"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 it please
If freedom fail."
Now this was the work, not of an English, but of a Scottish poet, who wrote in English.
John Barbour was born in Aberdeen in 1316, though the date is somewhat uncertain. He became, under David II., Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1356. He obtained permission of Edward III., through his own sovereign, to study at Oxford, and became famous, not only as a divine and philosopher, but as a poet, only surpassed in that age by Chaucer, and certainly far more purely English in his language than Chaucer himself. His great poem is the story of Robert Bruce and his noble companions, Douglas and Randolph, Earl of Moray.
Of the English poets, with a reference to Lawrence Minot, who celebrated the exploits of Edward III. in martial poems, and has, therefore, been styled the Tyrtæus of his age, we shall now only mention Gower and Chaucer.