We have already tried to show that Bothwell was not the mere ‘brave stupid strong-handed Border noble,’ ‘the rough ignorant moss-trooper,’ but a man of taste and culture. If the Sonnets be genuine, there was actually a contest in literary excellence between Bothwell’s wife and his royal mistress. This queer rivalry would account for the style of Letter VIII., in which Mary labours to prove to Bothwell, as it were, that she is as capable as his wife of writing a fashionable, contorted, literary style, if she chooses: in poetry, too, if she likes. We naturally feel sorry for a man of action who received, at a moment when decisive action was needful, such an epistle as Letter VIII., and we naturally suppose that he never read it, but tossed it into the Casket with an explosion of profane words. But it is just conceivable that Bothwell had a taste for the ‘precious,’ and that, to gratify this taste, and eclipse Lady Bothwell, Mary occasionally wrote in the manner of Letter VIII. or quoted Jason, Medea, and Creusa.
This hypothesis, far-fetched as it may seem, at all events is naturally suggested by Sonnet VI. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that a dexterous forger would sit down to elaborate, whether from genuine materials or not, anything so much out of keeping with his Letter II. as is his Letter VIII. Yet Letter VIII., as we saw, cannot be connected with any known moment of the intrigue.
While the Letters thus vary in style, in tone of sentiment they are all uniform, except Letter II. We are to believe that the forger deliberately laid down a theory of this strange wooing. The Queen throughout is much more the pursuer than the pursued. Bothwell is cold, careless, breaks promises, is contemptuously negligent, does not write, is suspicious, prefers his wedded wife to his mistress. Contemporary gossip averred that this, in fact, was his attitude. Thus, after Mary had been sent to Loch Leven, Lethington told du Croc that ‘Bothwell had written several times to his first wife, Lady Bothwell, since he lay with the Queen, and in his letters assured Lady Bothwell that he regarded her as his wife, and the Queen as his concubine.’ Lethington reported this to Mary herself, who discredited the fact, but Lethington relied on the evidence of Bothwell’s letters.[381] How could he know anything about them? The belief in Bothwell’s preference of his wife was general, and, doubtless, it may be urged that this explains the line taken by the forger.