His great work, 'The Bruce,' or more fully, 'The History of Robert Bruce, King of the Scots,' does not appear to have been printed till 1616 in Edinburgh. Between that date and the year 1790, when Pinkerton's edition appeared, no less than twenty impressions were published, (the principal being those of Edinburgh in 1620 and 1648; Glasgow, 1665; and Edinburgh, 1670--all in black letter,) so popular immediately became the poem. Pinkerton's edition is in three volumes, and has a preface, notes, and a glossary, all of considerable value. The MS. was copied from a volume in the Advocates' Library, of the date of 1489, which was in the handwriting of one John Ramsay, believed to have been the prior of a Carthusian monastery near Perth. Pinkerton first divided 'The Bruce' into books. It had previously, like the long works of Naerius and Ennius, the earliest Roman poets, consisted of one entire piece, woven 'from the top to the bottom without seam,' like the ancient simple garments in Jewry. The late respectable and very learned Dr Jamieson, of Nicolson Street United Secession Church, Edinburgh, well known as the author of the 'Scottish Dictionary,' 'Hermes Scythicus,' &c., published, in 1820, a more accurate edition of 'The Bruce,' along with Blind Harry's 'Wallace,' in two quarto volumes. In strict chronology Barbour belongs to an earlier date than Chaucer, having been born and having died a few years before him. But as the first Scotch poet who has written anything of length, with the exception of the author of the 'Romance of Sir Tristrem,' he claims a conspicuous place in our 'Specimens.' He was singularly fortunate in the choice of a subject. With the exception of Wallace, there is no name in Scottish history that even yet calls up prouder associations than that of Robert Bruce. The incidents in his history,--the escape he made from English bondage to rescue his country from the same yoke; his rise refulgent from the stroke which, in the cloisters of the Gray Friars, Dumfries, laid the Red Comyn low; his daring to be crowned at Scone; his frequent defeats; his lion-like retreat to the Hebrides, accompanied by one or two friends, his wife meanwhile having been carried captive, three of his brothers hanged, and himself supposed to be dead; the romantic perils he survived, and the victories he gained amidst the mountains where the deep waters of the river Awe are still telling of his name, and the echoes of Ben Cruachan repeating the immortal sound; his sudden reappearance on the west coast of Scotland, where, as he 'shook his Carrick spear,' his country rose, kindling around him like heather on flame; the awful suspense of the hour when it was announced that Edward I., the tyrant of the Ragman's Roll, the murderer of Wallace, was approaching with a mighty army to crush the revolt; the electrifying news that he had died at Sark, as if struck by the breath of the fatal Border, which he had reached, but could not overpass; the bloody