Colonel Sir Henry Yule, The Book of Sir Marco Polo.

Sir John wandered far and long, but at last his journeyings ended.  “I have passed through many lands and isles and countries,” he says, “and now am come to rest against my will.”  And so to find comfort in his “wretched rest” he wrote his book.  “But,” he says, “there are many other divers countries, and many other marvels beyond that I have not seen.  Also in countries where I have been there are many marvels that I speak not of, for it were too long a tale.”  And also, he thought, it was as well to leave something untold “so that other men that go thither may find enough for to say that I have not told,” which was very kind of him.

Sir John tells us then how he took his book to the holy father the Pope, and how he caused it to be read, and “the Pope hath ratified and affirmed my book in all points.  And I pray to all those that read this book, that they will pray for me, and I shall pray for them.”

BOOKS TO READ

    The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, edited

Chapter XXVI BARBOUR—­“THE BRUCE,” THE BEGINNINGS OF A STRUGGLE

WHILE Chaucer was making for us pictures of English life, in the sister kingdom across the rugged Cheviots another poet was singing to a ruder people.  This poet was John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen.  An older man than Chaucer, born perhaps twenty years before the English poet, he died only five years earlier.  So that for many years these two lived and wrote at the same time.

But the book by which Barbour is remembered best is very different from that by which we remember Chaucer.  Barbour’s best-known book is called The Bruce, and in it, instead of the quiet tales of middle-class people, we hear throughout the clash and clang of battle.  Here once again we have the hero of romance.  Here once again history and story are mingled, and Robert the Bruce swings his battle-ax and wings his faultless arrow, saving his people from the English yoke.

The music of The Bruce cannot compare with the music of the Tales, but the spirit throughout is one of manliness, of delight in noble deeds and noble thoughts.  Barbour’s way of telling his stories is simple and straightforward.  It is full of stern battle, yet there are lines of tender beauty, but nowhere do we find anything like the quiet laughter and humor of Chaucer.  And that is not wonderful, for those were stern times in Scotland, and The Bruce is as much an outcome of those times as were the Tales or Piers Ploughman an outcome of the times in England.