eping with
the alleged author's temperament. It is respectful, but far from
servile. Gowrie is a great Earl, but Logan is of an old and good name.
There is the genial sensualism of the man, with his promise of wine and
'a fine hattit kit' (a kind of syllabub). There is the joyous forward
glance at an anniversary dinner, with Bothwell, to which the King's
hunting of _this_ year shall furnish the dainty cheer; '_hoc jocose_!'
At this dinner Bothwell and Gowrie, old allies, are to meet at Logan's
board, which may suggest that Bothwell and Gowrie are still working
together.

The contempt for Lord Home as a conspirator--'in good faith he will never
help his friend or harm his foe'--and the praises of Bower, are
characteristic, and, here, are in place; elsewhere they are idle
repetitions, mere copies. The apology for bad writing--Logan could not
employ a secretary in this case--is natural: the two days writing agrees
with Sprot's evidence. (p. 221.)

Could Sprot have invented all this: and, in his confessed forgeries,
failed to invent anything? Would not the fertility of his genius have
hurried him into fresh developments, and characteristic details,
appropriate to the imaginary correspondent whom he addresses? These
considerations may seem a mere leaning on 'internal evidence,' and
'literary instinct,' broken reeds. But the case is buttressed by the
long and, on any theory, purposeless retention of Letter IV, the secrecy
concerning it, and the confession, so obviously true, that Letter IV is
the source and model of the forgeries. These facts have hitherto been
unknown to writers who believed the whole correspondence to be a forgery
done for the Government.

Both Mr. Anderson (who has greatly aided me by his acuteness and learned
experience of old MSS.) and myself disbelieve that Logan's hand wrote
Letter IV. The matter, the contents of Letter IV, may be Logan's, but
the existing document may be 'a Sprot after Logan.' Sprot may have
reinserted the genuine Logan IV among Bower's collection of papers,
pretended to find it, and returned it to Logan, after copying it _in
Logan's hand_. Or he may have copied it in his 'course hand' (the copy
in the Haddington MSS.), and later, in autumn 1606, after Logan's death,
have rewritten his copy in an imitation of Logan's hand. The contents,
Mr. Anderson believes, as I do, are, none the less, genuine Logan.

If readers accept these conclusions, there was a Gowrie conspiracy