Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/120

 of this explanation it becomes of real value historically as reflecting the vehemence of Scottish antagonism to England and Edward IV, circa 1483. But its endless structural inversions, conversions, and perversions of the great and true story of Bruce in order to deck the plume of Wallace, preparatory to a challenge of comparison upon the ludicrously falsified issue, make it, with its pretence of truth 'ner as the process gais', nothing short of a grievous wrong to Bruce. The owl in the poetic fable had the grace to confine his borrowed feathers to those which the other birds had discarded, but the 'fetheram' in which Harry bedizened Wallace were plucked from the quick. As history the poem is the veriest nightmare. As literature it requires an almost deranged patriotism to accept as worthy of the noble memory of Sir William Wallace so vitiated a tribute.

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