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year; so that the business of the ransom was probably transacted by Barbour when passing through Edinburgh, on his way from Aberdeen to Oxford.*

In 1365, there appears to have been a second passport granted to Barbour, to go through England, with six knights in company, to St. Denis in France. The object of this journey is not stated, nor is there any thing else respecting it on record.

Such are all the memorials which the destructive hand of time has left us, of one of the first and best of our poets. The editions of his "Bruce," the only work which we know him to have written, are numerous; but the only one which can be relied on, for the purity of the text, is that edited by Mr. Pinkerton, which was copied from a MS. in the Advocate's library, written in 1489, and in fine order. It is much to be wished, for the sake of the less wealthy orders of our coutrymen with whom Barbour is still a great favorite, that they had the advantage of a cheap edition, printed from the same text. H. S.

A reasonable inference, which does away with that of Mr. Pinkerton's, that, because Barbour had this business to transact, he could not have remained to study at Oxford.

A. S.

ANDREW WYNTOUN.

In the midst of that fine expanse of water, Lochleven, and near to the island which contained the Castle of Lochleven, so celebrated as the prison of the unfortunate Mary, there is a smaller island, called the Inch, or St. Serf's, on which the ruins may yet be traced of a priory which was dedicated to St. Serf, or Servanus. It is said to have been founded by Brudo, the last but one of the Pictish kings; and before the Reformation untenanted its walls, many things occurred within and about it, all of which I should begin to relate to you in minute detail, were it in the power of walls, crumbling to dust, to revive in one the same indefatigable and proper spirit, which centuries ago distinguished those monkish worthies, whose tapers (to use the words of poor Bruce, Lochleven's ill-fated bard)

through the windows beam'd,

And quiver'd on the undulating wave.

The most memorable of these worthies was that venerable chronicler, Andrew Wyntoun, the author of one of the oldest Scottish works known to exist; and, after the admirable example which he has set us in his Cronykil of Scotland," of going through the whole history of the world, spiritual and terrestrial, before he comes to that bit of barren space,* the events of

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Which, form'd in haste, was planted in a nook, But never enter'd in Creation's book.

CHURCHILL..

which are the particular objects of his pen, I fear now, that Andrew himself is to be the theme of story, I shall scarcely stand excused for not entertaining you with, at least, 1st. A description of the monastery of Saint Serf, of which Andrew was prior; 2. A description of the island in which was the monastery of which Andrew was the prior; 3. A description of the lake in which was the island in which was the monastery of which, &c.; 4. A description of all the trout (the famous trout*) in the lake in which was the island in which, &c.; 5. A description of the kingdom in which was the lake in which, &c.; 6. A description of the world in which was the kingdom, &c. &c.-Were my powers of narration as great as Andrew's or even within a hundred leagues of them, I could, indeed, have no hope of being excused for passing over matters of fact so much to the purpose of what I have immediately in view, namely, a faithful account of all that is known of honest Andrew; but being little better than a mere parish-clerk in biography, I trust you will take his "Life, parentage, and adventures," in such a way as "the parish

"This lake is remarkable for producing trout of a large size, and with flesh of a pink or reddish colour, approaching nearly to the taste and appearance of salmon. Some of them weigh from two to eight and even ten pounds; but, in general, they are not of such magnitude. They are brought regularly to the Edinburgh market, where they find a ready sale."

Forsyth.

books" enable me to give them, without judging severely of the narrator, because he does not give you a history of all the world beside.

Andrew Wyntoun was a canon of St. Andrew's, and prior of the monastery of St. Serf in Lochleven. Of my defaute it is my name

Be baptisme, Andrewe of Wyntowne,
Of Sanct Andrew's a chanoune
Regulare bot, noucht forthi
Of thaim all the lest worthy.
Bot of thair grace and thair favoure
I wes but* meryt, made prioure
Of the Ynch within Lochlevyne.

Cronykil.

Andrew was born and died, nobody can tell where nor when. That he came to this world, and was a man advanced in years, some time or other in the course of the fourteenth century, is abundantly certain. In the chartulary of the priory of St. Andrew's, there are several public instruments by Andrew Wyntoun, as prior of Lochleven, dated between the years 1395 and 1413; and in the last page of his chronicle, according to the copy in the king's library, he makes mention of the Council of Constance, which began 16th Novenber, 1414, and ended 20th May, 1418. Taking it for granted, then, that he brought down his narrative of events to as late a period as he possibly could, his death may reasonably be supposed to have taken place not long after the year 1419.

* Without.

In these few particulars, half certain and half conjectural, you have all that time has left us of the personal history of honest Andrew Wyntoun.

His "Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland," notwithstanding its great value, both as the oldest Scottish manuscript existing, except Sir Tristrem,* and as the first record of the history of our country, in our own language, was suffered to remain neglected for many centuries. In 1786, Mr. Pinkerton called the attention of the public to the work in strong terms, and appears to have had himself the intention of publishing it; but of this task he was relieved by Mr. David Macpherson, who, in 1795, presented the public with a splendid edition of that part of it which relates more immediately to the affairs of Scotland. Such chapters as those, of Angels, of Man's Creation, &c. he has resigned to more recondite and less national collectors; and it is much to be feared, that now that these parts have lost the chance of coming into the world as outriders of Scottish history, they may be left to slumber in oblivion for ever. Andrew caught this fancy of prefacing with an account of the creation, from Roger of Chester, whose Polychronicon, the first example which we have of this mode of history writing,

* Barbour preceded Wyntoun; but the earliest copy we have of his Bruce is of the year 1489, nearly a century after the period when Wyntoun wrote: in Wyntoun's MS., indeed, there are nearly three hundred lines quoted from Barbour, in a more genuine state than in any manuscript or edition of Barbour's own work.

A. S.

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