to the much-involved and contested events of that tumultuous time—can be said to be placed diE- passionately for his own judgment thereupon before the reader. Mr. Skelton's book cannot be said to fill up thisgap.. Like every writer of imagination and poetic feeling, he holds his brief for Mary ; and though compelled to stop short of any absolute decision in her favour, yet cannot but state her ease with all the eloquence of which he is master, in what is often. a very convincing way, did we not feel sure that there is more than he has told us to -be said on the other side. It is un- necessary to add that Mr. Skelton here, as in whatever subject he touches, shows the skill of a practised and accomplished writer. His style is always picturesque, and his method. admirable.
The Scotland of that strange period of revolution and. violence is a very curious and interesting spectacle. It is difficult not to think of Sir Walter's famous description of a battle " as a great scour [dust], with here and there a hand. and a sword coming through." A great scour:—dust and smoke, and wild rumour and tumult of noises, fill the scene, while from moment to moment some gust of strong wind,. some wild breath of unusual commotion, lifts the veil, and shows us suddenly in the opening a fierce group, an individual struggle, a decisive scene, always upon a confused and lurid background, and disappearing as suddenly as it came into sight. Edinburgh between its castle and its palace, St. Giles's ringing with fiery eloquence in the midst—now crowded with factious Lords, now with sour Presbyters (almost as gloomy and sour in Mr. Skelton's narrative as if they were intended for the conventional necessities of the stage)--a city prone to strife and always full of volcanic elements, is the centre of the great and terrible drama, in which one after another tragic course is run, and one figure after another rises prominent, to disappear each in his turn amid fire and blood- shed. The romance of the story is, indeed, quite overweighted. by the tragedy, and we miss the lighter touches, the sketches of the gay, youthful Court and ever-bewitching Queen, which brightened the previous volume ; but, on the other hand, this wonderful crisis in national history is so vividly drawn in all its fated combinations, that the interest of the reader is never allowed to languish. Mr. Skelton does not point any moral in respect to that fierce absolutism of the Scottish character which comes out so strongly in his pages, a temper which has no thought of the habitual English compromise and attempt to make life possible under whatsoever difficulties,. but goes straight to the severest conclusion, cutting the knot of circumstance with an intolerance of every obstacle which still sometimes characterises the national proceedings. The rapidity with which the Lords decided to cut off Darnley, their almost identical action in respect to Rizzio, and other- summary proceedings, the instant and repeated suggestion of murder which seems always to have come to their minds as the easiest of expedients, and to be unanimously agreed upon by the wisest and gravest, would be almost ludicrous if it were not so tragical. The removal of Darnley is the:
most wonderful instance of this disposition which sticks at nothing. Such murders are not rare in history ; and had it indeed been done by Mary herself, as has been said, or by the Queen's fierce and ambitious lover, the man who actually per- petrated the deed, it would have been a natural product enough in those wild times of violent passions. But whether Mary was an accomplice or not, whether her imagination (which was quick enough) took in the full force of the proposal, no one who reads Mr. Skelton's narrative can entertain any doubt that it was fully and almost judicially decided upon by her best advisers. In the deep mid-winter, Mary was at Craig- miller, sick and sad, sprighted with a fool in her impossible young husband, tormented by his jealousies and assumptions, and feeling her life a burden, when she was suddenly asked to. give audience to a party of gentlemen, including some of the greatest in the kingdom. Bothwell was among them, it is true, who, rightly or wrongly, has been accused of being already her lover ; but he was but the last of a group which consisted besides of Moray, Argyll, and Huntly, conducted by Lething- ton, who was their spokesman. The Secretary put to Mary the trenchant question whether she would consent to be divorced from her husband. She would seem to have hesitated. for a moment, then replied that a lawful divorce, throwing no etigma upon her son, might be accepted by her :—
" Then Lethington, speaking for the others, said : Madam, we that are here the principal of your Grace's nobility and council, will find the means that your Majesty shall be quit of him without prejudice of your son : and although my Lord of Moray be little less scrupulous for a Protestant than your Grace is for a Papist, I am assured that he will look through his fingers thereto, and will behold our doings saying nothing against the same!—The Queen answered : I will that ye do nothing whereby any spot may be laid to my honour or conscience, and therefore I pray you rather let the matter be in the state it is, abiding till God in his goodness provide a remedy. Thinking to do me service, the end may not be conformable to your desires ; on the contrary, it may turn to my hurt and displeasure.'—' Madam,' said Lethington, let us guide the matter among us, and your Grace shall see nothing but what is good and lawful and approved by Parliament."
'his occurred about six weeks before the blowing up of the Kirk o' Field. A suggestion so truculent yet so calm, from the lips of the accomplished Secretary, not a man of blood in any way, has an astounding significance.
The chief interest in this volume is the careful development of the character of Lethington, from whom, indeed, Mr.
Skelton's pictorial instincts, as well as his genuine historical inspiration, continually draw him aside, thrusting into their natural prominence the more picturesque and strenuous 'figures of the time, and the stormy vicissitudes which con- tinually interrupted his policy. These distractions perhaps make the author too elaborate in his descriptions of his hero, as he returns to him again and again with a half-apologetic exuberance of praise. Yet, with these drawbacks, the portrait is well defined and powerful. A man of cultivated and trained
-intelligence, and of a statesmanlike moderation and clear- -sightedness, pursuing through all the tumults of the time a
great patriotic scheme demanding ceaseless care, precaution, and wisdom : whose projects are perpetually traversed by the fighting men around him, who understood none of his subtle. ties, his plane shattered and his best efforts foiled : yet who
holds on to the verge of the grave, rising after every fresh disappointment to piece his broken threads together, to try a
new way, never abandoning either purpose or effort,--cannot fail to be an interesting study. He did not keep himself un- • smirched amid the bloodstains of the time. It would have been strange had he done so, for he was no scru- pulous paladin, but an adroit and versatile diplomatist, above all things a man of the world, without any moral theories or inspiration except patriotism, and a certain fidelity, not quite without clouds and apparent lapses, to the Queen whose history he knew better than any one, and as to -whose innocence or guilt he could be in little doubt. That -such a man should have in the depth of his heart believed in Mary, and on the whole stood by her through good and evil, never apparently relinquishing the hope that she might still recover her position, and what he valued almost more, her claim to the inheritance of the English throne, is a circum- stance in her favour in the midst of all the uncertainties of the evidence for and against.
Mr. Skelton perhaps a little over-estimates the intelligence or memory of his readers in leaving such a never-failing interest as the Casket letters, and the part they had in Mary's trial, with merely a reference to his own previous work on the -subject and to that of Mr. Hosack. Without either volume to refer to, and with only the vague recollections of a general reader, it will be difficult to form any idea upon the subject from what we are told in this book. Our own recollection of some of these letters in the freshness of a first reading is that -either Mary Stuart, or some person of genius unknown, able to invent a powerful image of the working of passion, and the abysses of a woman's mind in which mad and miserable love, shame, and self-conscious humiliation were all blended in a wild outpouring, must have produced them. Who was this -person of genius ? Certainly not a common forger skilled only in counterfeiting handwriting, and not apparently very -clever at that. Mr. Skelton deprecates internal evidence, which to some minds will always appear the most potent of all. And it is possible that our first impression was not justified ; but it is a matter on which it is difficult to satisfy the • mind by mere circumstantial details.
It is, however, Lethington, and not Mary, who is Mr. Skelton's hero. The picture with which the book concludes of the old statesman, worn almost to death with illness and misery, in the besieged castle of Edinburgh, listening to the representa- tions of the deputation of ministers who came in the interests of peace to persuade, if they could, the Secretary and the Captain to agree to terms,—a helpless man, seated with his
paralysed limbs in his bedchamber opening from the great hall, and playing as he listened and replied with a little dog upon his lap, "a little messan," or mongrel, as one of the visitors indignantly reports, is very striking and pathetic. Lethington was dying : the garrison in the last straits, very near the starving point : Mary in a hopeless prison : all the opponents of his projects, from the unfriendly neighbours beside him to great Elizabeth and her great Minister looking on afar, with satisfaction scarcely disguised at the failure and downfall of the champion : but yet no thought of yielding was in the Secretary's mind. His polite and subtle scorn, his fine fence against their trenchant arguments, the tone of a higher level and a wider experience than theirs, is unchanged and undiminished. He held his head as high as ever upon the edge of the grave. The image of such constancy and stead- fastness must call forth a natural and profound human homage everywhere, notwithstanding all the variations of opinion.
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