A CHAPTER IX MASTER BLAIR And of his song nought only the sentence, As writ myn autour called Lollius, But pleynly, save our tonges difference, I dar wel seyn in al that Troilus Seyde in his song, lo! every word right thus CHAUCER FTER the poet's blindness, the most vexed question in connection with the Wallace concerns a Latin book" by "Master Blair," which the poet explicitly mentions as his principal authority, -one, he claims, superior to all others regarding Wallace, yet unknown to any one else.* Off Wallace lyff quha has a forthar feill May schaw furth mair with wit and eloquence; For I to this haiff don my diligence, Eftyr the pruff geyffyn fra the Latyn buk, In fayr Latyn compild it till ane end. This Master Blair, according to the poet, was: A worthy clerk bath wys and rycht sawage.† Amang maistris in science and renoune. He was the man that pryncipall wndirtuk, Eftir Wallace thai lestit mony day, Thir twa knew best off gud Schir Wilzhamys deid.† Master Blair," in his priest's weed," is once sent by Wallace to warn the west, and he figures further as a companion of the mysterious Jop, whose name before he was rechristened by the Scots was Grimsby.‡ He is pictured as writing in his book the absurd account of Wallace's appearance and attitudes, which was curiously made up by the author, in part from the description of characters in the Knight's Tale.§ Blair is also made to participate in the fantastic sea-struggle with John of Lynn, in which he is described as a doughty bowman, who himself cast the chief brigand's remains overboard; but in this last case, since it would not do for him to exalt himself in his own book, his exploits are said to have been recorded by his friend Gray, who was their “steerman " for the nonce.|| Until recently, nearly all historians and critics accepted the worthy French clerk, Master Blair, as an actual person, and merely speculated as to what Blind Harry owed to him,* whether he was responsible for the descriptions of nature in the poem,† or for the variations from other chroniclers that it exhibits, and so on. On the ground of his statement that he used a Latin book, it has sometimes been argued that the author was not a minstrel, or that he was an ecclesiastic, as well as that he was not blind from birth.‡ But of late Master Blair has begun to play a different rôle. It is probably true, as Dr. Ross wrote,§ that " no human being possessing the faculty of reason could now be got to believe that any contemporary of the illustrious patriot could by any possibility have penned such a biography as Blind Harry gives us." Therefore, those who believe in Blair must apologize for Blind Harry. Mr. Henderson, who holds that the poet was always blind, maintains that he merely carried on the tradition of a Latin book from some earlier "bard," emphasizing that so far from affirming that he had either seen or read the aforesaid book, Harry does not even affirm that it then existed; and if he does not actually imply that it no longer existed, he refrains from stating where, or from whom, he had access to it." || On the other hand, Dr. Moir, who holds that Harry was not born blind, believes that his mistakes might have been due to the fact that he grew more and more " rhapsodical" in old age, 66 and forgot" the true historical sequence of his tale." "Starting from his Latin original in the days of his youth, when perhaps he to some extent could read the original, he would gradually forget the exact facts of history as given by Blair and Gray, and give his enthralled and prejudiced audience something which he honestly believed was true, but which he could no longer from blindness verify or check. . . . I must say that Harry's allusions to his 'autor' are made in so guileless a way, that I do not consider him to be a wilful impostor. I think there had been some such book, but that, as I said above, Harry, carried away by rhapsodical fervour, gradually departed from his original.. If Blair wrote a Latin Book on Wallace, probably but one or two copies of it ever existed, and it is no wonder if these were lost at the Reformation, if not before." * Though belief in Blair's book thus remains, the present trend of opinion is to regard it as a fictitious authority, † "an apocryphal work ostentatiously cited by the poet, which criticism ought to combat." So far the best arguments in favor of this view have been advanced by Mr. Brown. "To none of the critics," he "does it seem to have occurred that the poet's statements may be quite otherwise interpreted by comparing them with similar passages in other early works. says, They seem to have forgotten that early authors in order to give their works the stamp of authority, very frequently, as Dunlop remarks, 'feigned that their fables had been translated from Latin, or derived from ancient French prose, in which they had been originally written, averments which should never be accepted unless otherwise established to be true.' . . . The putting forth of works under a false name was not in early times associated with any sense of literary dishonesty. The practice arose from a desire on the part of authors to fortify themselves by alleging authority for their statements." Mr. Brown cites among other less pertinent examples that of Chaucer's giving credit to "myn auctour called Lollius," instead of to Boccaccio, for the chief matter of the Troilus. The case of Lollius has very recently been discussed in most illuminating fashion by Professor Kittredge, who puts the situation as follows: "When Chaucer came to write this novel [Troilus], he wished — as all writers of fiction did, and do still to lend his work an air of truth and authenticity. A ready and familiar device was, and still is, to appeal to some source that might be accepted as authoritative. Benoit and Boccaccio would not answer, for the conditions of the problem required an ancient (or at least an antique) |