After all the many years since 1586, the Life of Mary Queen of Scots remains to be written. The task can only be achieved by a person of genius, and no person of genius, of either sex, has attempted the adventure. Sir Walter Scott always refused, for chivalrous reasons, to write the biography of the Queen; and Mr Swinburne, his tragic poems apart, has only consecrated an essay to the topic. We thus await the coming of a genius who is not too chivalrous of heart, and who is also a laborious and untiring ‘searcher of records.’ A newspaper editor has recently informed the world that history must not be abandoned to ‘searchers of records.’ Yet without exhaustive study of documents it is not easy to see how such measure of truth as is attainable can be attained. The public may be indifferent to truth, but history cannot be satisfied with less than the fullest possible measure of that unpopular commodity.

The new, easy-going way of writing history is to distil it out of printed Calendars of State Papers. These are ‘one-eyed calendars,’ like the three in the ‘Arabian Nights.’ They are summaries of the original letters and despatches; they contain not only omissions of important matter, but actual blunders of every kind. The person of genius who is to write Queen Mary's biography must not be content with your Calendars, your Lemons, Father Stevensons, and Dr Joseph Bains, but must peruse all the actual manuscripts.

This truth has been impressed on me by practical experience and by the study of certain letters written at a crisis of Mary's life. They have remained unknown to our historians, as far as I am aware, though the epistles have long been in the daylight of the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh, and in the British Museum. The letters are by that well-known diplomatist, Thomas Randolph. The son of an English squire, Randolph was bred ‘to a scholar's life,’ and in France was intimate with George Buchanan. In 1559 Randolph, then in Paris, is spoken of by Throckmorton, the ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, as ‘my man, Barnabie.’