Prate in death's ear and with a speechless tongue
Of my dead doings in days gone out....”
It is surely punishment enough to be condemned to carry on a conversation of any kind with the worm of hell and in the ear of death; but to compel even a cast-out soul to perform this unpleasant duty “with a speechless tongue” is punishment that passes ordinary comprehension. Doubtless, however, matters are or will be altered for Mr. Swinburne's special convenience [pg 351] in the lower regions. Abandoning the wretched Murray to his destiny, we look for other revelations of Mary's character, although something of her mettle may be gathered from the passages already given, which have been taken almost at random from the first twenty-eight pages of the five hundred and thirty-two. They are by no means the liveliest specimens to be found.
It would display a lamentable lack of knowledge of nature supposed to be human to imagine for a moment that the woman—if the expression is allowable—revealed in these passages is likely to be at all squeamish or foolishly coy about the profession of what Mr. Swinburne would probably call her love for Bothwell. The insignificant facts that her own husband, Darnley, and Bothwell's wife, Jane Gordon, were still living, would naturally weigh lightly as feathers in the balance against her desire. Most of the scenes between the queen and Bothwell might be shortly described as “linked foulness long drawn out.” Were they even word for word true, it would still be a wonder and a shame to honest manhood that they could be dwelt upon and gloated over by any writer at all. Horace boasted of belonging to the “Epicurean herd.” Were he living now, he would, we honestly believe, feel conscientious scruples at admitting Mr. Swinburne into the company. Only such passages are quoted here as are presentable and necessary to endorse our judgment of this drama.
Without even an attempt at disguise, Mary and Bothwell discuss the best means of getting rid of Darnley. As a wife, expecting soon to be a mother, and as a Christian woman, it is only natural that she should urge on the not unwilling Bothwell in this style:
“Would I were God!
Time should be quicker to lend help and hand
To men that wait on him. . . . Were I a man,
I had been by this a free man.”
In the course of the second act she falls sick, as she believes, to death. She makes her dying confession to the Bishop of Ross, who, it is to be presumed, knew his religion. That being the case, it was somewhat rash in Mr. Swinburne to put into his mouth a gross error. He assures the dying queen that