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Wordsworth and Burns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Russell Noyes
Russell Noyes*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

Wordsworth once wrote that he had been indebted to the North for more than he should ever be able to acknowledge. By that statement he probably meant to include, among other writings, the border ballads and certainly the poetry of Robert Burns. Burns was one, Wordsworth assures us, whose light he hailed when first it shone, and from whom he learned in youth “How Verse may build a princely throne On humble truth.” Wordsworth must in fact have been among the earliest of Burns' English admirers. When his sister told her seventeen year old brother of a new book Jane Pollard had recommended to her (it was the Kilmarmock edition then just a few months off the press), he replied that he had read it and, as Dorothy put it, “admired many of the pieces very much; and promised to get it me at the book-club, which he did.” Dorothy, too, was very much pleased with the poems and singled out the “Address to a Louse” and “To a Mountain Daisy” for special mention. The second edition of “poems” (1793) she carefully glossed in the margin.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1944 , pp. 813 - 832
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944

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References

1 W. W. to Allan Cunningham, Nov. 23, 1823. In The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Later Years, ed. E. de Selincourt (1937), p. 128. Designated hereafter Letters: L.Y.

2 The present study undertakes to set out the first full and accurate account of Wordsworth's literary debt to Burns. Previously K. Lienemann in Die Belesenheit von William Wordsworth (1908) catalogued allusions and borrowings. But the German work on the subject is incomplete and untrustworthy in detail: to cite but one example, The Waggoner, in which Wordsworth demonstrably borrows direct from Burns, is not even mentioned by Lienemann. In general the opinion prevails today that Wordsworth was not more than casually indebted to the Scottish poet's writings. D.W. Rannie, for example, has stated that Wordsworth was “insensible to Burns's lyrical merit,” and Oliver Elton, though recognizing Wordsworth's fondness for Burns, thought that he failed to learn much from him as an artist. The evidence offered in the following pages will call for some modification to the traditional opinion as expressed by these two scholars.

In a second part, some consideration will be given to the extent of Wordsworth's appreciation and understanding of Burns, particularly to the motives and circumstances resulting in his vigorous defense in the “Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns” by means of which he rendered a very real service to Bums' contemporary reputation.

3 “At the Grave of Burns,” 35–36.

4 The possessive form commonly used, I am well aware, is Burns's. However, authority can be cited (including Scott's occasional preference) for Burns', the form I shall use in this paper. H. W. Garrod in a similar deviation from usage has vigorously and, I think, quite successfully defended the possessive Keats' as against Keals's.

5 D. W. to Jane Pollard, Dec. 17, 1787. In The Early Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. E. de Selincourt (1935), p. 12.

6 Listed in the catalogue of Wordsworth's library is Burns' “Poems in Two Volumes,” 1793, with marginal glossary, of which a note dated June 6,1847, says: “In the handwriting of my very dear Sister, done long ago,”

7 The brother and sister also possessed Currie's edition in four volumes which they carried with them on their visit to the Burns country.

8 Crabb Robinson reports Wordsworth's remark: “You know how I love and quote, not even Shakespeare and Milton, but Cowper, Burns, etc. As to modern poets—Byron, Scott, etc.—I do not quote them because I do not love them.” Diary, Jan. 31, 1836. In Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers, ed. Edith J. Morley (1938), p. 486. Designated hereafter C.R. on Books and Writers.

In a letter to R. P. Gillies Wordsworth wrote: “I assure you that, with the exception of Burns and Cowper, there is very little of recent verse … that sticks to my memory (I mean which I get by heart).” Dec. 22, 1914. In Letters: M.Y., p. 615.

9 Characteristic references dating from 1799 to 1846 and not elsewhere mentioned in this study bear added witness to the fact:

In a letter to Coleridge, Wordsworth praised Burns' treatment of manners and declared him to be energetic, solemn, and sublime (Feb., 1799), [Letters, p. 222]; he talked of Burns “in terms of cordial admiration” (c. 1824), [Knight xi, 113]; he regretted missing a meeting with one of Burns' sons (1831), [note prefixed to “Yarrow Revisited”]; he referred to CSN as “imperishable verse” in “Address on Education” (1836); he thought many of Burns' letters “marvelous” (1840), [Knight xi, 376]; he praised the verses to Ferguson (1846), [Knight xi, 457].

10 The word is “sugh” and the phrase “faint huzzas” E.W., 317 and D.S., 437 and 365. Wordsworth borrowed these expressions by way of Gilpin rather than direct from the “Kilmarnock” edition. See A. Beatty, Wordsworth: Representative Poems (1937), pp. 24, 48.

478–481, 484–486 in the revised D.S. are very probably a reflection of the 2d and 3d stanzas of Cot. S. N. Lienemann sees a parallel in Tam o'Sh., 60–61 and D.S., 5–6.

11 See especially the prose note preceding “‘There!‘ said a Stripling.”

12 Dorothy quotes freely from “Bruar Water” in her journal account of 1803. Apparently both she and her brother knew the entire poem by heart.

13 Wordsworth quotes this couplet in his “Kendal and Windermere Railway.” He also quotes the entire stanza in making an autograph in an album (See Notes and Queries, Nov. 6, 1897, xii, 368).

14 Wordsworth quotes this stanza from “William Simpson” in a note to the Duddon sonnets, and he borrows a phrase from the third line for The Excursion (i, 703)—“And now the ‘trotting brooks’ and whispering trees.” As late as 1833 on a visit to the Burns country, Wordsworth is reminded of passages from this same poem and comments upon the success with which Burns wrote of his beloved rivers (see the prose note to “‘There!‘ said a Stripling”).

15 Wordsworth quotes and comments upon “The Vision” on several different occasions: See (1) “To the Sons of Burns,” 1803; (2) W. W. to Lady Beaumont, Dec. 23, 1806 (Letters: M.Y., p. 98); (3) prose note to “‘There!‘ said a Stripling,” 1833; (4) Lady Richardson's Memoranda, 1842, in Knight xi, 419–420.

16 Burns'“Bessy and Her Spinnin'Wheel” holds within it a joy in the humble contemplation of nature like that nearly everywhere implicit in Wordsworth's earlier work. A partial quotation reveals how close this poem is to the spirit of the nature poems of 1798.

The scented birk and hawthorn white
Across the pool their arms unite,
Alike to screen the birdie's nest,
And little fishes' caller rest:
The sun blinks kindly in the biel',
Where blythe I turn my spinnin' wheel.
Wi' sma' to sell, and less to buy,
Aboon distress, below envy,
O wha wad leave this humble state,
For a' the pride of a' the great? (9–16, 26–28)

17 A phrase in the Happy Warrior poem strongly suggests the possibility of verbal indebtedness to verses in Burns:

And resolutely keep its [honor's] laws
Uncaring consequences
(“Epistle to a Young Friend”)
And through the heat of conflict, keep the law
In calmness made.
(“Character of the Happy Warrior”)

In “The Sun Has Long Been Set” Wordsworth takes over a pair of phrases:

At operas and plays parading,
Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading.
(“Twa Dogs,” 153–154)
Who would go “parading”
In London, “and masquerading.”
(“The Sun Has Long Been Set,” 10–11)

Among those of Wordsworth's pieces that follow rather closely the thought patterns of his predecessor is “A Poet's Epitaph,” modeled upon Burns' “A Bard's Epitaph.”

18 Vol. xvii. The review is reprinted in Elsie Smith, An Estimate of William Wordsworth (1932), p. 50.

19 Cf.

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.

20 Cf.

Then Nature said …
“Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse.“

21 Cf.

A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye.

22 Cf.

She shall be sportive as the fawn.

23 Cf. “Highland Mary,” 7–8, 23–24, 29–30 with “I Traveled Among Unknown Men,” 13–16 and “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,” 5–8.

24 It will be instructive to note the sources that Wordsworth drew upon:

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm
“To a Mountain Daisy,” 13–16
Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,
O pass not by!
But, with a frater-feeling strong,
Here heave a sigh….
Here pause—and, thro' the starting tear
Survey this grave.
The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to know,
“A Bard's Epitaph,” 7–12, 17–20
Henceforth I'll rove where
busy ploughs
Are whistling thrang,
An' teach the lanely heights an' howes
My rustic sang.
“To James Smith,” 51–54
But yet the light that led astray
Was light from Heaven.
“The Vision,” 239–240
Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius “glinted” forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glorify its humble birth
With matchless beams.
Neighbors we were, and loving friends
We might have been;
True friends though diversely
inclined; …
The tear will start, and let it flow;
Thou “poor Inhabitant below,”
“At the Grave of Burns,”
19–24, 40–43, 49–50
Or where, 'mid “lonely heights
and howes,“
He paid to Nature tuneful vows;
Or wiped his honourable brows
Bedewed with toil,
While reapers strove, or busy ploughs
Upturned the soil; …
Nor deem that “light which leads astray,
Is light from Heaven.“
“To the Sons of Burns,” 31–36, 41–42

25 Life (1916), ii, 59.

26 In her journal Dorothy tells of how she and William walked upwards along the stream of Bruar noting “the firs and larches intermingled—children of Burns's song.” She is referring to the lines in “The Humble Petition of Bruar Water”:

“Let lofty firs and ashes cool
My lowly banks o'erspread.“
(73–74)

27 The single instance of the use of “lintwhite” in Wordsworth.

28 Cf. “The Humble Petition of Bruar Water,” 47–55 and “Braw Lads,” with “Yarrow Visited,” 61–69.

29 Diary, June 3, 1812. In C.R. on Books and Writers, p. 102.

30 Cf. also “Tarn o' Shanter,” 8–10, 39–40, 51–52 with “The Waggoner,” ii, 83–86,70–73.

31 Cf. “The Jolly Beggars,” 11–14, 50–56, 288–289 with “The Waggoner,” ii, 57–59, 66–71. See also “The Waggoner,” ii, 92–100 for Wordsworth's summary of the action of Poosie Nancie's transferred to his own poem.

32 For facts in this paragraph concerning Burns' reputation during the two decades following his death I am indebted to the article by F.B. Snyder, “Burns and His Biographers,” Studies in Philology, xxv (1928), 401–404.

33 For a full account of the war of the poet and his critic, see my study, “Wordsworth and Jeffrey in Controversy,” Indiana University Publications: Humanities Series No. 5, 1941.

34 The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed. David Masson, 1896, ii, 130.

35 “On Burns and the Old English Ballads,” 1817, in Complete Works of Hazlitt, ed, P. P. Howe, 1930, v, 123–143.

36 Snyder, op. cit.

37 “Burns has, at length, become a national … subject; which he had not until the controversial management of his reputation had irritated the public attention.” De Quincey in Collected Writings, Masson, ii, 131.

38 Op. cit., p. 410.

39 The italics are mine.

40 Wordsworth's own words.

41 Collected Writings, Masson, ii, 131.

42 See Complete Works, ed. Howe, v, 129.

43 For a discussion of Wilson's feat of sensational journalism in his attack on Wordsworth see A. L. Strout's “John Wilson, ‘Champion’ of Wordsworth,” Modern Philology, xxxxi (May, 1934), 383–394.

44 Barron Field, otherwise an admirer of Wordsworth, thought “His letter on Burns betrayed too much personal revenge against Jeffrey.” See Edith J. Morley, The Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson with the Wordsworth Circle (1927), p. 591.

45 Peter's Letters to His Kinsfolk, 2d ed. (1819), i, 120.

46 See in Complete Works, ed. Howe, v, 131.

47 “Observations on Mr. Wordsworth's Letter Relative to a New Edition of Burns' Work. By a Friend of Robert Burns.” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, i (June, 1817), 262.

48 Diary, February 24, 1818. In C.R. on Books and Writers, p. 220.

49 Lamb to Wordsworth, Apr. 26, 1816. In Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas (1935), ii, 190.

50 Vol. iv (July, 1816), quoted in Elsie Smith, An Estimate of William Wordsworth (1932), p. 247).

51 W. W. to S. T. C., Feb. 27, 1799. In Letters, ed. de Selincourt, p. 222.

52 “Resolution and Independence,” 45–46.

53 Reported by Crabb Robinson, Diary, May 29, 1812. In C.R. on Books and Writers, p. 88.

54 Diary, Jan. 3, 1839. In C.R. on Books and Writers, p. 562.

55 W. E. Henley, “Robert Burns: Life, Genius, and Achievement,” in Poetical Works (1897), iv, 264.

56 Reminiscence by the late Bishop of Lincoln, Knight x, 324.

57 He praised, for example, the skilful conclusion of the satirical “Death and Doctor Hornbook.” See C.R. on Books ani Writers, p. 89.

58 Walter Scott had great admiration for Burns as a poet, whom he compared to Shakespeare. Yet the “Tory” Scott was ungenerously patronizing towards “poor Burns” (as he called him), whose plebian nature, he said, was “untinged with the slightest shade of the spirit of chivalry.” There is none of this patronizing attitude in Wordsworth.

Jeffrey found it politic to admit he had written too bitterly on Burns (see his review of Campbell's British Poets, March 1819), and even publicly to acknowledge his error on the occasion of a banquet honoring Burns (see Lockhart's Peter's Letters, 2d ed., i, 124). By 1819 (turned by Wordsworth's vigorous protest of Jeffrey's abuse) the tide of public opinion had begun to run strong against the Edinburgh Reviewer.

59 Keats, for example, was worshipful towards Burns, but the several poems inspired by a visit to the Burns country (1818) are by his own confession “flat” and “so bad he cannot transcribe them.”