Stuart dynasty

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 151
One thing, however, is certain, that if Mary Stuart
had not fascinated those of her contemporaries with
whom she came in contact in France, Scotland, and
England, so as by the interest excited to insure a
thorough investigation of facts, her literary con-
demnation would have ensued as certainly as her
failure to govern the oligarchic factions in Scotland
followed her return to that land of hill and heather.
One of the earliest proofs of her power thus
to attract mankind is to be found in Camden's
' History,' indited by that learned antiquary at the
behest of James I. as an antidote to the poisonous
untruth disseminated by Buchanan in his ' Detec-
tion,' a work discredited in important particulars
even by the most unfriendly narrators of Mary's
career. Camden had in the first instance to show
that the Queen was not by nature the bitter, revenge-
ful, intemperate woman represented by Knox and
Buchanan, and he remarks how, after some years of
cloister life spent in devotional and industrial habits,
Mary captivated Henry II. of France, who desired
to marry her to the Dauphin. He draws a picture
for the purpose of explaining how this came about,
and gives us a glimpse of a beautiful girl, fond of
poetry, and thereby attracting the poet llonsard,
having good taste for music, dancing well, and riding
as if to the manner born ; while such was her skill
in Latin, that she spoke an oration of her own com-
posing, in the great guardroom of the Louvre, before
the royal family and nobility of France.*
* Camden's ' History,' p. 60.