1. The Trojan War, Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, and King Arthur.
(a) The only thing urged against the Trojan War passage[135] is that it is in the suspicious company of the others, and these, Mr. Brown suggests, are derived from Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale, from which he produces a selection of lines to parallel those in the Bruce. It may be urged,[136] at the outset, that two contemporary poets dealing with the same set of historical events are very likely to display similarities. As Chaucer himself begins by saying—
“The storie of Alisaundre is so commune,
That every wight that hath discrecioune
Hath herd somwhat or al of his fortune.”
But even in Mr. Brown’s “selected” lines it is the divergencies rather than the similarities that stand out. Chaucer says nothing of “Babilony’s tour”; “his awyne hows” is no parallel to “of thyne owne folk”; and “Bot, ar he deit, his land delt he” has no equivalent whatsoever in the Monk’s Tale. Yet Chaucer has forty lines to Barbour’s eight. In fact, the “example” is a stock one, even to its phraseology, as witness these excerpts from sources half a century and more earlier than either poet: Commendatio Lamentabilis on Edward I. in 1307, “magnus Alexander ... Nam ille annos regnans duodecim veneno hausto vita defungitur (15); Vita Edwardi Sec. (c. 1326). Sed ille magnus Græcorum imperator Alexander, totius orbis domitor, cum cunctas nationes orbis subicit, per familiares proditores toxicatus occubuit.” Do such close parallels prove that either Barbour or Chaucer borrowed from chronicles which they never saw?
(b) Mr. Brown argues that the Julius Cæsar parallels are “not less remarkable for significant agreement, as regards the sequence of the narrative,”[137] and that “so far as concerns the diction it (the Bruce passage) approaches even nearer the Chaucerian original.”[138] But where Chaucer speaks of Cæsar conquering “thoccident” and “the orient,” Barbour enumerates the countries. Is this similarity of diction? According to Mr. Brown, he is giving “simply an expansion of the Chaucerian phrases.”[139] Elsewhere, in such a case, Barbour is convicted of “summarising” or “assimilating,” here of “expanding.” This is Mr. Brown’s “fork” from which no author could escape. In twelve lines Barbour comments on Cæsar’s conquests, his imperial position, and his death, and in forty-eight Chaucer gives a detailed biography introducing Pompey, of whom Barbour says nothing, and Barbour is thereupon charged with following “the sequence of the narrative”—as if he could avoid doing so! That Cæsar by both poets is styled “Emperor” goes for nothing; that was the medieval way; as also was the statement that he was killed in “the Capitol,” as Shakespeare, too, believed. But the most striking note of difference remains. Barbour says of Cæsar—
“Hys eyn with his hand closit he,
For to dey with mar honeste.”[140]
Now Chaucer remarks: “Of honestee yet had he remembrance,”[141] and Mr. Brown enrols the word “honestee” among the things “not to be explained either as commonplaces or as mere coincidences.”[142] We see Barbour’s idea of his “honeste”; this is Chaucer’s:
“His mantel over his hypes casteth he
For no man sholde seen his privetee.”[143]
Mr. Brown here seems to have followed Cæsar’s example and “closit hys eyn”!
(c) The only point made with regard to the Arthur lines[144] is the calling of Lucius “Emperor,” and regarding this see my note on the passage. Geoffrey of Monmouth does the same. That Wyntoun corrects Huchown, and not Barbour, in this usage—well, Mr. Brown can make all he can of that. Barbour’s dozen lines on the familiar Arthur story is charged with being “an excellent summary of the Morte Arthure,”[145] a poem of 4,364 lines! No “expansion” here!