Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/95

 with the Bruce, changes the plane of composition from that of the rhyming chronicle of the Middle Ages to that of an age a century later, that of the set classical poetry—classical in the vernacular—of the Renaissance. In the comparison these two standards must be remembered. The Bruce was a fine type of the chanson de geste, a narrative root and branch historical, with only slight occasional lapses into decorative simile and heroic apostrophe. It was a rhymed chronicle. A full hundred years later in style, the Wallace is a conscious heroic poem of a type elaborate, ambitious, and highly developed. It tells its tale with enthusiasm, patriotism, and metrical vigour; but it is poetry and not chronicle. Neither in its episodes, chronological sequence, nor general outline, does it really correspond with the historical biography, although through and through it the gleams of fact in unexpected places sometimes puzzle as much as they surprise.

Vivisection has its advocates and opponents, its virtues and defects. Chief of the disadvantages is the fact that the process is apt to end in a post mortem examination. Closely analogous is criticism by scrutiny of sources: the scalpel may lay bare every bone and muscle, but its action may arrest the blood, and most likely will fail to discover any trace whatever of the soul. It is a risk, notwithstanding, which both the critic and the criticized must run from the examination of sources wherever the theme is so tangible and ponderable as a historical figure. Especially is this search of quellen an inevitable element of the critic's task in cases where, as in Harry's Wallace, the claim to be a vitally true record differs so little from the historic 'soothfastness' which Barbour so solemnly declared as the design for which he wrote the Bruce. How deliberately Harry parallels it in the Wallace!

All worthi men at redys this rurall dyt, Blaym nocht the buk, set I be wnperfyt,