Consequently we cannot compare the Casket Letters with genuine letters by Mary. On the other hand, as I chanced to notice that genuine letters of Logan’s exist at Hatfield, I was enabled, by the kindness of the Marquis of Salisbury, and of Sir Stair Agnew, to have both the Hatfield Logan letters, and the alleged Logan letters produced in 1609, photographed and compared, at Hatfield and at the General Register House in Edinburgh. By good fortune, the Earl of Haddington also possesses (what we could not expect to find in the case of the Casket Letters) documents in the ordinary handwriting of George Sprot, the confessed forger of the plot-letters attributed to Logan. The result of comparison has been to convince Mr. Gunton at Hatfield, Mr. Anderson in Edinburgh, Professor Hume Brown, and other gentlemen of experience, that Sprot forged all the plot-letters. Their reasons for holding this opinion entirely satisfy me, and have been drawn up by Mr. Anderson, in a convincing report. To put the matter briefly, the forged letters present the marked peculiarities of Logan’s orthography, noted by the witnesses in 1609. But they also contain many peculiarities of spelling which are not Logan’s, but are Sprot’s. The very dotting of the ‘i’s’ is Sprot’s, not Logan’s. The long ‘s’ of Logan is heavily and clumsily imitated. There is a distinct set of peculiarities never found in Logan’s undisputed letters: in Sprot’s own letters always found. The hand is more rapid and flowing than that of Logan. Not being myself familiar with the Scottish handwriting of the period, my own opinion is of no weight, but I conceive that the general effect of Logan’s hand, in 1586, is not precisely like that of the plot-letters.