doubtless, its value can never be put in competition with the works of the above
authors; it is rather a romance than a history, and is full of exaggerations and
anachronisms; the narrative Henry professes to have derived from a complete
history of Wallace (now lost) written, in Latin, partly by John Blair and partly
by Thomas Gray; and this circumstance, if true, exculpates the poet from the
invention at least of its manifold and manifest absurdities. His information
seems to have been, for the period, respectable. In his poem he alludes to the
history of Hector, of Alexander the Great, of Julius Cæsar, and of Charlemagne;
but without profiting from the character which these heroes exhibited in history, of policy combined with prowess and bravery, he has in his book taken the childish or gross conception of a warrior, and held up Sir William Wallace as a mere man of muscular strength and ferocity capable of hewing down whole squadrons with his single arm, and delighting in the most merciless scenes of blood and slaughter. It is in this point that the Minstrel is so far inferior to Barbour. He is destitute of that fine balancing of character displayed by the latter, and those broad political views which render "The Bruce" as much a philosophical history as a poem.[1]
HENDERSON, Alexander, one of the most eminent of the many eminent men whose names are interwoven with the annals of Scotland at probably the most interesting period of her history, (the middle of the 17th century,) was born about the year 1583. He is supposed to have been descended from the Hendersons of Fordel, "a house," says Wodrow, "of good quality in Fife." Of his early life there is little farther known than that he was distinguished for his assiduity and progress in learning, in which he greatly excelled all his school fellows. Having been sent to the university of St Andrews to complete his studies, he there went through the ordinary routine of learning, but with much more than ordinary reputation, a circumstance sufficiently evinced by his having been made master of arts, and soon after admitted regent or professor of philosophy. As this appointment took place previous to the year 1611, when he could not be more than eight and twenty years of age, it is evident that Henderson was already considered a man of no common attainments. The situation of professor of philosophy he held for several years, discharging its duties with a zeal and ability which acquired him much reputation.
It is not surprising to find, that at this period of his life he was a strenuous advocate for the dominant or episcopal party in the church. His patrons hitherto were of that party. He had long associated with men who entertained its principles, and, unable to foresee the great changes which were about to take place in the civil and religious polity of the kingdom, as well as that which afterwards happened in his own private sentiments, he naturally enough, while perfectly sincere in the opinions which he then entertained on religious matters, conceived besides, that in the direction of these opinions, and in that direction alone, lay the road to preferment. Inspired by the ambition of a mind conscious of its powers, Henderson, after the lapse of a few years, becoming impatient of the circumscribed sphere to which a professorship of philosophy confined
- ↑ In his work, entitled "Lives of Scottish Worthies," Mr P. F. Tytler has expressed his deliberate conviction, founded upon recent investigations, that the minstrel holds too low a rank as a credit-worthy historian. "I am persuaded." says Mr Tytler, "that Wallace is the work of an ignorant man, who was yet in possession of valuable and authentic materials. On what other supposition can we account for the fact, that whilst in one page we meet with errors which show a deplorable perversion of history, in the next we find circumstances unknown to other Scottish historians, yet corroborated by authentic documents, by contemporary English journalists, by national monuments and records only published in modern times, and to which the minstrel cannot be supposed to have had access. The work, therefore, cannot be treated as an entire romance." The ingenious historian then adduces a number of instances in which Henry's statements are proved by lately discovered documents to have been correct.
