Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than Mr. Brown’s attempt to show that the poem breaks down in autobiographical details, and that it derives these details from Wyntown’s _Chronicle_. James does not mention the exact year in which he was taken prisoner. He tells us that he commenced his voyage when the sun had begun to drive his course upward in the sign of Aries, that is, on or about the 12th of March--and that he had not far passed the state of innocence, “bot nere about the nowmer of zeris thre”--in other words, that he was about ten years of age. Hereupon Mr. Brown, assuming that Wyntown gives the date of the King’s birth correctly, proceeds to point out that the King was not at this time “about ten,” but that he was about eleven and a half; and then asks triumphantly whether James would have been likely to forget his own age. Again, he contends that the King’s capture could not have taken place in March, because it is highly probable that at the end of February, or at the beginning of March, the King was in the Tower. For the fact that he was in the Tower at that date there is not an iota of proof, or even of tolerably satisfactory presumptive evidence. How the author of the _Kingis Quair_ could have been indebted to Wyntown’s _Chronicle_ for the autobiographical details it is, indeed, difficult to see. The poem gives March as the date of the capture; the _Chronicle_ gives April. According to the poem, the King’s age at the time of his capture was about ten; according to the _Chronicle_, about eleven and a half. The _Chronicle_ gives the year of the capture; the poem does not. The _Chronicle_ gives details not to be found in the poem; the poem details not to be found in the _Chronicle_. Mr. Brown has no authority whatever for asserting that Book IX. chap. xxv. of the _Chronicle_ was certainly written years before James returned to Scotland. All we know about the _Chronicle_ is that it was finished between the 3rd of September, 1420, and the return of James in April, 1424. Mr. Brown must forgive us for expressing regret that he should have wasted so much time and learning, in attempting to support a paradox which can only serve to perplex and mislead. Scholars, especially in these days, would do well to remember, that nothing can justify destructive criticism but a conscientious desire, on the part of those who apply it, to correct error and to discover truth. And they would also do well to ponder over Bacon’s weighty words: “Like as many substances in Nature which are solid do putrify and corrupt into worms, so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrify and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and, as I may term them, vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter nor goodness of substance.” WILLIAM DUNBAR[24] [Footnote 24: _William Dunbar._ By Oliphant Smeaton. Edinburgh: Oliphant.]