Besides the edition of 1594, I have compared the MS. with Hart’s, 1620; and with one printed by Gedeon Lithgow, Edinburgh, 1648, which I have not seen mentioned by any writer. It is a neat edition, in small 8vo, black letter, pp. 343, in the square form of our more early publications. It has an introduction, entitled _The Printer to the Reader_, considerably larger than that prefixed to Hart’s, as it extends to nineteen pages. This contains an abridgment of the History of Scotland from the portentous death of Alexander III. A. 1285, to the year 1318. I have also consulted the Edinburgh edition of 1673, printed by Andrew Anderson, in twelves, pp. 252. This is considerably inferior in execution to the one last mentioned, although it seems to have been taken from it, with some slight changes of the orthography. The introduction to the former is reprinted _verbatim_; but there is added, after the Table of Contents, a poetical address of “Scrimger to Wallace, by reason of the false Menteith captive at London,” and the reply of “Wallace to Scrimger, his Baner-man.” The following page contains a curious wood-cut of Wallace in armour, with his bow and quiver.
Mr Pinkerton mentions also editions at Edinburgh 1601, Aberdeen 1630, and Glasgow 1665, in 8vo. He adds; “There are many editions of the present [eighteenth] century, but bad. The very worst is that of Edinburgh, 1758, 4to., which the printer very expertly reduced to modern spelling, and printed in black letter, and in quarto; being exactly, in every point, the very plan which he ought not to have followed. The same sagacious personage gave Barbour’s Poem in the same way; and neither selling, (how could they?) the booksellers sometimes tear out the title, and palm them upon the ignorant as old impressions.” List of Scot. Poets, _ut sup._
This is the edition which is here quoted in the Notes as that of 1714. For I have been assured, on good authority, that this edition, as well as that of _The Bruce_, was printed by Robert Freebairn, printer to his Majesty, in the year 1714 or 1715; but that, as he engaged in the rebellion in the year last mentioned, before the work was ready for publication, they were suffered to lie in a bookseller’s ware-house till A. 1758, when they were published, either without titles, or with titles bearing the false date of this year. As to the merit of these editions, I am under the necessity of differing from Mr Pinkerton. To me, the editions printed by Freebairn appear more correct than any of the preceding ones, and his Wallace even preferable to the Perth edition, A. 1790; as, bating the liberty used with regard to the orthography, they, in a great variety of instances, give the sense of the original writers more accurately, having evidently been collated with the MSS. of _The Bruce_ and _Wallace_ in the Advocates’ Library.