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Wordsworth and Burns

1944; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/459386

1938-1530

Russell Noyes,

Scottish History and National Identity

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.