Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, page 66 by Anonymous
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ed to the Crown.'
Barbour also wrote a poem under what seems now the strange title, 'The Brute.' This was in reality a metrical history of Scotland, commencing with the fables concerning Brutus, or 'Brute,' who, according to ancient legends, was the great-grandson of Aeneas--came over from Italy, the land of his birth--landed at Totness, in Devonshire--destroyed the giants who then inhabited Albion--called the island 'Britain' from his own name, and became its first monarch. From this original fable, Barbour is supposed to have wandered on through a hundred succeeding stories of similar value, till he came down to his own day. There can be little regret felt, therefore, that the book is totally lost. Wynton, in his 'Chronicle,' refers to it in commendatory terms; but it cannot be ascertained from his notices whether it was composed in Scotch or in Latin.
Barbour died about the beginning of the year 1396, eighty years of age. Lord Hailes ascertained the time of his death from the Chartulary of Aberdeen, where, under the date of 10th August 1398, mention is made of 'quondam Joh. Barber, Archidiaconus, Aberd., and where it is said that he had died two years and a half before, namely, in 1396.'
His great work, 'The Bruce,' or more fully, 'The History of Robert Bruce, King of the Scots,' does not appear to have been printed till 1616 in Edinburgh. Between that date and the year 1790, when Pinkerton's edition appeared, no less than twenty impressions were published, (the principal being those of Edinburgh in 1620 and 1648; Glasgow, 1665; and Edinburgh, 1670--all in black letter,) so popular immediately became the poem. Pinkerton's edition is in three volumes, and has a preface, notes, and a glossary, all of considerable value. The MS. was copied from a volume in the Advocates' Library, of the date of 1489, which was in the handwriting of one John Ramsay, believed to have been the prior of a Carthusian monastery near Perth. Pinkerton first divided 'The Bruce' into books. It had previously, like t