Some claim for Huchown not only these pieces, but "Pearl," "Cleanness," and "Patience," and long poems on Alexander the Great, and the Tale of Troy, and much more. Huchown, on this theory, must have been a professional poet, yet he has been identified, we saw, with Sir Hugh of Eglintoun, a soldier, diplomatist, and man of affairs. It is certainly improbable that a man so busy as Sir Hugh of Eglintoun wrote such a huge mass of poetry unless he were as energetic as Sir Walter Scott. The great alliterative "Morte Arthur" wanders from the true way, pointed out in the ancient Welsh verses on "The Graves of Heroes," and by Layamon. "The Grave of Arthur" is no mystery to honest Huchown; of the King it cannot be said "in Avalon he groweth old," he does not dwell with "the fairest of all Elves": he is buried at Glastonbury, a fable invented late, in the honour of that beautiful and desolate home of old religion. Huchown shows that he was intimately familiar with minutiæ of English law, which Sir Hugh of Eglintoun was more likely to know than an obscure parish priest. Many other curious arguments in favour of Sir Hugh of Eglintoun as author of the "Morte Arthur" have been set forth (by the learned ingenuity of Mr. George Neilson, who also claims for him "Pearl"), but we still marvel how a busy man like Sir Hugh, living in a rough age, found time for all his labours. The "Pistyl of Susan" adds little, save in one passage, to the laurels of Huchown. It is a tale of Susannah and the Elders, told in stanzas, both alliterative and rhyming, of eight lines, followed by one short line of two syllables, then come three, rhyming lines of three feet, and a fourth rhyming to the first in this set: thus, And told How their wickedness comes Of the wrongous dooms That they have given to gomes (men) These Judges of old. The garden of Susan is described in a manner both copious, florid, and inconsistent with botanical science, but there is a touching scene between the falsely-accused Susan and her husband. Huchown is also credited with the "Awntyrs (Adventures) of Arthur"; which contains a curious appearance of the ghost of Guinevere's mother to Sir Gawain and "Dame Gayenour," Guinevere. This is certainly "the gryseleste gaste,"--the grisliest of ghosts, but she has all of Huchown's delight in theology and edification, prophecy, heraldry, and hunting. The metre is not unlike but is not identical with that of "Susan". By Scottish critics the "Morte Arthur" and "Susan," at least, are claimed for the Ayrshire bard, Sir Hugh, and, if they are right, Scotland was civilized enough, and fortunate enough, to have a considerable poet before Barbour, author of "The Brus" (1376), a rhymed history of King Robert Bruce, the great hero of his country. But the literature of Scotland is more conveniently to be treated in a separate chapter. CHAPTER IX. CHAUCER.