Voltre ire en bref de voir affouvie.
Et vous amys qui m'avez tenu chere,
Souvenez-vous que fans cueur, et fans fantes,
Je ne fcaurois auqun bon œuvre faire.
Souhaitez donc fin de calamitey,
Et que fus bas etant affez punie,
J'aie ma part en la joie infinie.

The

The verfes are written on a fheet of paper by Mary herself, in a large rambling hand. following literal tranflation of them was made by a countrywoman of Mary's, a Lady in beauty of person and elegance of mind by no means inferior to that accomplished and unfor tunate Princefs.

Alas, what am I? and in what eftate?

A wretched corfe bereaved of its heart;
An empty fhadow, loft, unfortunate:
To die is now in life my only part.
Foes to my greatnefs, let your envy rest,
In me no taste for grandeur now is found:
Confum'd by grief, with heavy ills opprefs'd,

Your wishes and defires will foon be crown'd.
And you, my friends, who ftill have held me dear,
Bethink you, that when health and heart are fled,
And ev'ry hope of future good is dead,
"Tis time to with our forrows ended here;
And that this punishment on earth is given,
That my pure foul may rife to endless blifs in Heaven.

In her way to Fotheringay Castle, Mary stopped a few hours at Buxton, and with her diamond

diamond ring wrote on a pane of glass at the inn

of that place,

Buxtona, quæ tepidæ celebrabere numine lympha,
Buxtona, fortè iterum non adeunda, vale!

Uncertain, in the womb of Fate,
What ills on wretched Mary wait!
Buxton, my tribute (whilft I may)
To thy fam'd tepid fount I pay ;
That fount, the cure of ills and pain,
Which I fhall never fee again!

Many curious MS. papers relative to Mary Queen of Scots are to be met with in the Library of the Scots College at Paris. The last time that David Hume was in that city, the learned and excellent Principal of the College fhewed them to him, and asked him, why he had pretended to write her history in an unfavourable light without confulting them. David, on being told this, looked over fome letters which the Principal put into his hands, and, though not much used to the melting mood, burst into tears. Had Mary written the Memoirs of her own Life, how interesting must they have been! A Queen, a Beauty, a Wit, a Scholar, in diftrefs, muft have laid hold on the heart of every reader: and there is all the reafon in the world to fuppose that she would have been candid and impartial. Mary, indeed, completely contradicted the obfervation made by the learned Selden in

VOL. I.

M

his

his Table-Talk, "that men are not troubled to

hear men difpraised, because they know that "though one be naught, there is still worth in "others but women are mightily troubled to "hear any of themselves spoken against, as if the "fex itself were guilty of fome unworthinefs :" for when one of the Cecil family, Minister to Scotland from England in Mary's reign, was speaking of the wisdom of his Sovereign Queen Elizabeth, Mary stopped him fhort by faying, Seigneur Chevalier, ne me parlez jamais de la fageffe d'un femme; je connois bien mon fexe; "la plus fage de nous toutes n'eft qu'un peu moins fotte que les autres."

66

The pictures in general supposed to be thofe of this unfortunate Princess differ very much from one another, and all of them from the gold medal ftruck of her with her husband Francis the Second at Paris, and which is now in the late Dr. Hunter's Museum in Windmill-ftreet. This medal reprefents her as having a turned-up nofe. Mary, however, was fo graceful in her figure, that when, at one of the proceffions of the Hoft at Paris, she was carrying the wafer in the pix, a woman burst through the crowd to touch her, to convince herself that fhe was not an Angel. She was fo learned, that at the age of fifteen years fhe pronounced a Latin oration of her own com

pofition

pofition before the whole Court of France at the Louvre.

Mary, wearied with misfortunes, and tired of confinement, received with great firmness and refignation the sentence of death that was pronounced against her by her rival. "Death," faid fhe," which will put an end to my misforσε tunes, will be very welcome to me. I look upon a foul too weak to support the body in "its paffage to the habitations of the blessed, as "unworthy of the happiness that is to be enjoyed "there."

σε

The original of the following fupplicatory letter of Mary Queen of Scots, to Queen Elizabeth, is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford:

66 MADAME,

"Pencant felon le commandement donney, que tous ceulx non compris en ung certeinge memoyre, deuffent aller ou leur affayres les "conduirefoient j'avois choifi Monfieur de Levington pur eftre porteur de la prefente, ce

que m'estant refusay a lui retenu, j'ai ete con"traynte, nayant autre libertay, mettre la pre"fente aux mayns de Monfieur de Shrewsberi, "de la quele, & de celle fiendofes, je vous fuplie

au moyns par pitié me faire quelque response. "Car

M 2

"Car fi je demeure èn cet eftat, je n'esperai ja "mais vous donner plus de payne.

"Voftre affligée bonne Sœur & Coufin,
"MARIE R."

A very curious account of her execution was published in France foon after that event; from which it appears, that on her body's falling after decapitation, her favourite fpaniel jumped out of her clothes. Immediately before her execution The repeated the following Latin Prayer, compofed by herself, and which has been set to a beautiful plaintive Air by that triple fon of Apollo the learned and excellent Dr. HARINGTON of Bath, at the request of the COMPILER, as an embellifliment to thefe little volumes.

O Domine Deus, fperavi in te!
O care mi Jefu, nunc libera me!

In durá catenâ, in miferá pœnâ, defidero te!
Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo,

Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me!

It may be thus paraphrafed:

In this laft folemn and tremendous hour,
My Lord, my Saviour, I invoke thy power!
In thefe fad pangs of anguish and of death,
Receive, O Lord, thy fuppliant's parting breath!

* See the Music annexed.

Before