and Sir Dudley Carleton in Venice and Mr. Beaulieu in Paris-these are the scraps of which some sort of historical pudding may be made, with a strong flavour of romance, maybe, and a seductive aroma of human mystery. At least they seem more hopeful material than depositions of bullied witnesses, cunningly edited by Lord Chief Justice Coke.

It is strange, too, how some of Anthony Weldon's romantic scandal, contemptuously rejected by the graver historians, has been verified by news letters coming to light in modern days from forgotten muniment rooms, now that there is no longer danger of the Tower and the scaffold for those who kept them.

66 I pray thee burn this letter as soon as read," is a constant postscript of the Court news-man. Fortunately, the magpie instinct of humanity prevailed; and perhaps there was safety in keeping your friend's recorded thought, since if he chanced to break with you and sought to expose you to your enemies you could counter him with his own whispered treason.

But if learned men, as I thought, could make no clear solution of the Overbury Mystery, of what use were my collectanea? Weave them how one might they made no living tapestry of the affair. Neither history nor biography could I make of the bundle, so I tied it up many years ago and left what I had written to ripen for many more than the nine years prescribed by the poet.

Yet ever and again I would add to my library a volume of the works of Overbury, or Francis Osborne, or a copy of Aulicus Coquinaria, or Cecil's secret correspondence with James in Scotland, and thus the desire to open my bundle and sort out what, at all events to me, were treasures of memory, and to add to these, led me to consider whether there was any form in which I could set down this story with some enjoyment to myself, if not to others.

When I was writing The Drama of the Law I rescued

from my store material for a miniature of pretty Mistress Anne Turner and her first and last appearance as a heroine of the Law Courts. A kindly critic declared that she wanted more-wanted, indeed, the whole romance of Frances Howard and anything that went with it as trimmings.

It was thus that I was led to look into the affair again and see how the story could best be told, and I concluded that what was wanted was something in the nature of a chronicle of the facts and a drama of the law. For in this way only could I see any hope of making the people of the story as intelligible to the reader as they must have been when they were living and all their neighbours were talking about them.

It is by this method that your chronicler gains veracity and gives entertainment. He makes history, it is true, but he never fails to tell you those pretty details and fateful words that you know are just to the occasion. He makes his characters "say the things they actually would have said if they had known what they were really doing."

For when that pious lady Queen Philippa of England died at Windsor Castle, we know that Sir John Froissart was not present, for it was twenty-seven years since he had been in England. Nevertheless, we do not resent his telling us how the dear lady "extended her right hand from under the bed clothes," nor do we cavil at the words of the dying speech she made to her husband, since the drama of it fits in with our hopes and beliefs. For all chronicles must be written and read in a spirit of faith, and Froissart no doubt believed that he was recording the true facts of the scene just as he knew he was setting down a true fact when he tells us that the great Queen's spirit was "caught by the holy angels and carried to the glory of heaven."

For myself I enjoy grubbing in old books, extracting long passages from them that bear on the matter in hand, piecing them together, comparing them, guessing

at their falsities and blunders and weaving my own tapestry out of the warp and weft of them. Then, too, how exhilarating to turn to the discriminating academic pictures the great historians have made of these same materials, and to marvel how it is that, in history, things that are equal to the same thing are always different from one another. The quarrels of authors are all for our delight. And of all authors historians are those who quarrel with greater zest and pageantry and heroic obstinacy. They are like the old-world knights in armour, battling in the tiltyard, with mace and twohanded sword, giving forth sparkling flashes of steel and noisy shouts of victory to thrill the onlooker, but happily not often dangerous to themselves or others.

But these hobbies are not for every reader, and there will be some who prefer to read the story of The Overbury Mystery in one volume rather than collect it from ancient records and letters and contradictory histories. And as the historians had, to my thinking, called their chapters history and written romance, I could at least write the romance of the story without calling it history.

Like Gaul, the Overbury story seemed to divide itself into three parts. There were the dramatis personæ to describe, there was the strange narrative of the Somerset marriage, and then, when the curtain should ring down. on a happy ending, the extraordinary series of trials which, though elusively reported, might perhaps be placed on the stage for a general audience and the tragedy of them displayed.

Nor was it necessary to enforce any of the various historical solutions of the mystery and bend the facts to that end. To my mind the tale can be told and the reader enjoy his own solution. For one will read this as the story of the King and will make him the hero or villain of the peace. Another will weep over the sorrows of the beautiful Frances, and in pity of her cruel fate, like a weak juror, falter on the word of the verdict. Some will champion the innocence of the noble Somerset,

praising his steadfastness in adversity, whilst others will condemn his insolence in the face of his obvious guilt.

But for the poor Overbury, the dying prisoner in the Tower who was so evilly entreated, everyone must feel indignant pity at the story of his woe. For, surely, they will say, it was a foul murder! Or stay! is it not possible the poor wretch died of disease? And if it was murder, who planned the evil deed? And was it really ever done as it was planned, or how otherwise? Well, that is the Overbury Mystery.