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reates, consisting of three of Scotland's greatest poets,--Barbour, Scott, and Burns. The last of these has given us a glimpse of the patriot-king, revealing him on the brow of Bannockburn as by a single flash of lightning. The second has, in 'The Lord of the Isles,' seized and sung a few of the more romantic passages of his history. But Barbour has, with unwearied fidelity and no small force, described the whole incidents of Bruce's career, and reared to his memory, not an insulated column, but a broad and deep-set temple of poetry.
Barbour's poem has always been admired for its strict accuracy of statement, to which Bower, Wynton, Hailes, Pinkerton, Jamieson, and Sir Walter Scott all bear testimony; for the picturesque force of its natural descriptions; for its insight into character, and the lifelike spirit of its individual sketches; for the martial vigour of its battlepictures; for the enthusiasm which he feels, and makes his reader feel, for the valiant and wise, the sagacious and persevering, the bold, merciful, and religious character of its hero, and for the piety which pervades it, and proves that the author was not merely a churchman in profession, but a Christian at heart. Its defects of rude rhythm, irregular constructions, and obsolete phraseology, are those of its age; but its beauties, its unflagging interest, and its fine poetic spirit, are characteristic of the writer's own genius.
APOSTROPHE TO FREEDOM.
Ah! freedom is a noble thing!
Freedom makes man to have liking!
Freedom all solace to man gives:
He lives at ease that freely lives!
A noble heart may have none ease,
Nor nought else that may him please,
If freedom fail; for free liking
Is yearned o'er all other thing.
Nay, he that aye has lived free,
May not know well the property,
The anger, nor the wretched doom,
That is coupled to foul thirldom.
But if he had assayed it,
Then all perquier[1] he should it wit:
And should think freedom more to prize
Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, page 68
by Anonymous