in making his authority convey a meaning diametrically opposed to the one intended. After this, Mr. Froude goes on with the story of the divorce as if Anne had no existence, and she does not appear again upon the scene until the stage has been nearly cleared for her.
This is a fair specimen of literary dishonesty or recklessness from the first volume. Later instalments of the work, especially those devoted to the Queen of Scots, have been dissected by an able hand in the pages of this magazine. The series of papers in which Mr. James F. Meline examined in our columns Froude’s account of Mary Stuart, have now been incorporated with much additional matter in a volume entitled Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Latest English Historian.[117] No more thorough scarification of a literary offender has been published within our recollection. Mr. Meline has traced the historian’s authorities with admirable patience, disclosed his falsifications, his misconceptions, his suppressions, and his interpolations, and utterly demolished the case which Elizabeth’s advocate made against the unfortunate Mary. It is common to meet with uneducated people who cannot tell a story correctly, or repeat the words of a conversation without grossly distorting their meaning. Partly from defects of memory, partly from an intellectual deficiency which prevents them from apprehending things exactly as they are, such persons invariably misreport what they have seen and heard. What such people are to society, Mr. Froude seems to be to history. The Saturday Review says that he has not “fully grasped the nature of inverted commas.”
If he quotes a state paper, he leaves out essential passages, and inserts statements which rest upon no authority but his own. He gives his conjectures as if they were recorded facts. He disingenuously combines unconnected facts so as to bear out his private conjectures.
These are serious charges to bring against a writer of history; but they are all proved by Mr. Meline’s book. We do not purpose reviewing the whole story of the Queen of Scots, or reviving the endless controversy upon her innocence, so soon after the task has been performed in the pages of The Catholic World by the author of the savage little volume now before us. But we shall select and arrange from this record a few specimens of Mr. Froude’s sins, that our readers may judge for themselves how little claim this latest English history has to an honorable place on their library shelves.
1. Mr. Froude begins early to prepare our minds for Mary’s imputed profligacy. “She was brought up,” he says, “amidst the political iniquities of the court of Catharine de Medicis.” The fact is that Mary never was at the court of Catharine de Medicis at all. Catharine had no court, no influence, no position in history, until after Mary had left France. And, besides, Mary and Catharine cordially detested each other.
2. On the authority of Knox’s History of the Reformation, he relates that Knox had labored to save the Earl of Murray from the dangerous fascinations of his sister Mary, “but Murray had only been angry at his interference, and ‘they spake not familiarlie for more than a year and a half.’” But Knox gives an entirely different version of the quarrel. He writes that he had urged Murray to legalize by act of the parliament the confession of faith as the doctrine of the Church
of Scotland, but Murray was more intent upon his private interests—“the erledom of Murray needed confirmation, and many things were to be ratified that concerned the help of friends and servants—and the matter fell so hote betwixt the Erie of Murray and John Knox, that familiarlie after that time they spack nott together more than a year and a half.” There is nothing about Mary’s influence over her brother; the influence was all on the other side.
3. Mr. Froude assumes to quote from a dispatch of Randolph’s to Cecil a description of Mary’s luxurious habits. “Without illness or imagination of it, she would lounge for days in bed, rising only at night for dancing or music; and there she reclined with some light delicate French robe carelessly draped about her, surrounded by her ladies, her council, and her courtiers, receiving ambassadors and transacting business of state. It was in this condition that Randolph found her.” (Randolph to Cecil, Sept. 4, 1563.) There is no such description in the dispatch. On the contrary, Mary is represented at this period, both by Randolph and by other authorities, as industrious, active, energetic, and capable, but at the same time in bad health.
4. Mr. Froude thus travesties Randolph’s account of the return of Bothwell (1565): “Suddenly, unlooked for and uninvited, the evil spirit of the storm, the Earl of Bothwell, reappeared at Mary’s court. She disclaimed all share in his return; he was still attainted; yet there he stood—none daring to lift a hand against him—proud, insolent, and dangerous.” And he adds that “the Earl of Murray, at the expense of forfeiting the last remains of his influence over his sister, summoned Bothwell to answer at Edinburgh a charge of high treason.” What Randolph really
says is this: “The Queen misliketh Bothwell’s coming home, and has summoned him to undergo the law or be proclaimed a rebel.” It was the Queen therefore, and not Murray, who “summoned him to answer.” Moreover, Bothwell did not appear at court, but sought refuge among his vassals in Liddesdale.