King Robert the Bruce. By A. F. Munson. (Oliphant, Ander-
son, and Ferrier, Edinburgh. Is. 6d )—Professor Murison erred in being too enthusiastic in the monograph on Sir William Wal- lace, which he contributed to the "Famous Scots Series." In his new volume on Robert the Bruce, which may be regarded as the complement of its predecessor, he perhaps errs in the opposite direction. He is not inclined to give Bruce sufficient credit for pure and self-sacrificing patriotism. No doubt the greatest of Scottish Kings and soldiers, as even Mr. Munson allows Bruce to have been, did begin his active career as a Norman chief bent on aggrandising himself and his house at the expense both of English monarch and of Scottish people. The mystery of his "murder" of Comyn is never likely to be cleared up, and Mr. Munson does not profess to throw any fresh light upon it ; but he would seem inclined to follow in the wake of the majority of previous investigators, and to come to the conclusion that Bruce merely "removed" an obstacle in the way of his ambition. On the other hand, such a view as Dr. Hume Brown's seems alike charitable and sensible, that Bruce improved in character as he grew older, and that he became on the whole a good as well as a great man. For the rest, Professor Munson gives in a very con- venient form a narrative of the career of Bruce, based upon the familiar authorities such as Barbour, but checked by the re- searches of modern investigators. He has been in every respect more discriminating than he was in the preceding volume on Wallace. The book is not, perhaps, so well written as Sir Herbert Maxwell's monograph on the same subject, but it will give more satisfaction to the majority of Scottish readers.
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