al, but not in the
particular. It was not necessary to point out the present source, when
so many others of a parallel nature exist. This tale, universally told,
Mr. Douce considers as the origin of _Measure for Measure_, and was
probably some traditional event; for it appears sometimes with a change
of names and places, without any of incident. It always turns on a
soldier, a brother or a husband, executed; and a wife, a sister, a
deceived victim, to save them from death. It was, therefore, easily
transferred to Kirk, and Pomfret's poem of "Cruelty and Lust" long made
the story popular. It could only have been in this form that it reached
the historian, who, it must be observed, introduces it as a "story
_commonly told_ of him;" but popular tragic romances should not enter
into the dusty documents of a history of England, and much less be
particularly specified in the index! Belleforest, in his old version of
the tale, has even the circumstance of the "captain, who having seduced
the wife under the promise to save her husband's life, exhibited him
soon afterwards _through the window of her apartment suspended on a
gibbet_." This forms the horrid incident in the history of "the bloody
Colonel," and served the purpose of a party, who wished to bury him in
odium. Kirk was a soldier of fortune, and a loose liver, and a great
blusterer, who would sometimes threaten to decimate his own regiment,
but is said to have forgotten the menace the next day. Hateful as such
military men will always be, in the present instance Colonel Kirk has
been shamefully calumniated by poets and historians, who suffer
themselves to be duped by the forgeries of political parties![87]

While we are detecting a source of error into which the party feelings of
modern historians may lead them, let us confess that they are far more
valuable than the ancient; for to us at least the ancients have written
history without producing authorities! Modern historians must furnish
their readers with the truest means to become their critics, by providing
them with their authorities; and it is only by judiciously appreciating
these that we may confidently accept their discoveries. Unquestionably
the ancients have often introduced into their histories many tales
similar to the story of Kirk--popular or party forgeries! The mellifluous
copiousness of Livy conceals many a tale of wonder; the graver of Tacitus
etches many a fatal stroke; and the secret history of Sueto