As for the lines found only in Hart’s edition, their every feature arouses distrust and suspicion. Skeat’s judgment of “almost certainly genuine” he has had to retract for 18 out of the total of 45, including the eight-line version of a couple in the MSS.[8] Those on the heart-throwing episode, Bk. XX. *421-*432, have been referred to above. Not a single example of the remaining accretions meets the test of repetition operative in the case of the MSS., or suggests its own explanation. The couplet in Bk. II., p. 25, is nothing either way; that on p. 283 is awkward; the intrusive lines on p. 321 are neither sense nor grammar; those on pp. 215, 216 can find a place only by an unwarrantable alteration of the succeeding line in both MSS., a liberty which Mr. Brown, on purely speculative grounds, lightly accepts from the very passage in question.[9] On the untimeous harangue into which Bruce is made to pass on p. 239 I have spoken in its place. In general it may be said that Hart’s contributions are clear misfits. Moreover, the circumstantial evidence seems to clinch the main conclusion. Hart, or his editor, had a turn for rhyme: to him are due the rhyming rubrics, and he added at the close of the poem a halting colophon of six lines, which in the later corrupt editions was simply merged in the poem, and is quoted as a specimen thereof in a critical historical work of 1702.[10] In XX. 610 he has barefacedly substituted a line for that of the MSS., which introduces a detail not found before the time of Bower and no doubt taken from him.[11] This throws a strong light on the origin of other lines in the same Book.[12] Thus we prove capability and inclination. Hart “modernized” the language of _The Bruce_, and from “modernization” to “improvement” is a tempting transition. [8] XVII. 887, 888. [9] _The Wallace and The Bruce_, pp. 133, 134. [10] _The Scottish Historical Library_, by W. Nicholson, Archdeacon of Carlisle, p. 147. [11] See note on passage. [12] See Appendix D. 2. THE SCRIBES.