File:Wallace, Burns, Stevenson; appreciations (1905) (14777027984).jpg

Identifier: wallaceburnsstev00rose (find matches)
Title: Wallace, Burns, Stevenson; appreciations
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Rosebery, Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of, 1847-1929
Subjects: Wallace, William, Sir, d. 1305 Burns, Robert, 1759-1796 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894
Publisher: Stirling : E. Mackay
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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guardian.Then he disappears into France for a few years.Then he comes back into Scotland, is captured,as some say, by treachery again, and iscondemned to a cruel and shameful death inLondon, almost exactly eight years after thecrowning victory of Stirling Bridge. Now, gentlemen, these are the great and salientfacts of Wallaces history, and they are so fewthat we may well wonder how so short a recordhas so powerfully impressed the imaginations ofmankind. But, I think the causes are not veryfar to seek. The first I will mention is theleast of them all. It is his biographer, BlindHarry. I believe that Blind Harrys record isnow generally condemned as apocryphal andlegendary, but this decision of historical criticismcomes too late to overtake the impression madeupon mankind. Dr. Moir, his most recent editor,says of his History that it has passed throughmore editions than any other Scottish bookbefore the times of Burns and of Scott—that itwas the book, next to the Bible, most frequently
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NATIONAL WALLACE MONUMENT, STIRLING. SIR WILLIAM WALLACE. 17 found in Scottish households. Burns tells usthat it poured a Scottish prejudice into his veinswhich will boil there till the floodgates of lifeshut in eternal rest. And we know in hisfamous lyric how that impression was reproduced.Well, no one can, I think, exaggerate the effectof such a leaven as this upon our national life.Nothing, however destructive the criticism may-be, can now obliterate the impression that it hascaused. A hero may die unknown and un-honoured without a biographer. Many a herodoes. And therefore the memory of Wallace,great in itself as it may be, does owe aconsiderable debt to the imaginative andvivacious chronicler of his deeds. Well, the next circumstance to which I wouldassign the impression left by Wallace isthis, that the cause he headed was a greatpopular cause. The natural leaders of thepeople had either failed them, or betrayedthem, or forsaken them, and so fierce were theinternal divisions that

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