PREFACE.

FEW personages in modern history have received. more notice, have been invested with a greater attraction, or have been spoken of with more indulgent friendship or more partial hostility, than the queen of France and Scotland, the fair and unhappy Mary Stuart. The books relating specially to her have become numerous enough to form, if collected, a rather considerable library, and now, within the last few years, (I speak of France only), the publication of documents by Prince Labanoff, the Latin thesis for the grade of doctor by M. Cheruel, who, we are informed, will soon resume more at large and in French the same subject, the in form rather historical romance of M. Dargaud, and the excellent history by M. Mignet, are proofs that the interest of the subject is not exhausted, and that it is always possible to awaken curiosity

b

216903

and sympathy by recalling to our memory one who, by her death at least, seems sanctified as a martyr, and of whom we may still say that in most hearts

“The memory is green."

But we leave this as without our scope; for our far more modest aim in this publication is not to renew and judge the inquiry, but only to print for the first time the contents of a small manuscript in the handwriting of the young Mary, the oldest, probably, of her productions which can be produced, and which will be a quite new, although but a small, stone added to the monument raised to her by posterity. Rather unimportant in the historical point of view, it is so singular an instance and so true a pearl in curiosity, that England, since she may not have the original, may perhaps be glad to receive an accurate copy of it, which being, from the limited number of the impression, conveniently reserved to the hands of some fit judges and friends, it may be said, will not go down in the open area and meet the great common light too strong for its harmless ingenuity. It is a delicate and superfluous ornament,

"the very button of the cap," but good only to be put into learned hands, habitually conversant with rare books. Those only may hold it with the pious and interested lightness in the grasp, that will not crush it, as too stern a hand might do. It is not to be discussed, nor even used; it is only a very curious and particular memorial, and the memorials of long deceased persons, which are in appearance trifling, are often the more dear and characteristic.

This little book has remained long undisturbed, and the more effectually was it hidden, from the circumstance of its being wrongly described in the very well known catalogue of one of the most important libraries in the world. For, in the printed catalogue of Latin manuscripts in the Royal, now Imperial, Library of Paris, it was thus entered: "VIII MDCLX. Codex chartaceus, olim Joannis Balesdens. Ibi continentur Mariæ Stuartæ, Scotorum reginæ et Galliæ delphinæ, epistolæ variæ, Latine et Gallice. Is codex decimo sexto sæculo exaratus videtur." Not only is the last appreciation unnecessarily indefinite,—for the precise year is, as it will be said, written in

b 2

the manuscript,—but the whole article is a blunder. The book has consequently been asked for many times, as seeming to contain real letters, that is to say, historical documents; but, as this was not the case, it was laid aside as useless.

Recently, however, a French scholar, M. Ludovic Lalanne, well known by his historical publications, happening to see this manuscript, examined it more closely, and came to the curious conclusion that it was neither a correspondence, nor a collection or transcripts of real letters, but that it was what French schoolboys call a cahier de corrigés, the autograph transcript by Mary Stuart of the Latin, into which she had translated French letters given to her as themes. Under these circumstances the interest of the manuscript was very different from that which it had been supposed to possess, not so great perhaps, but still so curious, that M. Lalanne inserted a description of it, with some well selected extracts naturally taken from the French part, in the weekly Parisian paper, called 'Atheneum Français, of which he is the director, and to the

* 1853, 33rd number, Samedi 13th August, pp. 775-7.

1

1