otherwise than as an imaginary figure.* He is too strikingly parallel a person to Master Blair to permit us to believe that the Wallace-poet was not thinking of him when he invented his own recondite authority. Blaise (Blase), to be sure, is not absolutely identical with Blair (Blare).† The two names differ by the difference of an s and an r; but that is of small account. Accepting the idea of Master Blaise, it would have been as natural as judicious for the poet to make this name of Wallace's supposed chaplain more Scottish in appearance, and the form Blair would inevitably occur to him at once. But why John Blair? A fact cited by Mr. Brown § provides us with an easy explanation. One "Magister John Blare" was a king's chaplain at the Scottish court in Blind Harry's time, and (in 1467) was given a robe by royal authority" pro scriptura unius libri dicti Mandevile." This is a precious bit of information. The Wallacepoet had evidently read the voyages of Sir John Mandevile before he wrote his own envoy, in which he asserts that he had done his " diligence,"

Eftyr the pruff geyffyn fra the Latyn buk
Quhilk Maister Blayr in his tym wndertuk
In fayr Latyn compild it till ane end.

For he continues, in words that point directly to Mandevile's final paragraph:

With thir witnes the mar is to commend.
Byshop Synclar than lord was off Dunkell,
He gat this buk, and confermd it him sell
For werray trew; thar off he had no dreid,
Himselff had seyn gret part off Wallace deid.
His purpos was for till haue send it to Rom,

Our fadyr off kyrk tharon to gyff his dom.

Sir John Mandevile (or rather Jean de Bourgogne, dit à la barbe; for he, like the author of the Wallace, wrote under an assumed name) tells us similarly in his closing words what he did to promote belief in his fabulous book when once it was compyled." *

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"For as much," he says,

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as many men beleve not that they see with theyr eyen or that they may conceive and know in their mynde, therefore I made my way to Rome in my coming homewarde to shew my boke to the holy father the Pope and tell hym of the mervayles that I had sene in diverse countreys; so that he with his wise counsel wold examine it, with diverse folke that are at Rome, for there dwell men of all nations of the world, and a lytle time after when he and his counsel had examined it all through, he sayde to me for a certayne that it was true, for he sayd he had a boke of Latyn contayning all that and much more, of the which Mappa Mundi is made, the which boke I saw, and therefore the Pope hath ratyfied and confirmed my boke in all poyntes."

It is curious to find the author of the Wallace thus following the lead of Mandevile, for his own book is to be placed in the same category of narrative imposture, covered with a thin veil of pretension to recondite authority. Geoffrey of Monmouth's History and Sir John Mandevile's Voyages were apparently books of a kind that a man of his temperament would desire to have "at his beddes heed." His taste was not singular. No narrators of the Middle Ages compared in vogue with these two writers of fiction. He and they together form an incomparable trio. By no others, perhaps, have readers ever been more willingly led away from the strait and narrow path of fact. We may well doff our hats to these men's power of imagination. But perhaps it would be just as well in a future edition of the Dictionary of National Biography to remove altogether the curious account of Master Blair there given, as far from truth perhaps as the Wallace itself, but set down with no intent to deceive.

Master Blaise, in his turn, one may conjecture, is no other than Master Blihis,* the mysterious authority for much Arthurian fiction, including the story of the Grail and its mysteries, the "famosus fabulator Bledhericus" of whom Giraldus Cambrensis speaks, and who, under the name Breri, is cited by the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas as the

most trustworthy source of information about Tristram.

Ky solt les gestes e les cuntes

De toz les reis, de toz les cuntes

Ki orent esté en Bretaingne.

There must have been many "masters" of the sort. Master Blair reminds one further of Master Brogan, St. Patrick's supposed scribe, who recorded Caeilte's wonderful tales. "Success and benediction, Caeilte!' Patrick cried, and where is Brogan? be that tale written down by thee, so that to the chiefs of the world's latter time it prove a diversion.' And Brogan penned it." *

Thanks to Master Blair and Blind Harry, William Wallace has become one of the most famed of Scottish chiefs of the world's latter time, and the narrative of his exploits has proved a diversion to many" recreation of spirit and mind," † such as St. Patrick found the tales of Caeilte.

T

CHAPTER X

THE WALLACE AS HISTORY

A Scotchman must be a very
sturdy moralist who does not

love Scotland better than truth.

Dr. JOHNSON

HE nature of the Wallace and the cause of its

permanent influence become clearer when we consider the poet's method of make-believe and the way his work was treated by learned historians. In these respects the Wallace presents a striking parallel to Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, a book which, despite its obvious inventions, has been taken seriously by multitudes, and been gravely argued about by historians, during the bewilderingly long period of over seven hundred and fifty years since it was launched upon a world fain to believe.

Immediately after his book appeared, sober historians like William of Malmesbury set down Geoffrey's statements as "fallacious fables" and

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ridiculous figments." "He disguised," said William of Newbury, "with the honest name of history the fables about Arthur taken from the old tales of the Britons with increase of his own."