Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/109

 audacity of this assignment of the historical part of Bruce to Wallace, and the bestowing upon Bruce, instead, of the inglorious part of De Bohun. But can any stretch of poetic licence justify such hard measure to Bruce as this filching from him of one of the chief roses of his chaplet of Bannockburn?

Critics of Harry have, however, done less than justice to certain sections of his work which, far removed from sober history, have been set down as palpably absurd, and the blame laid by implication entirely upon Harry's shoulders. The 'Wallace Buke' of 'Maister Blair' needs further search, which may yet show that that fictitious authority had some kind of basis for his alleged existence. The theme is too deep for the present occasion. Certainly there is chronicle for something substantially akin to Wallace's dream. There is the same for his encounters on the sea with pirates, for adventures in France, and also for the vision which attested the passage of his soul from purgatory into paradise. These all belong to the Wallace story in fifteenth-century chronicle.

A chief object of the present essay is to re-examine the extraordinary narrative which fills the eighth book and records Wallace's invasion of England in terms hardly capable of recognition as in any degree consonant with the actual expedition of Wallace after the victory of Stirling Bridge on September 11, 1297. Complete records of the historical invasion exist, and its strict limitations equally in