The Copy Letters
Four copies were preserved by the descendents of William Cecil. The copies do not reproduce signatures or dates, and they contain endorsements made by the copyist that indicate how the letters were to be used against Queen Mary. Versions of some of the letters and sonnets were printed in George Buchanan's polemic Detectio Mariæ Reginæ and Dectectioun, and reprinted by James Anderson in 1727. Walter Goodall, in 1754, printed parallel English, French, and Latin versions without the clerk's endorsements.
Four other copy letters and other copy documents were preserved in the English state papers and the Cotton Collection. These were printed in the Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, Volume 2.
The French sonnets, said to have been found in the casket, were printed in Anderson's Collections, Volume 2, with Scottish translations. Walter Goodall reprinted the twelve poems in Examination, Volume 2. The sonnets can be evaluated as French literature.
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Famous quotes containing the words copy and/or letters:
“I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)