Studies in Scottish Literature

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1 Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 22 Issue 1 Article Volume 22 Follow this and additional works at: Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation (1987) "Volume 22," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 22: Iss. 1. Available at: This Full Volume is brought to you for free and open access by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact SCHOLARC@mailbox.sc.edu.

2 Studies in Scottish Literature Editorial Board Ian Campbell David Daiches Robert L. Kindrick A. M. Kinghorn Walter Scheps Kurt Wittig Hugh MacDiarmid (member, founding Editorial Board)

3

4 VOLUMEXXll Studies in Scoffish literature Edited by G. ROSS ROY ~panxnentofenglish University of South Carolina Columbia, South Carolina

5 1987 G.RossRoy Printed in the United States of America ADDRESS ALL CORRFSPONDENCE TO: Editor, Studies in Scottish Literature ~parhnentofenglish University of South Carolina Columbia, South Carolina (USA)

6 Table of Contents Poetry of Displacement: Sorley MacLean and his Writing Colin Nicholson... 1 On Marshak's Russian Translation of Robert Burns Yang De-you Sir Walter Scott and Eyrllyggja Saga Julian D'Arcy and Kirsten Wolf Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets Walter Scheps Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist: A Study of "Walker London" RD.S. Jack Spontaneity and the Strategy of Transcendence in Burns's Kilmarnock Verse-Epistles Steven R McKenna "Let us burn our ships": Carlyle, Sarah Austin, and House-Hunting in London Rodger L. Tarr Ambivalent Artifice in Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rais Deanna Delmar Evans... 95

7 The Growth of a Poem: Ed win Muir's "Day and Night" Elizabeth Rubennan Royalty and Self-Absorption in Drummond's Poetry David Reid Charitable Actions Reevaluated in the Novels ofreruy Mackenzie Elaine Ware Rebelling from the Right Side: Thomas Carlyle's Struggle Against the Dominant Nineteen th-centwy Rhetoric Charles A Beirnard The Genesis of The Green Isle of the Great Deep Alistair McCleery The "Wofull Prisonnere" in Dunbar's Goidyn Targe David V. Harrington Book Reviews Brief Notice Contributors Index

8 Colin Nicholson Poetry of Displacement: Sorley MacLean and his Writing For a poetry reading in the winter of 1973, Sorley MacLean, then Writer in Residence at Edinburgh University, introduced his guest Geoffrey Hill by describing him as a difficult writer whose verse was moved by an intellectual passion. Visibly pleased, the Englishman expressed his delight at being so described by a poet of MacLean's stature. It seemed then to be a telling moment of mutual recognition, and for those of us who can only enjoy MacLean's work!n English (though with the sound of his native readings echoing in our ears)l it remains a provocative memory. A passionate intellect invigorates almost everything the Gaelic poet has written, with powerful emotion characteristically driving a wedge into intellectual conviction. Two years before Hill's visit, lain Crichton Smith's translations of Poems to Eimhir had appeared, and in the intervening decade, helped by the dual-language appearance of the poet's own Selected Poems2 in 1977, lin a review for The Scotsman (Feb. 15, 1975), George Campbell Hay eloquently characterizes the aural impact of MacLean's reading: "It is an impressive experience to listen to Sorley MacLean as he performs... He is gifted with what the Welsh call Hwyl, the power of elevated declamation, and his declamation is full of feeling." 2Spring tide and Neap tide: Selected Poems (Edinburgh, 1977). All references to the poems are from this edition and are given in parenthesis in the text.

9 2 Colin Nicholson MacLean's reputation in the English-speaking world has grown spectacularly. An English-language edition of his poems is in preparation in the United States, and the Stornoway publisher Acair has now brought out Ris a Bhruthaich: The Criticism and Prose Writings of Sorley MacLean,3 much of it, too, in English. Though Gaelic scholars will find a variety of their own preoccupations stimulated by these critical writings, for the rest of us they are of considerable value for the light they shed upon the author's own poetic preferences and predilections. They are also evidence of the indefatigable energy with which the poet promoted the language and poetry of his people. A corresponding intensity of relationship between poet and place becomes a natural attribute of MacLean's art. One remark in his Introduction to this collection of essays and prose pieces reminds us of the unprecedented pressures which helped to shape his poetry. "In 1938 the continuing existence of Gaelic as a spoken language seemed a forlorn hope and Europe itself appeared about to be delivered into the hands of Teutonic racist fascism" (p.3). And a comment from the essay "Realism in Gaelic Poetry" helps us to focus upon this gathering of feeling and circumstance. "The great poem is always in some way realistic in that, however transfigured it is by passion, emotion or fusion of emotion and intellectuality, it has its roots in reality, not in a dream world" (p. 17). A unique triangulation of perceived cultural decline, the personal anguish of frustrated loves and a world at war led to the creation of a body of writing recognized as being among the finest of its time. At the end of the nineteen-thirties, while contending forces of fascism and democracy, then fascism and communism, tore Europe and then the world apart, Sorley MacLean's involvement with two women collapsed painfully amid complicated intensities, uncertainty and doubt. For a year or two in the early thirties, MacLean loved a woman he had first met at the very beginning of the decade. Then, in August 1937, he met an Irish woman to whom he was irresistibly drawn, but to whom he could never make any kind of advances. The insoluble difficulty lay in the fact that MacLean was under the mistaken impression that one of his greatest friends, who was responsible for the poet first meeting the woman in question, wanted to marry her himself. Under such circumstances, MacLean saw no choice but to hold off. In December 1937, he left Skye for Mull. This was for him a traumatic time anyway, since evidence of The Clearances was much more pressingly felt there than on his native island, and MacLean is the best known of all Mull names. "I believe Mull had much to do with my poetry: its physical beauty, so different from Skye's, with the terrible imprint of The Clearances on it, made it almost intolerable for a Gael." He was 3(Stomoway, 1985).

10 Poetry of Displacement: Sorley MacLean 3 already deeply affected by the Spanish Civil War which in one of its aspects also appeared to him like The Clearances. It took, after all, no great leap of the imagination to perceive in Franco and his landlord, big capitalist and Roman Catholic support, a Hispanic version of the landlords of The Clearances and the Church of Scotland at that earlier time. But there was more to it than that. For serious economic and domestic reasons, MacLean was prevented from volunteering to fight in Spain. In his poem "Prayer," though, these things are dealt with differently. Here, the speaker is suffering agonies of spirit because I would not cut away the love of you, and that I preferred a woman to crescent History. (p. 22) The question which haunts this poem, and which came to undermine many of MacLean's subsequent self-reflections, soon follows: But who will call my white love Surrender, faintness or shadow? (p.24) Today, Sorley MacLean's tenacious memory recalls the corrosive effects of that abiding conflict between love, politics and history. "It was not a case of an actual choice between the woman and Spain. I was prevented from going to Spain by family circumstances. But I realised that if it were a pure choice between the woman and Spain, I'm afraid I would have chosen the woman. I knew, I knew that would have been my choice." The imaginative sense of being so divided against himself wrought distinctive effects in his poetry, as the claims and counter-claims of love and political commitment took their toll. "The Turmoil" ends: And her beauty cast a cloud over poverty and a bitter wound and over the world of Lenin's intellect, over his patience and his anger. (p.8) In other ways his tragic predicament arose from the fact that in his conception, the woman he had loved could not fail to hold in contempt what "The Selling of a Soul" terms his "little, weak, base spirit." Its last stanza speaks the withering self-perception that remains, as well as the continuing self-deception of unreasoning love:

11 4 Colin Nicholson Therefore, I will say again now, that I would sell my soul for your sake twice, once for your beauty and again for that grace that you would not take a sold and slavish spirit (p.18) Worse was to come. The Irish woman got married in December 1939; nor did she marry MacLean's friend. It subsequently transpired that there had never been any question of that marriage taking place. In that same December, MacLean was led to believe that the woman he had loved much earlier for a year or two, "had been desperately unfortunate in a personal relationship and had suffered a very great disability in consequence." Also in that fateful December the wife of MacLean's brother John began her last illness. She was to die in January, "Her last illness coincided with me finding out about this terrible misfortune of this other woman; and the point is that I was so touched by the revelation that this woman had made to me, about her own condition, that I became madly devoted." There now began a time of blackest and most wretched melancholy. References in several of the poems about this time to a woman's wounded and mutilated body are to be taken literally: Dead stream of neap in your tortured body, which will not flow at new moon or full, in which the great springtide of love will not comebut a double subsidence to lowest ebb. (pao) "I was completely wrong about this, too, but I had no way at all, as far as I can see, of finding out, because between one thing and another, I saw her only once between December 1939 and late July or early August 1941." The emotional cataclysm which he experienced stopped the writing of "The Cuillin," the long poem on which he had been working, and "The Blue Rampart" charts aspects of this disturbance: But for you the Cuillin would be an exact and serrated blue rampart girdling with its march-wall all that is in my fierce heart (p. 42) Here as throughout the poetry, metaphors of topographical place and displacement express psychic dislocation:

12 Poetry of Displacement: Sorley MacLean 5 And the brown brindled moorland and my reason would co-extendbut you imposed on them an edict above my own pain. (p. 44) In "The Woods of Raasay" this experience of displacement receives answering configuration as the poet metaphorically re-populates the Island of Skye. In a sense this poem stands as something of a corrective to the pervasive tenor of blight and division in the writing which was to follow. On native ground, MacLean discovers the image of endurance and perseverance sufficient to his needs: It is that they rise from the miserable torn depths that puts their burden on mountains. (p.100) So this was, as MacLean acknowledges, an immensely creative anguish. Quite a few of the poems were not published at all in 1943 because they would have been too explicit. There were some in which I actually represented myself almost as a rejected lover, which I wasn't by any manner of means-as far as I thought then! The part of the Selected Poems called "The Haunted Ebb" was written during this period, but "The Woods of Raasay" was written during the summer of 1940 before I went away to the army. A lot of people think that my very best stuff is "The Woods of Raasay"-you know, everything else was accelerated by going away to the war. Those poems which are group:<l together under the sub-headings "The Grey Crop" and "The Broken Image' are a commentary on my state of mind between December 1939 and August 1941, and they were written after September 1941 and before the end of By the spring of 1941, then, MacLean was on draft to go abroad; still nothing was resolved by the time he left Britain for active service. I was in the Libyan desert first, and the Western desert for most of And it wasn't a very pleasant place. Well, the point is, after such an experience, and the fact that the business was not really properly resolved. It wasn't so much a tragedy now, but a kind of perplexity; not knowing what was what. It was the business of having to go away to the desert on top of all this; of having made a fool of myself, through what I can only describe as a kind of quixotic rashness. But then, I don't know in the circumstances what else I could have done except forgotten all about her. Wounded in action in November, 1942, MacLean was in various military hospitals until late I was in a battery command post, and went up on a landmine. The wheel of the battery command post was thrown about thirty yards, and it was mostly my bones in my feet broken; metatarsals and heelbones, by blast. I had superficial fleshwounds on my legs. but it was my feet that took it. mind you, I was hit twice before that but I didn't become a casualty. I got wounded with a bit 0' shell business in the thigh away back in May, '42. I was dressed for that. The second time,

13 6 Colin Nicholson Oh Christ I was lucky! I was hit there (strikes his chest above the heart) by a bit of shell casing as big as that (his fist). But it had ricocheted so much....it would have tom me to bits. That was during the big retreat, which started on 15th June, '42. Then Rommel was stopped on the Alamein line, on the second of July, which was a hell of a day. He was stopped really by massed artillery. In the creative stress of his poetic reconstruction, MacLean was living mythically-eimhir was the loveliest of the heroes' women in the early Irish sagas-and tom reason, with other images of division, forms a continuing leitmotif in his verse, "just as the reason is torn! to put beauty on poem or melody" (p. 1(0): I do not feel kindly towards Nature, which has given me the clear whole understanding, the single brain and the split heart. (p.24) Gaelic itself seemed about to disappear from the face of the earth, subjected to a kind of discursive clearance; so the imminent devastation of Europe projected the death of the language onto a world-historical stage: I do not see the sense of my toil putting thoughts in a dying tongue now when the whoredom of Europe is murder erect and agony. (p.56) Imagery of personal despoliation is extended to register the impact of international events, and it is part of MacLean's achievement to have pushed language to the edge of emotional tolerance just when the territory of Gaelic discourse seemed destined for narrower confines. Such pressures of sensibility, time and circumstance lend a resonance to his verse as, out of the darkest hour of personal distress came his sequence of exquisite love-poems. Beyond this, the desolate music of a poem like "The Island" elevates regret for the enforced migration of the people of Skye to an elegized possible future for many more besides. Displacement becomes the figure of the larger fate: Pity the eye that sees on the ocean the great dead bird of Scotland. (p. 74) Remorse of an intensely personal kind finds fitting correlations in historical contexts, enabling the poet to "put the people's anguish! in the steel of my lyric" (p. 38). As the closing stanza of "Humility" expresses it:

14 Poetry of Displacement: Sorley MacLean 7 I have burst from the husk which my life's condition imposed and my spirit's blossom has come out of distress an adamant. (p. 52) For such a voice, continental developments composed an answerable environment of betrayal, deceit and agonized strife. What MacLean came later to call his "rash folly" is transmuted in his poems into a self-lacerating image of constancy become obsessive and of resolution disfigured by a kind of delirium. Political commitment and private passion are in open conflict, and MacLean's lyric grace expresses a soul in torment: This is the ultimate place, after the brave boast of your aspiration the farther end whence there is no return but broken heart and sharp pride. (p.134) Clearly, his own anguish articulates with wartime desperation, intensifying an already overpowering sense of humiliation, loss and exposure. Isolated on the territorial fringe of beleaguered Gaeldom, MacLean saw on the Russo-German battlegrounds of the Eastern front a life and death struggle taking place for the defense of the West. At any rate, this is in some senses the measure of "The Haunting": You see, I knew from the beginning. I think, that Hitler would attack Russia, and I considered Russia then the only thing that really stood between us and even a thousand years of fascist domination of Europe. You must remember that America was not yet in the war. "The Haunting" was written in July Hitler attacked Russia on the 22nd of June 1941 and his armies reached the Dnieper on the third ofjuly. a hell of a rapid advance. I really thought the game was up. Good or bad, the behaviour of the Russian government, they saved us. "The Haunting" fuses meditations upon love for a woman with the seemingly imminent demise of Gaeldom. Its structure of syntax, characteristically, proposes a mode of utterance logically sequential in form, suasive in intent, but mined by a fatal certainty. The poem becomes as much a lament for the misdirection of its creator's own "newly lit consciousness" as it is for the absent woman. "The Haunting" thus laments a sense of personal and historical displacement, as a clear bardic duty to sing his people's fate came into conflict with his heart's desire:

15 8 Colin Nicholson Though the Red Anny of humanity is in the death-struggle beside the Dnieper, it is not the deed of its heroism that is nearest my heart, but a face that is haunting me, following me day and night, the triumphant face of a girl that is always speaking. (p.64) It is difficult to read that last stanza, or lines like "my thought comes on you when you were young" from the marvellous "Spring Tide" without being put in mind of the preoccupations of Thomas Hardy. Indeed, there are moments when the rhythms and intonations of, say, Hardy's "At Castle Boterel" seem to speak through the Gaelic poet's English versions: What was and is now of us, though they would last forever, how would a tale of them corne from distant shores?4 (p.62) Both poets are haunted by the absence of a loved woman and, for all their acknowledged differences, in their singular combinations of elegiac historicism and passionate affection, there may well be something of a common inspiration. Both MacLean and Hardy, moreover, pressed their remarkable lyric gifts into the service of a profound cultural pessimism, and though he is diffident about accepting the comparison, Sorley MacLean talks eloquently of the religious environment which helped to shape his own perceptions. And a simple perusal of the history which his lifetime spans suggests its own formative influences upon his sense of time. You see, I have a great admiration for Hardy's poetry, and of course I have a very definite pessimism. I was brought up on an island where everybody was of a church which envisaged an eternity of physical and mental torture for practically everyone: where works did not matter unless you were Effectually Called, unless you saw the light and all that, and even the best people didn't necessarily see the light; and that included not only people of other creeds, but the great majority of the adherents of that church itself. So that was bound to cause a pessimism. In any given congregation of the Free Presbyterians, about 5% of the adults took communion. The rest were just adherents. And although they didn't say that all the adherents were going to hell, the assumption was that the great bulk of them would-unless they saw the light, unless they were Effectually Called and so on. 4MacLean refers to these versions as "line by line translations," because "they're hardly meant to be poetry in their own right. But they're a kind of compromise."

16 Poetry of Displacement: Sorley MacLean 9 It is difficult to detennine the line between sincerity and mischief when MacLean adds with a twinkle in his eye, "mind you, the Church of Scotland has not believed that for a hell of a long time." The Free Presbyterians and the Free Church talked about the filthy rags of human righteousness. How it didn't signify, unless, unless... And they still believe that! D'you know, the most remarkable description of the Free Presbyterian hell I have ever read is the sermon in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oh God that is a powerful thing! But stili, although human righteousness may be filthy rags, they are by-products of a Saving Grace, and their non-existence is a very dangerous thing! The Roman Catholics had a safetyvalve in purgatory, and also the fact that they did not throw the responsibility so much onto the individual. If you were alright in the eyes of the Church, there was at least some comfort in that. It was effectually milder, at least. But there was nothing like that Mass business in the strict Calvinist churches. And then, of course, having been born just before the Great War, I remember being terribly affected by the miners' strike in 1926, although I'd only be fourteen then, I was in Portree school. When even a man like Sir John Reith could say to Churchill, "how would you like to live on 25 shillings a week?" Even Reith said that! And y'see, actually, though Edinburgh hadn't as many slums as Glasgow, it had some of the worst in Europe; it had some of the worst overcrowding in Europe, though the slums were not as extensive as in Glasgow! It was 1929 when I came to Edinburgh University, and that's when the Wall Street crash was, and the great Depression was at its height in And, of course, there came in this hellish National Government. Just past his seventy-fifth birthday, Sorley MacLean finished our conversations with a question purely his own, and one which a cultural historian capable of such precise recall has every right to ask: "What is the time now, because I've got this damned watch which keeps stopping." University of Edinburgh

17 Yang De-you On Marshak's Russian Translation of Robert Burns Problems concerning translation is one of the subjects in the studies of comparative literature. S.Y. Marshak's Russian translation of Robert Burns's poetry is well-known in the Soviet Union and to scholars of Burns in the Western countries. Soviet critics have almost unanimously agreed that his translation is the best, which has entered the treasure-house of poetry in the Russian language. This paper will propose some arguments about this statement in a detailed analysis of some of Burns's poems which he translated. Samuel Yakovlevich Marshak ( ), Russian poet, writer of children's literature and translator, studied English language and literature at London University from 1912 till He published his first translations of William Blake, Wordsworth and English and Scottish ballads in His first translation from Burns was done in 1924, and for more than three decades he provided Soviet readers new translations from Burns each year. In volume four of his Selected Works (1960) there are additional "new translations" consisting of thirteen poems. The largest selection of his translations from Burns appeared in 1963 in two volumes with an introduction by R. Rait-Kovaleva and a postscript by M. Molozov. The collection consists of two parts, "Songs and Ballads" and "Epigrams," containing a total of 171 poems, about one fourth of the number of poems Burns wrote.

18 Marshak's Burns Translation 11 Other editions of Marshak's translations from Burns which I have checked are: Robert Burns: a Selection (Moscow, 1947); introduction by M. Molozov -contains forty-two poems. Robert Burns: A Selection (Moscow, 1950); introduction by M. Molozov-contains ninety-four poems. Lyrics (Moscow. 1971); introduction by R. Rait-Kovaleva; notes by M. Molozov-contains eighty poems. It is interesting that the poems in all the above-mentioned editions are not arranged in chronological order. The 1947 edition begins with "John Barleycorn" followed by "Is there for Honest Poverty"; in 1950 and 1963 "Is there for Honest Poverty" is followed by "John Barleycorn." Generally the order of poems was determined in the 1947 edition. No poem in these Russian editions is marked with the year of its composition, and this information is mentioned only very occasionally in the notes. The reason for this order may lie in the general evaluation of Burns by Russian critics. Rait-Kovaleva says that Burns is close to all those, who love people, love their motherland and freedom. all those who defend peace and free labor. who struggle against the dark forces of war, slavery and hatred of mankind, which Burns struggled against in his immortal poetry) Though very general and oversimplified, this is typical of the method of literary criticism prevailing among Soviet critics, emphasizing the part literature plays in society, the relationship between literature and historical events, sometimes to the neglect of the aesthetical basis of an author's experiences found in their writings as well as the artistic value of a work of art. Because of the non-chronological order of the poems in these editions, one cannot trace the development of the author's mentality and skills in creating the poems. Marshak's theory of translation basically is revealed in his article "The Art of Poetical Portraiture:'2 Here are some passages I translated from the Russian text: Artistic translation is completely different, unimaginable without engaging the soul, without imagination, intuition-in a word. without anything indispensable for creation... (p ) lselections of Robert Burns. Trans. S. Marshak. 2 vols. (Moscow, 1963), I. 68. All translations from Russian are mine. 2Works. 4 vols. (Moscow. 1961). IV

19 12 Yang De-you Let this art be dermed with any term, if only both the translator and the reader could imagine in their integrity all the complications and difficulties of the mastery, whose mission is to reproduce, in another language, the innermost ideas, images, the fmest shades of feelings, which have already the maximum exact expression in the language of the original... (p. 336) We understand that even the replacement of a single word with another in poems or in artistic prose will be essential. In translation, notably, it is not one word, but all the words which are to be replaced by others, which belong to another language system, different in its specific structure of speech, with innumerable whims and caprices... (p. 336) It is necessary to feel profoundly the nature of the native language in order not to give in to foreign diction, not to be captured by it. At the same time, Russian translation from French should be considerably different in its style and coloring from Russian translation from English, Estonian or Chinese... (p. 337) In translating poems one must understand what to sacrifice, if words of a foreign language turn out to be shorter than one's own... (p. 337) The excellent tradition of the art of Russian translation has always been alien to dry and pedantic literalism... (p. 337) Yet, if you attentively take the best from among our poetical translations, you will fmd out that all of them are children of love, not a marriage out of interests... truly poetical translations should be built up, not fabricated Poems of outstanding poets are translated for readers who will not only get acquainted with the approximate content of their poetry, but also truly love for a long time... (p. 337) Marshak's principles are certainly acceptable to translators of poetry, yet his principles can be understood and interpreted in many different ways due to the nature of his generalizations. The problem is to what degree one could use these principles in translation, and to what degree one should enjoy freedom in translating. The analysis of Marshak's own translation may throw some light on this issue. My comparative reading of Burns's poems in both English and Russian has made it possible for me to trace a part of Marshak's translation process and his method. Marshak's translations from Burns are, in a certain sense, highly successful. The Russian version of each of Burns's poems sounds beautifully rhythmical, natural in truly Russian phrases and expressions, free from any high-sounding words or cliches, though of course, most Russian words are multisyllabic, with complicated declension and conjugation endings and a surprisingly free word order, which presumably makes Russian poetical writing easier. It is necesary to compare translations to Burns's original works. Such comparison is justified since Marshak's versions must be highly readable, artistically beautiful and melodious. Russian readers must find them

20 Marshak's Burns Translation 13 touching, familiar in their presentation; but, on the other hand, they must also retain their original features, for they are expressive of feelings, yearnings and emotions related to Scottish culture as a whole. How well Marshak succeeded in his translations will be examined in a representative selection of Bums's poems. Bums's text and a liteml translation of Marshak's are given, and my comments follow. Where necessary the word order of the translations has been altered to conform to English pmctice; occasionally a word has been added in bmckets for clarity. "JOHN BARLEYCORN" There are fifteen stanzas in Bums, fourteen in Russian; Marshak has omitted stanza ten. The reason for Marshak to omit this stanza is not clear. It is not likely that he left it out by mistake, for in the 1947, 1950 and 1963 editions the poems is always in fourteen stanzas. We can only try to seek for the reason of this omission. It is true that John Barleycorn has so far suffered a lot: he was cut "by the knee," "cudgell'd," "hung," "heaved" into "a darksome pit," each of the tortures being cruel. And here, in this stanza, he is "toss'd to and fro," which may be thought not bad enough, as in the following stanza 11, "they wasted the marrow of his bones," and "crush'd him between two stones," which is, of course a great suffering. Did Marshak think that only the worst maltreatments could expose how cruel and barbarian his oppressors were? Or that the detail in this stanza was not important enough to be rendered into Russian? Or that it sounds like mere repetition? Or that the Russian text is to him approximate enough in content to the original even without this stanza? The translator keeps silent about his omission. The rhyme of each stanza in the original is abab, octosyllabic iambic in odd lines and hexasyllabic iambic in even lines. The Russian version is presented exactly the same way. There was three kings into the east, Three kings both great and high, And they hae sworn a solemn oath John Barleycorn should die. They took a plough and plough' d him down, Put clods upon his head, And they hae sworn a solemn oath John Barleycorn was dead. Three kings he incensed, And it was decided, That forever [must) die John Barleycorn. Ordered to dig with a plough A grave the kings, That glorious John, a spirited fighter, Not rise from the soil.

21 14 Yang De-you But the chearful Spring came kindly on, And show'rs began to fall; John Barleycorn got up again, And sore surpris' d them all. The sultry suns of Summer carne, And he grew thick and strong, His head well arm'd wi' pointed spears, That no one should him wrong. The sober Autumn enter'd mild, When he grew wan and pale; His bending joints and drooping head Show'd he began to fail. His colour sickend more and more, He faded into age; And then his enemies began To show their deadly rage. They've taen a weapon, long and sharp, And cut him by the knee; Then ty'd him fast upon a cart, Like a rogue for forgerie. They laid him down upon his back, And cudgeu'd him full sore; They hung him up before the storm, And turn'd him o'er and o'er. They filled up a darksome pit With water to the brim, They heaved in John Barleycorn, There let him sink or swim. They laid him out upon the floor, To work him farther woe, And still, as signs oftife appear'd, They toss'd him to and fro. A hilly slope by grass was covered, Rivulets filled with water, And from the earth rises John Barleycorn. Always so lush and staunch, From the slope into the summer heat He threatens with spears his enemies, Swaying his head. But mild autumn comes. And heavily loaded Drool'ing under the burden of cares, Bendmg low old John. The time to die arrived [With] winter not far away. And there and then foes again Came to the old man. A hunchbacked knife brought him down, With a blow from feet, And as a rogue to parade, They took him to threshing. [The] cudgelling [of] John started [By] scoundrels in the morning, Then, tossing [him] up [He] spun round in the wind. In a well he was sunk On the dark bottom. But even in the water [he] didn't go down-john Barleycorn. Not sparing his bones, They threw them into a bonfire, A heartless miller ruthlessly ground [him] Between stones. They wasted, 0' er a scorching flame, The marrow of his bones; But a Miller us'd him worst of all, For he crush' d him between two stones.

22 Marshak's Burns Translation 15 And they hae taen his very heart's blood, And drank it round and round; And still the more and more they drank, Their joy did more abound. John Barleycorn was a hero bold, Of noble entetprise, For if you do but taste his blood, 'Twill make your courage rise. 'Twill make a man forget his woe; 'Twill heighten all his joy: 'Twill make the widow's heart to sing, Tho' the tear were in her eye. Then let us toast John Barleycorn, Each man a glass in hand; And may his great posterity Ne'er fail in old Scotland! Boiled his blood in a cauldron Under the hoop rages. Flares up in jars on the table And souls cheer up. Reasonable was the late John When alive-a good fellow He raises courage From the bottom of human hearts. He drives from the head A boring swarm of worries; With a jar the heart of a widow From happiness sings. So to the end of time Let the bottom not dry up In the keg-tbere gurgles John Barleycorn. L Obviously, much of the original is lost here. Of course, Russian words are generally longer than English ones, but this linguistic problem should not be the grounds for too much of the content of the original to be cut off or changed. The first two lines are condensed into two words "three kings"; "into the east", "both great and high" being brushed aside. It is accepted that eastern rulers were more cruel and despotic than perhaps the western ones. Marshak says that John Barleycorn "incensed" them. Despotic tyrants, often unreasonable and whimsical, need not have any pretext to kill their subjects; perhaps the proverb "give him a name and hang him" may best describe their sense of law and legal procedure. How can we know here that John has "incensed" him? Does Marshak mean to extol John's rebellious spirit against the oppressors by his having offended the three kings? And can a mere "it was decided" express "they hae sworn a solemn oath"? Also, in the eyes of some western Europeans, Russia belongs to the East, not only politically, but even geographically and ethnically. With this in mind, did Marshak simplify those details to be cautious, particularly because he may have translated this poem in the late 1930's? Though this speculation may not have much to do with the poem, yet the environment in which art is created needs to be taken into account. 2. In the original, the kings themselves "plough'd him down", though they are "great and high", they bury John alive in person as they really hate him, so here the "solemn oath" is repeated. By losing the whole of the

23 16 Yang De-you original third line, the Russian version attaches importance to their dignity and omnipotence as they issue orders to have a grave dug. John is praised here by adding a line, i.e., the attributive "glorious" and the noun appositive "a fighter spirited" to him, both of which are absent in the original; "was dead" is changed into "not rise from the earth," an imaginative extension of meaning. In his theory of translation, Marshak did not mention that the translator must know what to add and what to sacrifice, but his own translations show that he was well aware of the subtle alterations required to render the poetry of one language into that of another. 3. In Marshak's version no spring, no showers are mentioned; we have a sketch of landscape, a consequence of spring-grass covering slopes and water from showers filling up rivers to the brim. The dynamic is turned into the static. It seems no vestige whatsoever of translation could be traced here. Here John has only risen from the earth. The three tyrants stand behind the curtain. If the long Russian words have to squeeze out the whole last line with its message, is the translator sure that he his not able to find some means to stage it? 4. "Slope" is added in stanza three, so here it appears naturally. Looking down from a hill, he threatens his enemies, swaying his head, which is an added detail wanting in the original. If the original is integrated enough to let the protagonist look great, has a translator the right to change it? The original line 4 is cut off again. Could not the translator, instead of adding, try to reproduce what is already in the original? 5. Why has whole original line 2 disappeared? Since poetry gives imagery and colors, why is this line out of place? The first three words of line 3 have, it is true, the connotation reflected in the imagery of the Russian second line, yet they by no means contain the same detail. The three words of line 3 and the whole line 4 of the original seem to have melted into line 4 in translation. "Burden of cares" here is, again, an extension of meaning. It is hard not to interpret in translating, but since almost each person will have his own interpretation, it is a good idea not to interpret too frequently. 6. The first two Russian lines inform us merely of winter drawing close and the end of life. The imagery of John Barleycorn-turning old, yellow and Weak-is left to the reader's imagination. The lines are mediocre compared with the original. If a translator, completely ignorant of Burns, had to turn these two lines back into English and respected the meaning and connotations in the translated version, he would have great difficulty in restoring the imagery of the original lines. The translator, it is

24 Marshak's Burns Translation 17 agreed, is responsible both to the author and to the reader. The freedom for the translator to express himself tends to be limited in the rendered text. He should be creative, but he should not put too much of himself into the translation. The other two Russian lines lost what is prominently stressed in the last line of the original: to show their deadly rage. The kings only "come to the old man." 7. There are two types of sickle, one is long and straight, like that in the Soviet movie "And Quiet Flows the Don"; the other, the "hunchbacked one" is like that on the national flag of the Soviet Union. According to what Burns says here, "a long and sharp" sickle is probably of the first type. Using the first type, of bigger size, one will keep standing, whereas using that of smaller size or the second type, one has to keep bending low. This detail need not have been changed, though "hunchbacked" here may have the connotation of wickedness and ugliness. Also the subject "they" is omitted, and the tool itself is being stressed, which will keep pace with the following sentence structure. 8. The Russian version missed the original first line "they laid him down upon his back" and "full sore," and added "the scoundrels in the morning." Is this retelling the story in one's own words? 9. Burns's first two lines are simplified into "a well," with part of the meaning of line 3 transplanted therein. Lines 3 and 4 are replaced by "John doesn't go down," in the active voice, perhaps to show that John is staunch, and thus the translator's idea is subtly inserted. The original fourth line "there let him sink or swim" means that the three kings wish to kill John, so they tort ure him. In this stanza, John again becomes the subject and therefore the coherence with the previous and following stanzas is weakened. 10. The original tenth stanza is omitted in the Russian version. The reason for the omission lies presumably in the similarity of both the imagery and language of this and the eighth stanza. Marshak might think this stanza superfluous, useless in the description of John's character. It is universally accepted that literature depicts life and the author's own experiences in details which must be faithful to life, expressive, emotional and vivid. Repetitions and refrains reinforce the effect of the whole. But, as a matter of fact, when it is necessary, they will describe man in production activities in detail. Burns must have known how to brew beer, that barleycom is to be soaked, malted, dried, ground, etc., before being brewed. Stanzas 8 through 11 sketch some points of this procedure. Of

25 18 Yang De-you course, Bums describes them in a literary way to serve the imagery of the protagonist; therefore, they are reasonably important. It is surprising that Marshak's translation was not revised in any of the editions from 1947 through The translation says that they threw his bones into a bonftre, whereas the English original puts it as "They wasted, o'er a scorching flame, I The marrow of his bones." Again a detail is not accurately rendered, for "marrow of his bones" is not "mere bones"; "over a scorching flame" is not equal to throwing "into a bonftre." 12. The ftrst two Russian lines describe John's blood boiling and raging in a cauldron, to show how energetic and vigorous John remains. The other two lines are about people's enjoyment of drinking the potion with the addition of "it flares in a jar on the table." The original stanza, however, only sings about people's drinking and their mirth. 13. The original second and third lines disappeared. That shows how well Marshak: knew what to sacrifice. But in his remarks about translation he did not explain the reason that he might like to add material. In this stanza "reasonably," "when alive," and "from the bottom of human hearts" are all the translator's additions. 14. Again the original second and fourth lines are absent in the Russian translation, with the original "woe" developed into "boring swarm of worries," and "from happiness" added. 15. In the final stanza of Marhak the original imagery has almost completely disappeared. The English stanza is a logical development of the previous stanzas; John Barleycorn suffered very much, but he never gave in. Though his marrow and blood were ruthlessly changed into beer, he is not dead; his spirit still encourages and brings rapture to those who drink it. John Barleycorn is the embodiment of the intrinsic staunch spirit of the Scottish people, so Bums writes, "Then let us toast John Barleycorn... and may his great posterity I Ne'er fail in old Scotland!" It is a great pity that the Russian version omitted all this imagery, especially the two key phrases "his great posterity" and "old Scotland!" Bums himself loved the Scottish people and Scottish cultural traditions which helped to make him the greatest poet in Scottish literature. "John Barleycorn" is, threrfore, highly representative of his ideas and feelings. Had he known Russian and lived on to read this verssion, he would probably not have appreciated the degree to which this Russian version deviates from his original.

26 Marshak's Burns Translation 19 SUCH A PARCEL OF ROGUES IN A NATION FAREWELL to a' our Scottish fame, Farewell our ancient glory; Farewell even to the Scottish name, Sae fam 'd in marial story! Now Sark rins o'er the Solway sands, And Tweed rins to the ocean. To make whare England's province stands, Such a parcel of rogues in a nation! What force or guile could not subdue. Thro' many warlike ages, Is wrought now by a coward few. For hirling traitors' wages. The English steel we could disdain. Secure in valor's station; But English gold has been our bane, Such a parcel of rogues in a nation! o would. or I had seen the day That treason thus could sell us, My auld grey head had lien in clay, Wi' BRUCE and loyal WALLACE! But pith and power, till my last hour, I'll mak this declaration; We're bought and sold for English gold, Such a parcel of rogues in a nation! THE SCOTI1SH GWRY Forever farewell. Scottish country With your ancient glory, The name itself farewell, Motherland majestic! Where Tweed rushes into the ocean And Sark flows in the sand, Now the domain of the English, The border of a province. For ages they could not subdue us, But a traitor betrayed us. To the enemies of [our] native land For a handful of damned money. The steel of England many times In battles we blunted. But with gold the English Bought us at the market. A pity that I didn't fall in battle,when with the enemy For glory and motherland Our proved Bruce, Wallace, fought. But ten times at the last hour I will say openly: Damnation for betraying us [That] swindling parcelf The original title "Such a parcel of rogues in a nation" is the final line of each of the three stanzas. It is repeated in the poem, presumably to condemn the traitors and to show Scots' love of their native country. The poem sounds both indignant and nostalgic, meant to kindle their patriotic feelings. The Russian title "The Scottish Glory" seems to strengthen the glorious historical past of the nation; a curse is rendered into a piece of glorification by denouncing the accomplices of the aggressors, and thus the tone of the poem is changed to some extent. 1. In the original the word "Scottish" appears twice, but only once in the Russian version. "Sae fam'd in martial story" becomes "majestic motherland," changing the meaning a great deal, particularly since the names of Bruce and Wallace appear later-which is the logic development of the statement "sae fam' d in martial story." "Majestic motherland" tends to be too general and ordinary, not able to imply the aspect of martial fame and unconquerable spirit.

27 20 Yang De-you 2. Perhaps it is for the sake of rhythm that the original order of the first two lines is reversed. The original third line now is divided into two, with "Such a parcel of rogues in a nation" omitted. 3. In the Russian version the word "warlike" is missing as is "martial" in the first stanza. 4. The original second line "Secure in valor's station" is replaced by "in battles," which is not accurate; the Scots defeated their enemies mainly because they were brave, though their weapons were not up to those of the English. In a battle morale and courage are often more decisive than arms, which are of course also important. Again, in order to omit the repeated last line, the third one is extended into two lines, with the adverbial "on the market" added. Marshak's principle is to know what to sacrifice because Russian words are longer than English, yet he never discussed deletions and extending one original line into two in translation. 5. The translated fifth stanza has omitted the first and second lines, including the phrase "That treason thus could sell us" which is in keeping with the basic tone of the poem; "For glory and motherland" is added in Marshak's interpretation. 6. The last Russian stanza brushes off the expression "pith and power," working in concert with the above "in valor's station," and also "We're bought and sold for English gold" echoing the "English gold has been our bane." Here at last appears the curse. "Swindling parcel" appears in the translation, but without "in a nation" which is not unimportant, since enemies are always easy to identify, whereas the "parcel of rogues in a nation" is hard to discern, therefore more dangerous and hated. ROBERT BRUCE'S MARCH TO B Al'."NOCKB URN- Scots, wha hae wi' WALLACE bled, SCOTS, wham BRUCE has often led, Welcome to your gory bed,- Or to victorie- Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front 0' battle lour; See approach proud EDWARD'S power, Chains and slaverie.- BRUCE TO THE SCOTS You, who have [been] led into battle [By] Bruce, Wallace,- You, the enemy, at any price We are ready to repulse. The day is near. the hour comes, The enemy mighty are at the gate. Edward leads the army- Chains and fetters.

28 Marshak's Burns Translation 21 Wha will be a traitor-knave? Whae can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? -Let him tum and flie:- Wha for SCOlLAND'S king and law, Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Free-MAN stand, or FREE-man fa', Let him follow me.- By Oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud Usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! LIBERTY'S in every blow! Let us Do-or DrE!!! Those, who would lay down the sword And lie like a slave in the grave, It's better in time to dismiss, Let them leave the ranks_ Let him remain in the ranks, Who for his motherland, Will live and fall in battie, With the bravery of a hero! The battle goes before our walls, [Does] shameful captivity await us? It's better [that] the blood of our veins We present to [our] people. Honour orders [us] to sweep Oppressors away from the path, And in battle attain Death, or liberty! Marshak abbreviated this fairly long title to read simply "Bruce to [the] Scots" since the Russian for "Scots" is a word of three syllables (Shotlandtsy), so with his title he could avoid this long word in the first stanza by using the pronoun vy (you). A long foreign title with a proper noun in it is always cumbersome for the average reader. As the key word "Bruce" is kept here, and "to [the] Scots" is added, the reader will expect what would be narrated in the poem. This is an example of the part interpretation plays in translations. 1. The first stanza, like the second and fifth, is written in contrasts, to make the spirit and detennination of the resistance of the Scots appear more outstanding; it also helps with the tragic and powerful nature of the poem. The first Russian stanza has lost that basic feature by the omission of the detail "wha hae wi' WALLACE bled" and "Welcome to your gory bed"; "bleeding" and "gory" are both tokens of sacrifice and therefore able to arouse the addressees' will to fight bravely. The last two lines in Marshak are simply a statement that the Scots are ready to repulse the enemy. 2. In the original the second stanza is a laconic depiction of the looming battle; the second line "See the front 0' battle lour" is reconstructed into "the haughty enemies are at the gate" which does not sound logical here, as Bruce's Scots are marching to the field of Bannockburn, not being besieged in a town. 3. The Russian third line has replaced the original-emphatic "Wha sae base as a Slave?" with a mere "It's better to dismiss," whose object is the first word of the stanza "those." The original first three lines, three terse rhetorical questions, have been here blended into a lengthy compoundcomplex sentence and thus have lost the quick, accelerating rhythmical

29 22 Yang De-you tone. In translation, the atmosphere, the mood and the tempo of the original text are certainly difficult to transmit, but whenever it is possible, efforts should be made to reveal them by means of the language of the translated version. 4. The original first two lines, "Wha for SCOTLAND'S king and law I Freedom's sword will strongly draw," are significant, as the word "Scotland" here is all capitalized to suggest the importance to Scots of their motherland, just as the Russians are particularly fond of the word "Russia" which repeatedly appears in Russian and Soviet poetry. "King and law," omitted here, almost synonyms in early modern times, were thought to be an embodiment of the subjects' interests, wishes and yearnings, an embodiment of the peace and prosperity of a nation. The notion of motherland is in one sense a more modern and abstract notion. Consequently this word can hardly denote the implications of "king and law," not to mention the capitalized "SCOTLAND" which is brushed off. 5. The Russian version again stresses that the "battle goes before our walls." This is a logical fallacy as mentioned above. One may guess that the recollection of the Mongols' coming to Moscow, Napoleon's army reaching Moscow and Hitler's threatening to overrun Moscow, or even the famous and tragic siege of Leningrad may have been in Marshak's mind when he made this translation. If so, of course, his version would be more acceptable to Soviet readers. Translators like to use historical allusions, hints of their own native traditions, in their translations; in fact, this is sometimes scarcely avoidable. Yet a conscientious translator is supposed to be aware of them when he uses them, particularly when he alleges his own creativity. It is not certain that Marshak had this awareness. 6. The original last stanza contains four impassioned phrases, each a single sentence, which are cast into a single idea. In the Russian version, the capitalized word "LIBERTY" is again omitted. Though perhaps a bit too creative, Marshak's version is highly effective. SONG-FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT- Is there, for honest Poverty That hings his head, and a' that; The coward-slave, we pass him bey, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The Man's the gowd for a' that.- HONEST POVERTY Who of his honest poverty Is ashamed, and all that, [He] is the most pitiable of men, A coward slave and all that. For all that For all that Let us be poor; Wealth is A stamp on gold, And gold We ourselves are.

30 Marshak's Burns Translation 23 What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey, and a'that, Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A Man's a Man for a' that. For a' that, and a' that; Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king 0' men for a' that.- Ye see yon birkie ca'd, a lord, Wha struts, and syares, and a' that, Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that. For a' that, and for a' that, His ribband, star and a' that, The man of independent mind, He looks and laughs at a' that. A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might, Gude faith he mauna fa' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities, and a' that, The pith 0' Sense, and pride 0' worth, Are higher rank than a' that.- Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth Shall bear the gree, and a' that. For a' that, and a' that, Its comin yet for a' that, That Man to Man the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that.- We eat bread and drink water, We wear rags, For all that, And at the same time fools and knaves Wear silk and drink wine, For all that. For all that For all that Don't judge by clothes. Who feed on honest labor I'll call them nobility. There's this clown-a born lord; To him we must make a bow, Yet let him be stuck-up and proud-a log remains a log! For all that For all that, Though he is all in ribbons, A log remains a log Even in orders and ribbons! A king makes his lackey A general. But he can make no one An honest nobody. For all that For all that Awards, favor, And all that, Wont' replace Sense and Worth And all that! May the day come and the hour strike When of sense and worth On the whole earth comes column To stand on the first place. For all that For all that I can foretell That the day comes When all around, All men become brothers! This poem is special for its folksy feature with the constant repetition of "a' that," particularly with the four lines of the refrain in variations following the first four lines of each stanza. In Marshak's translation, however, the refrain has grown into seven, six, five, six and six lines respectively, some in three syllables, others in eight, but most in between these numbers. 1. The Russian first stanza is paraphrase of the original first two lines, lamentably brushing aside the important "we pass him by, / We dare be

31 24 Yang De-you poor for a' that!" of the original text, with the additional phrase "[He] is the most pitiable of men," who is "a coward slave." The key sentiment here should be "We dare be poor," which is completely lost. That this sentence is deleted here is puzzling so far as its meaning is concerned. In a country where the proletarian (almost the synonym of poor, lower class) family origin is often mentioned proudly, it is natural that people "dare be poor" and make revolution to change the status quo. Marshak could not have neglected this conception. Perhaps a knowledge of his life experience would provide an interpretation of this deletion, but this is beyond us. Further, Bums's "The rank is but the guinea's stamp" is rendered into "wealth is a stamp on gold"; rank may bring wealth, perhaps dirty money. Do proletarians dislike wealth? What do they make revolution for? 2. The imagery of the refrain here is an extension of the original text, such as "Don't judge by clothes. / Who feeds on honest labor- / I'll call them nobility." The text is not a translation so much as a paraphrase of the original. 3. The original third line "Though hundreds worship at his word" is turned into "To him we must make a bow" meaning that we belong to the humble "hundreds," which is perhaps not true. 4. Marshak's third and fourth lines do not quite express what is in the original lines. Good faith is essential in an honest man, who does not need a prince's favor, and he is not necessarily a nobody. In the refrain of this stanza, the original "their dignities" is changed into "awards, favor" from a king, in order to be followed by "Won't replace / Sense and Worth." The reason that Marshak made this change may lie in the coordination between the first four lines and the refrain. In the former a king makes his lackey a general, so here awards and favor will not replace sense and worth. If that is true, it is still not justified to omit the original last line which shows "sense" and "worth" to be of "higher rank" than nobility, a phrase which just balances the whole structure of the refrain. S. The Russian version omitted the second line "As come it will for a' that," which is important, expressive of a common faith, or of the author's optimistic expectations for the future of mankind. One may suggest that to make up for that omission Marshak added a line, "I can foretell," to the Russian version of the refrain. It sounds odd, however, coming as it does all of a sudden where, for the first time in its form, the first person singular appears. This "I" can hardly add to the poem, though poems tend to be subjective, lyrical and expressive of the author's experience. A RED RED ROSE o my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June; o my Luve's like the melodie That's sweetly play'd in tune.- LOVE Love, like a rose, red rose Blooms in my garden. My love is like a song, In which I go on my path.

32 Marshak's Burns Translation 25 As fair art thou my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will love thee still, my Dear, Till a' the seas gang dry.- Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun; I will love thee still my Dear, While the sands 0' life shall run.- And fare thee weel, my only Luve! And fare thee weel, a while! And I will come again, my Luve, Tho' it were ten thousand mile! Stronger than your beauty My love is. It is with you, until seas Dry up to the bottom. Until seas dry up, my friend, Until granite collapses, Until sand stops, And it, like life, runs forward. Be happy, my love, Farewell, don't grieve. I'll come to you, though the whole world I must cross through. In the original stanza 1, the line "[red rose] That's newly sprung in June" is changed to "blooms in my garden." Here the notion of place replaces that of time. In Russia, as in Scotland, summer is thought to be the most beautiful season of the year because the warm season is shorter than in most other countries. Then why "in my garden"? It does not convey the warmth and joy of June. Further, the original "melodie" becomes a "song," not "play'd in tune." Marshak changed line 4 into "I'll go in my travel with it," which may sound more intimate and personal than it is in the original. But we are here concerned with imagery. A melody may give added depth to a song, especially when "sweetly play'd in tune." As in line 2 the adverb (sweetly) is lost. In the Russian stanza 2, the direct vocative "my bonie lass" is lost, which certainly makes the poem appear more sympathetic and heartfelt. The translator uses the comparative degree: only my love is greater than your beauty. Marshak sounds nobler than the mild causality in Burns; what lover does not think his girl beautiful? In the third stanza, "rocks melt wi' the sun" means more than "granite collapses." As "sun" represents warmth and heat, melting has different connotations than collapsing; both notions reinforce the atmosphere of warmth and energy in the entire stanza, rendering the effect more poetical. In the final stanza, "fare thee weel" is repeated to transmit a sense of goodwill and benefolence, followed by an emphatic "a while!" which expresses the emotion of a lover taking his departure, aware of the possibility of a long separation, but consciously trying to console the loved one. To what point are "be happy" and "don't grieve" used here by Marshak? They sound too direct and straightforward, something which poetry usually tries to avoid. The original "it were ten thousand mile!" is an example of the use of numerals rhetorically to describe great distance. The Russian lines "the whole world I I should have to go through" sounds more vague and general. People use "the whole world" to denote thoughts of a universal sense of remoteness making the tenn a sort of cliche.

33 26 Yang De-you M. Molozov admires Marshak for "his keeping the smallest microscopic details of a picture." He notes that in Marshak's translations "the original text is not simply reflected, but also experienced by the Soviet poet." It is obvious that to preserve details and to experience a poem are the prerequisites for any translator. The problem lies in the way he preserves and experiences. As a matter of fact, Marshak has on purpose brushed off many details and changed as many; this is presumably related to his "experiencing" the poems. Translations understandably differ from creative composition in terms of the freedom a translator and a poet enjoy. If a translator is a poet himself, he will be better able to grasp the essentials of a poem; he should, however, be aware of the limits of his freedom: he is not, in my opinion, justified in writing a new poem by adapting one from another language and calling it "creative translation." If translator-poets deal with foreign poems this way, readers can never know exactly what was said in the poem in question. Problems related to Marshak's translation of "Here's a Health to them that's awa" appear in the Russian version of the poem. Yet what is more conspicuous is that here in the Russian translation one and a half stanzas are omitted! It is difficult to justify this deletion. Perhaps Marshak thought that the following lines were the climax and key of the poem: Here's freedom to him that wad read, Here's freedom to him that wad write! There's nane ever fear'd that the Truth should be heard, But they whom the Truth wad indite. In a way Marshak is right, and he must have considered the additional twelve lines superfluous. But in doing so he placed his understanding of the poem above that of the poet. The Russian critic M. Molozov thinks very highly of Marshak's translations, pointing out that Marshak had faithfully transmitted some trivial details of "Tam 0' Shanter" and "To a Mouse," by noting that the translator had not merely reproduced, but actually "experienced" the original text, but Molozov remains silent about Marshak's deletions. Neither Marshak nor his enthusiastic critics have ever, so far as I know, even hinted that the Russian versions are adaptations. A year before Marshak's death a collection of Bums's poems entitled "Songs and Poems" was published by Vasiliev. Vasiliev says that in April 1958 "an interesting phenomenon" had drawn his attention at a meeting of young poets held in Smolensk, where Victor Fedotov had presented his translations of Robert Bums. Soon after the seminar, Fedotov's translation came off the press in Archangel, a remote city close to the Arctic Circle, far away from big cities where foreign authors are studied and published. Having made acquaintance with the poetry of the "Scottish Shakespeare" as a studcnt at the Institute of Foreign Languages, V. Fedotov was continuously

34 Marshak's Burns Translation 27 working at the translation of Bums, in spite of the existence of such a brilliant master as S. Marshak. Let us make a proviso first of all: here we are not talking about "retranslation," about anything like rivalry with the venerable translator. There are a few cases, which are, I think, completely justified, for example, with the famous poem "The Tree of Liberty," where the translator restores the penultimate stanza of eight lines, which had evaporated in one of the latest translations (pp. 5-6). Vasiliev then cited the eight lines which are not included in Marshak. "I don't think the translator acted improperly in presenting some of his versions of the poems which had already been translated, offering to the reader his own point of view on Burns, his own understanding of his poetics" (p. 7). This preface is revealing and instructive, showing us that Vasiliev is timid in recognizing the merits of the younger translator as compared to Marshak, whom he must have had in mind. Vasiliev obviously did not wish to stress the point that Marshak's prestige as a translator was being challenged by the younger man. Translators are, like conductors, often engaged in an endeavor to interpret the original work of art in words and sound. Of course some of them are thought first-rate, excellent. Yet no translator presumes that his or her interpretation is authoritative, unsurpassable, final, perfect. There is always something to be desired. This might be the reason that Vasiliev says Fedotov's translation is "an interesting phenomenon." Not only is it interesting, but also normal, healthy in terms of a sense of rivalry or competition with Marshak who was a Lenin prize laureate. A responsible and serious translator has the right to offer to the reader his own version of Burns. Marshak has offered this, and so has Fedotov. Taken as a whole, Fedotov's translation is highly readable, far morefaithful to Bums's original text in presentation and content than that of Marshak, though perhaps not always sounding quite as Russian as that of Marshak. As an example we may take the last stanza of "The Tree of Liberty": Wae worth the loon wha watna eat Sic halesome dainty cheer, man; I'd gie my shoon frae aff my feet, To taste sic fruit, I swear, man. Syne let us pray, auld England may Sure plant this far-famed tree, man; And blythe we'll sing, and hail the day That gave us liberty, man. In Marshak's version the translation reads:

35 28 Yang De-you But I believe the day comes- And it is not behind mountains When the leaves of the magic shade [Will] spread above us. Forget slavery and poverty Nations and countries, brother; People will live in harmony, Like a peaceful family, brother. Fedotov's version reads quite differently: To taste those glorious fruits Only cowards refuse, brother; I am ready to sacrifice all To know their flavor, brother. Let the tum for England come To grow that tree, brother, And the day will come when people Live in liberty, brother. The omission of "auld England may I Sure plant this far-famed tree" is a riddle since Marshak attaches importance to the historical aspect of a poem. Why did he omit this line, which tells much about Bums's wishes and the current affairs of the late 18th century both in France and England? Marshak's Russian translation of Robert Burns is highly readable, expressive, rhythmical and melodious, and very Russian sounding. A comparative bilingual reading of the original text and the Russian version shows, however, that his translation remains controversial. The basic problem concerns accuracy. In poetical translation accuracy cannot be attained as it is in prose because the translators are confined by poetical and rhetorical limitations. Translation, at the same time, cannot be separated from the original text; it is creative within the possibilities the original text provides, but it cannot be creative in the full sense of the word. Marshak seems to have gone beyond the limits of translation, making his version more like creative writing, thus here and there inaccuracies appear. His inaccuracies can be classified into three categories: form, content and imagery. Though the form of his Russian version sounds almost perfect, it is often different from the original. An eight-line stanza is split into two stanzas of four lines in "The Tree of Liberty." Burns's refrain of four lines is turned into as many as seven in "Is there for Honest Poverty." He often arbitrarily deleted entire stanzas,

36 Marshak's Burns Translation 29 as in John Barleycorn" and "Here's a health to them that's awa," or cast two stanzas into one as in "The Tree of Liberty." Within a stanza, Marshak often deleted one or even two whole lines or extremely freely reorganized a whole stanza; examples can be found in almost every poem he touched. Form is never separable from content. Since Marshak appears so ready to alter the original form, we naturally expect that he would make many changes in content. This loss can be seen there where whole stanzas are omitted or two merged into one, or where a whole stanza has been paraphrased or totally recast. Omissions and recastings occurred due to the greater length of Russian words, yet these can hardly be justified when Marshak wrote his own lines the way he understood them. Sometimes his omissions and substitutions can be understood, but more often the reason for them cannot be traced. A reader doing bilingual reading of his version often feels puzzled about this. Marshak might think part of the content of a poem unnecessary, trivial, superfluous or too local, and thus have felt justified in dropping it. With the pervasive paraphrasings, additions and modifications, imagery changed a great deal in terms of the protagonist's appearance, time and space. The general tendency is that poems are simplified as compared with what is present in the original text, or considerably reinforced due to the way Marshak understood the original works. Marshak allowed himself a great deal of freedom which is more like independent creative writing than creative translation. Examples can be found everywhere in comparing the original text and word-for-word English translation of Marshak's Russian versions. This type of translation will not of course give Bums scholars a good idea of how he is introduced to Russian readers of his poetry. For decades Marshak's translation of Robert Burns had been the only edition accessible to masses of readers, although there may be some other editions which we do not know. Then, in 1963, Fedotov's translation was published. The merit of his version lies in its greater accuracy. Having the two translations available allows Russian readers to compare the very different ways in which Marshak and Fedotov understood the same poem. The "adventure" of these two men in translating Scotland's poet may enlighten others who want to try their hand at rendering a Scots poet into Russian. Shanxi University, Taiyuan People's Republic of China

37 Julian D'Arcy and Kirsten Wolf Sir Walter Scott and Eyrbyggja Saga Sir Walter Scott's interest in Old Norse literature and history is a wellknown fact and frequently commented on, to a greater or lesser extent, by many scholars and critics. Scott had clearly developed this enthusiasm by the time he was a student in Edinburgh, for in 1790 he read a paper on Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic lore to the Literary Society, and in the following year he presented a paper on Scandinavian mythology to the Speculative Society.! Once he had passed his exams he spent the autumn evenings of 1792 poring over Bartholin's book on Danish antiquities.2 Scott also became a subscriber to the Arnamagnaean editions of the sagas, published in Copenhagen from 1770 onwards, and throughout his life he avidly read and collected books on ancient Scandinavian history and culture. Indeed, by the time he died in 1832, his library at Abbotsford contained an impressive number of the most important works on Old Norse subjects then currently available. The influence of this interest in ancient Scandinavia on Scott's own work has also been traced and examined in great detail, especially by Paul Robert Lieder whose painstaking and thorough research has established IJohn G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh & London, 1837), 1,173,176. 2Edgar Johnson, Sir Walter Scott: The Great UnkllOwn (London, 1970), p. 90.

38 Sir Walter Scott and Eyrbyggja Saga 31 that Scott's knowledge of Old Norse mythology, history, and literature was especially based on the works of Thomas Bartholin, Olaus Magnus, and Torfaeus,3 from which he drew much incidental material for his poems and novels (often as explanatory footnotes), particularly references to Valkyries, spae wives, magic swords, werewolves, dragons, dwarves, berserkers, and runic spells and inscriptions. Scandinavian material is esps:cially evident in such poems as The Lay of the Last Minstrel, The Lady of the Lake, The Lord of the Isles, Rokeby, and Harold the Dauntless, and also in his novels Ivanhoe, The Antiquary, and The Pirate; the last named is the most obviously influenced by Scott's knowledge of Old Norse literature, with its melodramatic spae wife, Norna, and plot elements borrowed from Eyrbyggja saga and Eirik's saga. Although Lieder's meticulous piece of research is almost fifty pages long and has many detailed examples, it is still not exhaustive. As F.W.J. Heuser points out in a review of the article, there is no mention at all of Scott's Letters on Denwnology and Witchcraft (1830), which contains many references to Old Norse superstitions, particularly as regards dwarves, fairies, and ghosts.4 There is yet a further lapse in Lieder's otherwise excellent pioneering work; at one point in his article (p.44) he claims that he has"reserved for fuller discussion" four of Scott's works which "deal fundamentally with, or are influenced by, Scandinavian writings": his review of Herbert's Miscellaneous Poetry, the Abstract of Eyrbiggia Saga [sic] (hereafter Abstract), Harold the Dauntless, and The Pirate. As far as the Abstract is concerned, however, the "fuller discussion" turns out to be nothing more than a very short paragraph which merely states that Scott used Thorkelin's Old NorselLatin edition of Eyrbyggja saga (hereafter Eyrbyggja) as his source, and that he abbreviated and re-told the saga "in his own language" (p.46). There is no attempt to criticize or evaluate Scott's method of selecting and translating his material. Scott's re-telling of Eyrbyggja has, in fact, been treated rather curiously by both Old Norse and English Literature scholars. In a very long, interesting and detailed article on Icelandic studies in eighteenth and nineteenth century Scotland, for example, Edward J. Cowan comments on Scott's well-known enthusiasm for Scandinavian literature and that "Scott's only published exercise on the sagas is the long abstract of Eyrbyggja saga appearing in Weber and Jamieson's Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1814."5 Again, apart from referring to this whole 3Paul Robert Lieder, "SCOtl and Scandinavian Literature," Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, I (1920), F.W.J. Heuser, Modern Language Notes, XXXVII (1922), Edward J. Cowan, "Icelandic Studies in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Scotland," Studia Islandica, XXXI (1972),121.

39 32 Julian D'Arcy and Kirsten Wolf work as a "magnificent volume" (p.122), there is no further comment on Scott's success or otherwise concerning his presentation of the Old Norse saga. As for his biographers, Lockhart (III, p.114), Grierson,6 and Johnson (pa35) each make a single reference to the Abstract, and Buchan7 fails to mention it at all This is all the more surprising when it is borne in mind that Scott's version of Eyrbyggja has often been referred to as the first English edition of an entire Old Norse saga.s Two scholars in particular have commented on the importance of this point. Edith Batho claims that the Abstract "shows the first clear recognition in English of the essential and eternal qualities of the sagas,''9 and John Simpson calls it the "one single but crucial instance" in which Scott introduced to English readers "an important new aspect of the literature and life of medieval Iceland. "10 Significantly enough, however, although Batho makes a detailed analysis, in the same article, of Scott's rendering from Latin and Old Norse of the story of Gunnar Helming (in Letters of Demonology and Witchcraft), there is no discussion at all on the content and style of Scott's version of Eyrbyggja. Simpson has much more to say about it, in general terms at least. "Scott tells the story with gusto," he informs us, "and his remarks on it are usually very much to the point" (p.310). Simpson even goes so far as to claim Scott as a "social realist" who saw "the thematic unity of the saga as lying in its depiction of a society in process of development."ll Simpson is full if admiration for his critical insights into the saga, particularly his awareness of Snorri Godi's unifying role and the social and political implications of his personality and behavior. That such a character, partaking more of the jurisconsult or statesman than of the warrior, should have risen so high in such an early period argues the preference which the Icelanders already assigned to mental superiority over the rude at- 6Hcrbert Grierson, Sir Walter Scott. Bart. (London, 1938), p John Buchan, The Life of Sir Walter Scott (London, 1932). SIf James Johnstone's translations of selected passages from Old Norse sagas are disregarded (e.g. Anecdotes of Olave the Black [1780] and Haco's Expedition to Scotland [1782]). 9Edith Batho, "Scott as Mediaevalist," in Sir Walter Scott Today, ed. by H.C. Grierson (London. 1932). p lojohn Simpson. "Scott and Old Norse Literature," in Scott Bicentenary Essays, ed. Alan Bell (London & Edinburgh. 1973). p lljohn Simpson, "Eyrbyggja Saga and Nineteenth Century Scholarship," Proceedings of the First International Saga Conference at the University of Edinburgh, 1971, (London, 1973), p. 381.

40 Sir Walter Scott and Eyrbyggja Saga 33 tributes of strength and courage, and furnishes another proof of the early civilisation of this extraordinary commonwealth.12 Many of Scott's interpolations in his Abstract are indeed astute comments on various aspects of early medieval Iceland. He makes a particular note of "the high honours in which the female sex was held in that early period of society" (481), and later cites Thordis's divorce from Bork as an example of such (482). As a lawyer Scott was also clearly impressed by Icelanders' frequent resort to long and complex litigation in attempts to solve disputes: Joined to the various instances of the Eyrbiggia-Saga of a certain regard to the forms of jurisprudence, even amid the wildest of their feuds, it seems to argue the extraordinary influence ascribed to municipal law by this singular people, even in the very earliest state of society. (509) Scott also makes some shrewd and probably accurate remarks about the conversion of Iceland to Christianity in the year A.D. 1000: As this was the third attempt to preach Christianity in the island, it seems probable that the good sense of the Icelanders had already rejected in secret the superstitions of paganism, and that the worship of Thor had declined in the estimation of the people. (501) Both Batho and Simpson make one further claim, however, for the importance of Scott's Abstract: that it was working on this saga in the autumn of 1813 which later gave him the inspiration to complete a piece of his own imaginative prose, begun and abandoned twice before, which dealt with the history and society of his native land. This prose work was nothing less than his first novel, Waverley, published in And if, to use Dr. Saintsbury's expression, Scott is the father as Jane Austen is the mother of the later novel, we may be doing no more than justice to the author of Eyrbyggja in recognizing him as one of the grandparents. (Batho, p.i56) Simpson enthusiastically agrees with Batho's suggestion, calling it a "brilliant scholarly aper~u," and arguing that, although one must probably apply to it the Scots verdict of 'not proven,' it remains, as a theory, "an attractive one surely" ("Scott and Old Norse Literature," p.312). The interesting point about both Batho's and Simpson's praise for Scott's Abstract, however, is that it is almost exclusively centered on Scott's comments on the saga (i.e. his inserted observations) and not on the actual translation and redaction of the saga itself. Thus, although Simpson correctly sees Scott as "a critic [emphasis added] capable of seizing upon the essential qualities of one of the Sagas of the Icelanders" ("Eyrbyggja Saga," p.377), he makes no assessment of Scott's English 12Sir Walter Scott. An Abstract of the Eyrbiggia-Saga. in Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, ed. H. Weber and R. Jamieson (Edinburgh, 1814), p All further page references are to this edition.

41 34 Julian D' Arcy and Kirsten Wolf version of Eyrbyggja. In view of these claims for the importance of Scott's Abstract, therefore, both as a valuable early nineteenth-century introduction, for readers of English, to Old Norse sagas, and as a vital stimulus in encouraging Scott to become a novelist, a more detailed examination of Scott's abbreviation and translation of Eyrbyggja would seem called for. To a twentieth-century reader familiar with Old Norse sagas in general and Eyrbyggja in particular, Scott's Abstract will almost certainly be a disappointment. It has many careless and sometimes crass errors and the general narrative of the saga is distorted by Scott's somewhat arbitrary selection of material. The translation itself is written in a rather ponderous and over-elaborate Latinate English which generally fails to emulate or even suggest the more straightforward and pithy style of a saga. Moreover although some of Scott's interpolations and comments are shrewd and interesting, others reveal a complete misreading or misunderstanding of the text. The tone is set in the very opening line of the Abstract in which he refers to Iceland as "still subject to the dominion of Norway" (477) in 1264, whereas in fact Iceland had only totally and finally submitted to the Norwegian crown in Scott's geographic knowledge of Iceland also left much to be desired, for in one of his first footnotes he refers to Thorsness, where some of the episodes of Eyrbyggja take place, as being part of "Gold-brynge Syssell" (478), i.e. on the Reykjaness Peninsula, whereas, of course, Thorsness is on the Snaefellsness Peninsula, a completely different part of the country! Lieder, Batho, and Simpson have all pointed out that although Scott claimed to have some slight knowledge of Old Norse, he invariably relied upon Latin translations for the Old Norse material he used in his works. Thus errors in a Latin translation could and did lead Scott into error and he was sometimes prone to make "linguistic howlers" (Simpson, "Scott and Old Norse Literature," p.304). Scott also had the tendency to quote from memory without re-checking his sources-with sometimes disastrous results. Both Batho and Simpson have analyzed his badly garbled version of Gunnar Helming's story and how this was a result of a faulty memory and a confusion of texts (Simpson, "Scott and Old Norse Literature," pp.304-5); Batho, pp ). In the case of the Abstract, however, Scott has no real excuse for the number of errors he makes; several of its passages are verbatim translations of the saga, so he clearly had Thorkelin's Old NorselLatin edition in front of him, and Thorkelin's Latin translation of Eyrbyggja is, on the whole, fairly accurate, though it does have at least one error which Scott unfortunately incorporated into his Abstract. There are in fact very few direct translation errors (i.e. word-for-word renderings) in the Abstract, and these are not very important since they do not affect the general sense of the saga. They are a result, presumably, of carelessness and a lack of revision. Thus there are nine men all told who set off from Helgafell to kill Arnkell, according to the saga (XXXVII,

42 Sir Walter Scott and Eyrbyggja Saga ),13 whereas Scott has Snorri Godi plus nine men (499). In the saga, Thorodd the Tribute-Trader is drowned in Breidafjord "off Enni," a headland (LIV, 274/5), whereas Scott says that he was drowned "crossing the river Enna" (507). Bjorn Asbrandsson holds a knife to Snorri's chest in the saga (XLVII, 250/51), but, according to Scott, he holds it to his throat (503). Thorgunna the Hebridean bequeathes to Thurid her scarlet cloak (LI, 262/3), which Scott describes as purple (504). Furthermore, Thorgunna is attributed with "beautiful chestnut hair" in the saga (L, 258/9), but Scott describes her as having "a profusion of black hair" (502). In this instance, however, Scott has been misled by Thorkelin, who translated "jarpur" as "fuscus," and Scott transmitted this mistake into his Abstract. Other inaccuracies, though perhaps not direct translation errors, include Scott's reference to the ghosts at Frod River as "goblins" (509), and his insistence on calling Thrand Stigandi a former berserker (510) when the saga specifically states that he was a former sorceror (LXI, 306n). Nor was it Barna-Kjallak who disputed the territory of Thorsness with Thorstein Thorolfsson (480), but Kjallak's son Thorgrim (IX, 20/21). Scott has the Thorbrandssons refusing to allow Arnkell to cross their land with the body of his father (498), whereas in the saga they simply refuse to help bury Arnkell's father (XXXIV, 176n7). Most of these mistakes seem to be the result of carelessness or haste, and, again, for the most part they make little difference to the general meaning of the saga. There are other errors, however, which are far more misleading. Scott makes the assumption, for example, that as Snorri's mother had re-married, "the tutelage of Snorro [sic] had devolved upon Borko [sic] the Fat" (481). This is a misrepresentation of the relations of the two men, for in fact, as Scott has either forgotten or ignored, the saga clearly states that Snorri was sent to Alptafjord to be fostered by Thorbrand (XII, 30/31). Later in the Abstract, Scott deprecates Snorri's violent and underhand methods in his feud with a rival chieftain, Arnkell. "For, although a priest, he [Snorri] was not in any respect nice in his choice of means on such occasions" (499). But this reveals that either Scott was ignorant of the nature and role of a godi, the heathen Icelandic chieftain/priest, or else he was guilty of an anachronism, for Snorri's quarrel with Arnkell took place several years before Iceland was officially converted to Christianity or Snorri himself had taken holy orders (XXXVII, 190/91 ff). Perhaps an even more astonishing example of how careless and inaccurate Scott could be can be found in his re-telling of the brawl at Helgafell, at that time the home of Bork and Thordis. Eyjolf the Grey arrives on a visit with his retinue and announces that he has finally succeeded in killing the outlaw Gisli Sursson, the brother of Thordis, and 13Grimur J. Thorkelin, ed. and trans., Eyrbyggia-Saga [sic] (Copenhagen, 1787). All further chapter and page references to Eyrbyggja are to this edition. The chapter divisions are usually exactly the same in more recent English translations of the saga.

43 36 Julian D' Arcy and Kirsten Wolf the murderer of her first husband. Scott describes Bork as "indifferent" to the death of Gisli (481), even though the saga explicitly states that "this was good news to Bork" (XIII, 36/37). Even worse errors are to follow. In the saga Eyjolf and his men take their seats at the table, laying their weapons on the floor; Thordis comes to serve them gruel, but as she approaches Eyjolf she drops the spoon; stooping to pick it up, she seizes Eyjolf's sword instead and plunges it into his thigh. Uproar follows, as Bork strikes Thordis and Snorri pushes him away and shields her; Eyjolf and his men have to be restrained, such is their anger. Bork immediately grants Eyjolf self-judgment, and the latter awards himself substantial compensation before leaving (XIII, 36/37). Scott, however, reports the scene as follows: Borko... received him [Eyjolf] joyfully, and commanded his wife to make him good cheer. While she obeyed his commands with undisguised reluctance. Eyjulf [sic] chanced to drop the spoon with which he was eating; as he stooped to recover it, the vindictive matron. unable to suppress her indignation, snatched his sword and severely wounded him ere he could recover his erect posture. Borko, incensed at this attack upon his guest, struck his wife, and was about to repeat the blow. when Snorro, throwing himself between them, repelled his attack, and placing his mother by his side, announced haughtily his intention to protect her. Eyjulf escaped with difficulty, and afterwards recovered from Borko a fine for the wound he had sustained... (481-2) Bork's second attempt to strike Thordis and Snorri's haughtiness are Scott's invention, and his statement that Eyjolf escaped with difficulty contradicts the saga. Moreover, the whole sequence of events in the stabbing is badly garbled; indeed, the way Scott relates the incident suggests it was rather an unusually harsh response to some sloppy table-manners than a cunningly envisaged attempt at revenge. It is a little mystifying as to how Scott could make such a muddle of what is perhaps one of Eyrbyggja's most well-known scenes. The only feasible answer (apart from a poorer knowledge of Latin than has hitherto been supposed) would seem to be extreme haste in composition and a complete lack of revision. However, perhaps Scott's carelessness can be attributed to another factor: a lack of interest in this part of the saga. This hypothesis is not quite as arbitrary as it seems, for immediately after the garbled version of the brawl at Helgafell comes Scott's detailed re-telling of the rivalry and feuding between two sorceresses and their families, primarily over horse theft (483-88). Scott makes no errors in this part of the story (except for one, to be mentioned later) which is at times a verbatim translation of the saga (XVI and XVIII-XX). As Simpson has pointed out ("Scott and Old Norse Literature," p. 310), Scott seems to revel in descriptions of supernatural events, as is even further apparent in his detailed accounts of the rather fantastic story of Styr's two Swedish berserkers (489-93) and his long rendering of the mysterious death of Thorgunna and the subsequent hauntings at Frod River; the ghosts are eventually banished, to Scott's delight and admiration, by a court of law

44 Sir Walter Scott and Eyrbyggja Saga 37 established in the very house itself ( ). What really must be questioned here, however, is the very way Scott has selected his material from the original Eyrbyggja, for, as anyone familiar with the saga will realize, the Abstract has some surprising, if not serious, omissions. There is no mention at all, for example, of the bitter feud between Vigfus of Drapuhlid and Snorri Godi (XXllI-XXVll), and the long and bloody dispute between the Thorbrandssons and the Thorlakssons, including the saga's two pitched battles at Alptafjord and Vigrafjord, is summarily dismissed in a mere ten lines (500). The re-occurring story of Bjorn Asbrandsson's adulterous affair with Thurid of Frod River, his voluntary exile, and final appearance as a Red-Indian chief in America (XXIX, XL Vll and LXIV) is relegated to a footnote (503). Such drastic reductions from the main body of the saga led Scott into other difficulties, as can be seen in his rendering of the quarrel between Arnkell and Snorri over Krakaness Wood. Arnkell's father had once given the wood to Snorri, and according to the saga (XXXV-XXXVll) once his father is dead, Arnkell reclaims the wood, and in an ensuing skirmish one of Snorri's slaves is killed. Snorri also loses the subsequent litigation, but bribes a man to try to murder Arnkell, an attempt which fails. Snorri and his men finally attack and kill Arnkell the following year. Scott, however, has the following: After the death of Thorolf, Arnkill [sic) engaged in various disputes with the pontiff Snorro for the recovery of the woods of Krakaness... Nor was Snorro for a length of time more successful in his various efforts to remove this powerful rival.and practised repeatedly against Amkill's life by various attempts at assassination (499) Scott then goes on to describe in detail, as in the saga, how Arnkell is finally surprised and killed. The saga's one skirmish, single court case, and one assassination attempt, however, have been multiplied by Scott into "various disputes... various efforts... practised repeatedly." This is clearly because Scott has omitted from the Abstract some earlier feuding between Arnkell and Snorri, and thus feels obliged to make up for this in the last fatal dispute; but the result is a gross distortion of the chain of events between the death of Thorolf and the killing of Arnkell. Such omissions and distortions seem even less defensible when one realizes just how much of the Abstract is devoted to the legendary and supernatural episodes listed earlier. Moreover Scott does not always comprehend all the implications of the supernatural elements he deals with. Before beginning the story of the rivalry between Katla and Geirrida, for example, he writes: "our annalist has not left the scene altogether unvaried" and that magic and the supernatural are "an invariable part of the history of a rude age" (483), thus suggesting that the incidents about to be related are little more than conventional pieces of light relief and typical examples of medieval credulousness. He thus apparently fails to appreciate that the primary importance of the episodes is not the ingenuity or

45 38 Julian 0' Arcy and Kirsten Wolf entertainment value of the women's magic, but the way in which they embroil influential families and factions in a deadly dispute. Scott does make a brief reference to the fact that the rivalry between the two witches brings about a homicidal feud, but then reveals his lack of interest or understanding of the relevant genealogical details by attributing one of the women to the wrong family, and misspelling it to boot (484). It could well be argued, therefore, that Scott's Abstract gives rather a distorted view of Eyrbyggja, in that it has detailed descriptions of legendary and supernatural events, whilst some of the more interesting personalities of the Snaefellsness community and the causes and consequences of important social alliances and feuds are simplified, drastically reduced, or even completely ignored. Indeed as a version of Eyrbyggja, and as the first complete example in English of the narrative contents of an Icelandic family saga, Scott's Abstract is not as convincing, representative, or accurate as it might have been. In addition to the questionable selection of material, the Abstract also has many stylistic weaknesses. Scott's complete dependence on Thorkelin's Latin translation of the saga is evident in the predominantly Latinate diction and syntax of his English. The rather terse and straightforward Old Norse prose is thus rendered in a grammatically intricate and abstract language which bears little relation to the original tone and style of the saga. The rather blunt and heated exchange between Thorbjorn the Stout and Thorarin the Black, when the former is demanding to search the property of the latter for his stolen horses (XVIII, 56/57), is rendered by Scott thus: This Thorarin refused, alleging that neither was the search demanded duly authorised by law, nor were the proper witnesses cited to be present, nor did Thorbjorn offer any sufficient pledge of security when claiming the exercise of so hazardous a privilege. (484) The tense confrontation of the saga has become a long and formal exposition in indirect speech. Many similar examples can be found throughout the Abstract; indeed at times it seems almost perverse the way Scott frequently insists on using an unnecessarily stilted Latinate vocabulary instead of a more readable and fluent English. Horses are thus "reposed" rather than rested (485), and when Styr tells his berserkers to build a sheep-shed, Scott has him order them to "construct a house for the reception of my flocks" (491-2). Such a style can easily result in farcical verbosity, as in Scott's description of the berserkers' tiredness and weakness after their strenuous efforts: They were extremely exhausted, as was common with persons of their condition, whose profuse expenditure of strength and spirits induced a proportional degree of relaxation after severe labour. (492) Scott does, of course, use a more natural, if not colloquial form of English in the Abstract, but it is generally marred by his frequent return to a highly Latinate diction and ponderous syntax, and thus fails completely to give a

46 Sir Walter Scott and Eyrbyggja Saga 39 reader with no knowledge of Old Norse at least some intimation of the sometimes pithy style of the original, or indeed of any Icelandic saga. A further irritation to modern readers familiar with Old Norse sagas may be the inconsistency with which Scott anglicizes Old Norse names. In the case of men's names, for example, he usually takes the nominative masculine singular (second declension) of Thorkelin's Latin version, minus the -us ending: Thorolf, Thorbrand, Thorgrim, etc. But in some cases he arbitrarily adopts the dative/ablative form, thus Snorro, Borko, and Haco; in other cases he uses no particular system at all: Ospakar, Thorer, and Oluf. It must be stated in Scott's defense, however, that even today there is more than one anglicized form for many names, and that some of the versions used by Scott were the generally accepted English adaptations of Old Norse nomenclature at that time, especially the -0 ending.l4 More exasperating, perhaps, is Scott's seemingly habitual lack of attention to detail, in this case the misspelling or confusion of proper names; thus Alptafiord is later written Altifiord (480; 499), and Breidawick, Bradwick (480; 503). The poet Thormod Vifilsson is inexplicably called Thormoda Ulfilsson (500), and Thorlef Kimbi on one page becomes Thorolf Kimbi on the next (499; 500). Moreover Eyjolf the Grey is referred to at least twice in one paragraph as Eyjulf (481-2). Geirrida is recorded as belonging to the Kialakan family (484), which is, presumably, a gross misspelling of Kjallak, and erroneous in any case. The bull which kills Thorodd Thorbrandsson is spelled Glaeser and Glaesir (498; 511). Some of these errors and inconsistencies may be charitably attributed to haste rather than ignorance, but Scott has little excuse for the way in which he renders some of the Old Norse verse in the Abstract. Scott was certainly impatient if not contemptuous of the skaldic form of poetry: It seems to have been the object of the poet to convert every line into a sort of riddle, for the exercise of the ingenuity of the hearer, who was thus obliged to fight his way from one verse to another, having for his sole reward, the pleasure of penetrating mystery and conquering studied obscurity. (Quoted in Batho, p.152) This lack of sympathy and understanding is reflected in Scott's English versions of some of the verses of Eyrbyggja which appear in his Abstract. Old Norse poetry was based on stressed patterns of alliteration and assonance and a complex use of metaphors called kennings. In one or two verses Scott manages to suggest at least some of the stylistic features of the originals, as in the following example, with its dramatic rhythm, strong alliteration, and even a hint of a kenning: 14See Frank E. Farley, Scandinavian Influences in the English Romantic Movement (Boston, 1903). Examples of various forms of anglicized Old Norse names can be found throughout this work.

47 40 Julian D'Arcy and Kirsten Wolf From me the foul reproach be far, With which a female waked the war, From me, who shunned not in the fray Through foemen fierce to hew my way; (Since meet it is the eagle's brood On the fresh corpse should find their food,) Then spared I not, in fighting field, With stalwart hand my sword to wield; And well may claim at Odin's shrine The praise that waits this deed of mine. (485-6) Most of Scotl's other skaldic verses are not so successful, however, and are hardly reminiscent of Old Norse poetry at all. His rather free translations tend to convey the very general sense of the verses, but his use of simple imagery and English metrical and end-rhyme forms leads to some incongruity; the highly complex, harsh, and chant-like poems of Eyrbyggja are, in the Abstract, turned into rollicking Border ballads or ditties: No feeble force, no female hand, Compels me from my native land; O'er-match'd in numbers and in might, By banded hosts in armour bright, In vain attesting laws and gods, A guiltless man, I yield to odds. (488) Oh, whither dost thou bend thy way Fair maiden, in such rich array, For never have I seen thee roam So gaily dressed so far from home... ( 492)15 This simply gives a false impression of the nature and delivery of Icelandic skaldic poetry, a rather unfortunate error in a work intended as an introduction to Old Norse literature. Before coming to final conclusions about the style and content of Scott's Abstract, a brief glance must be made at the claims for its vital influence on Scott's own narrative art. Edith Batho first noted that "there still remains something remarkable" in Scott's turning to prose fiction "immediately after he had been engaged in an intensive study of one of the most striking of the sagas," and comes to the conclusion that 15Por the Old Norse originals of all these verses see Thorkelin: XVIII, 62, 64; XXII, 102; XXVIII, 134.

48 Sir Walter Scott and Eyrbyggja Saga 41 "Eyrbyggja may well have been the stimulus" for Scott's becoming a novelist (p.155). She further supports her argument elsewhere by drawing attention to the fact that "the general resemblance between the Waverley novels and the sagas is obvious, in the combination of the heroic with comedy and plain downright realism."16 Simpson fully agrees with Batho's theory and gives it further implicit support by positing a "close literary kinship" between Scott and the author of Eyrbyggja as social realists who "bore truthful and unflinching witness to the most crucial social changes" in their local or national communities ("Eyrbyggja Saga," pp.377-8). Both Batho and Simpson reluctantly admit, however, that their hypothesis cannot be proved. Not the least of its drawbacks is that Scott himself never acknowledged any relationship between his Abstract and Waverley; indeed he categorically stated that Waverley was mostly inspired by Maria Edgeworth's novels on Irish society and manners. But there are yet other factors in Scott's literary and personal life in the years which would effectively undermine, if not totally refute, Batho and Simpson's theory. In the first place, Scott's turning to prose fiction was not, perhaps, such a radical change as it seems, for this involved no new developments in Scott's choice of subject matter; Scott was already famous as a narrative poet rather than a lyrical one, and many of the plot, character, and thematic elements of his novels were already present in his earlier poems, many of which were, in effect, novels in verse. Furthermore Scott had actually begun Waverley twice before, in 1805 and 1810, but had abandoned it because of a lack of encouragement and his continuing success in another genre. Success is here the key word, for another crucial factor in Scott's becoming a novelist was the emergence of a brilliant rival: Byron's Chi/de Harold's Pilgrimage had appeared in 1812 and had been an instant and stunning success; it was to be followed by a string of bestselling verse romances. Scott's Rokeby, on the other hand, published in December 1812, although it sold well, was by Scott's former standards of popularity a relative failure. Scott was too discerning and honest a critic to deny Byron's greater poetic genius, and "at the back of his head he knew that his vogue had gone" (Buchan, p.108). He went on to complete The Lord of the Isles the following year, but by mid-1813 he had "already bidden farewell to poetry as the staple of his life" (Buchan, p.109). As the word "staple" might suggest, there is one further point to take into consideration: money. It may be regarded as somewhat tasteless to bring financial matters into literary criticism, but in Scott's case it is not altogether unusual, not the least because it is a generally accepted view that the poorer quality of Scott's later novels was a direct result of overworking in his attempts to clear ever-increasing debts, especially after the collapse of 16Edith Batho,"Sir Walter Scott and the Sagas: Some Notes," Modern Language Review XXIV (1929), p. 411.

49 42 Julian D'Arcy and Kirsten Wolf the Constable and Ballantyne publishing and printing companies. Scott had in fact faced a bankruptcy crisis once before, precisely in the year 1813, the very year he saw his reputation as a poet overshadowed by Byron's and thus "beheld a large part of his occupation gone" (Buchan, p.106). The fate of the Ballantyne printing and publishing firm, in which Scott was involved, hung in the balance between May and September of 1813, and was only finally saved by Scott's desperate appeal to the Duke of Bucc1euch for a personal guarantee to a very considerable loan.l7 Scott was then able to breathe freely again, but he was nonetheless heavily in debt and with many other financial obligations and anxieties: his brother Tom's family was dependent on him and he had committed himself to further land purchases and extensive improvements to his house at Abbotsford. At this opportune moment in time he rummages in an old writing desk in search of some fishing tackle-and finds the abandoned manuscript of the first chapters of Waverley. The need for money and to re-establish his literary reputation (if only anonymously) would almost certainly have encouraged him to have completed and published Waverley. As Edgar Johnson (p.429) so aptly expresses Scott's probable state of mind: "Perhaps a prose romance would do better than another Rokeby." A whole series of events, literary, personal, and financial, therefore, contributed to the publication of Scott's first novel-not least the remarkable chance by which the lost manuscript was found. All of which would seem to suggest that, attractive though Batho and Simpson's hypothesis might be, the most likely explanation of the completion of Waverley within nine months of the writing of the Abstract is simply sheer coincidence. It may, perhaps, be unfair to be so negative about Scott's Abstract, as there are, in fact, some positive things to say about it, as indeed Batho and Simpson have already shown. Bearing in mind the limitations of Old Norse scholarship in the early nineteenth century, Scott's effort is certainly admirable; some of his critical insights into the saga have even foreshadowed more recent twentieth-century views of Eyrbyggja. Moreover Scott surely deserves credit for supporting Weber and Jamieson's idea for a book on Germanic and Old Norse literature and culture, and for being instrumental in persuading Ballantyne's and Longman's to publish Illustrations 0/ Northern Antiquities, not least by adding his Abstract-and prestigious name-to the project. Doubtless, too, many of Scott's contemporaries, especially those with little or no knowledge of ancient Scandinavia, would have found it interesting and enjoyable. To modern readers, however, particularly those who are acquainted with Icelandic medieval sagas, the extent of Scott's errors and inaccuracies in the Abstract are only too obvious, and the work, as a whole, must be regarded as a somewhat garbled and misleading version of Eyrbyggja. Interest and enthusiasm are 17For details of this financial crisis see Johnson, pp

50 Sir Walter Scott and Eyrbyggja Saga 43 always commendable, but, unfortunately, they are no substitute for knowledge and precision. The claims for the Abstract's meriting funher attention as a pioneering work in Old Norse studies and as an inspiration behind Scott's emergence as a novelist, therefore, must regrettably be rejected. For both Old Norse and English Literature enthusiasts, Sir Walter Scou's An Abstract of the Eyrbiggia-Saga must simply remain an interesting Ii terary curiosity. University of Iceland University of Wisconsin

51 Walter Scheps Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets For Scottish poets of the fifteenth century, Chaucer was, to use their expression, the "A per se" of poets writing in English. Dunbar calls him, "The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour,"l and it is his death which begins the doleful rollcall in Lament for the Makaris. In The Goldyn Targe, Chaucer again is preeminent: o reverend Chaucere, rose of rethoris all, As in oure tong ane flour imperiall, That raise in Britane evir, quho redis rycht, Thou beris of makaris the tryumph riall; Thy fresch anamalit termes celicall This mater coud illumynit have full brycht: Was thou noucht of oure Inglisch all the lycht, Surmounting eviry tong terrestriall, Alls fer as Mayis morow dois mydnycht? (253-61) James I, the supposed author of The Kingis Quair, yokes Chaucer and Gower together, and his description is somewhat similar to Dunbar's: llamentfor the Makaris (I. 50). This and all subsequent references are to The Poems of William Dunbar, ed. W. Mackay Mackenzie (Edinburgh, 1932).

52 Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets my maisteris dere, Gowere and chaucere, that on the steppis satt Of rethorike, quhill thai were lyvand here, Superlatiue as poetis laureate In moralitee and eloquence omate... 2 (The Kingis Quair, st. 197) For Henryson, he is "worthie Chaucer glorious" whose "gudelie termis and... Joly veirs" can "cut the winter nicht and mak it schort."3 Gavin Douglas's praise of Chaucer is a paeon of aureate exuberance:... venerabill Chaucer, principal poet but peir, Hevynly trump at, orlege and reguler, In eloquens balmy, cundyt and dyall, Mylky fontane, cleir strand and roys ryall, Of fresch endyte, throu Albion iland braid... 4 (Prologue to Bk. I, Eneyados, ) Although Blind Harry does not explicitly mention Chaucer, he undoubtedly was influenced by him,s and we may safely assume that his sentiments, if available, would not differ appreciably from those cited above, which in tum are similar to those of the English Chaucerians, Lydgate, Hoccleve, and Hawes.6 Even a cursory examination of Chaucer's influence on fifteenth-century poetry is enough to indicate how extensive it was, far more extensive, for example, than Milton's influence on poetry of the eighteenth century 2 "The Kingis QUilir" Together with "A Ballad of Good Counsel," ed. W.W. Skeat, STS, NSI (Edinburgh & London, 1911). All references are to this edition. 3Testament of Cresseid, stanzas 6, 9. This and all subsequent references are to The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson, ed. H. Harvey Wood, 2nd ed. (London, 1958). 4Virgil's "Aeneid Translated into Scottish Verse by Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, ed. David F.e. Coldwell, STS, 3rd Series 25, 27,28, 30 (Edinburgh & London, ). All references are to this edition. SThe connection was first noted by W.W. Skeat, "Chaucer and Blind Harry," The Modern LangUilge QUilrterly, 1 (1897), pp These are most conveniently found in Caroline F.E. Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion: , 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1925). See also Alice S. Miskirnin, The Renaissance Chaucer (New Haven & London, 1975).

53 46 Walter Scheps and, at least in England, with equally melancholy results. There is no major poet writing in English during the fifteenth century who is not, in his own mind at least, a disciple of Chaucer. The qualification is an absolute necessity because in the fifteenth century the distinction between those works actually composed by Chaucer and others which, for reasons to be discussed shortly, only seemed to be his could not be made with any degree of certainty. Indeed, for sheer bulk, the pseudo-chaucer outweighs the real, and thus when a poet pays general homage to "Chaucer" it is entirely possible that he is referring to such spurious Chaucerian pieces as Gamelyn, The Assembly of Ladies, The Flour and the Leaf, et at. With regard to Henryson and Douglas the problem does not arise since they specifically cite Troilus and Criseyde7 and The Legend of Good Women8 respectively; but neither James I nor Dunbar mentions specific works, and it is only by a full consideration of the Chaucer canon that the meaning of their references to Chaucer can be understood. Although the extensiveness of Chaucer's influence is generally conceded,9 its nature has rarely been studied in any detail. On the one hand, there are unsupported generalities about a "Chaucerian tradition,"lo on the other, citations of parallel passages, often commonplace, intended to show direct influence. 11 The problem with both approaches is a lack of perspective, and the choice they present between vacuity and punctilious attention to insignificant detail is singularly unattractive. What needs to be done, as Dr. Johnson says, is to begin with perception not principle. Each of the poets who is ordinarily considered to be a Scottish Chaucerian is highly individualistic, and the similarities among them, while noteworthy, are not nearly as important as the differences. Each poet is influenced by, and appropriates, often with modification, those aspects of Chaucer's genius which most nearly approximate his own: for James I, Chaucer would seem to be, as the translator of Boethius, primarily a philosophical poet; for Henryson, as he says, a poet who can simultaneously delight and instruct; for Blind Harry, as we shall see, a rhetorical guide; for Dunbar an inge- 7Testament ofcresseid, stanzas Eneyados, Prologue to Bk. I, ll Especially by English and American scholars; the Scots tend to be somewhat more reluctant. See, for example, Tom Scott, Dunbar: A Critical Exposition of the Poems (Edinburgh & London, 1966) and especially his anthology of Middle Scots poetry, Late Medieval Scots Poetry (London, 1967), pp loe.g., T.F. Henderson, Scottish Vernacular Literature (Edinburgh, 1910), pp IIE.g., Skeat, "Chaucer and Blind Harry," p. 50, uses the commonplace simile "meek as a maid" in an attempt to demonstrate influence.

54 Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets 47 nious satirist and linguistic innovator12; and for Douglas in his Eneyados an expert metrist.13 It is not that the Scottish Chaucerians are narrow in their perception of Chaucer, but rather that they are intelligent enough to be selective in their use of the ideas and techniques which they have learned from him; and it is precisely this selectivity which distinguishes them from their English counterparts and which in part accounts for their superiority to them. The slavish imitator, Lydgate for example, is one who refuses to recognize the differences between himself and his model, a refusal which, for obvious reasons, would have been impossible for the Scots. Linguistic, cultural, and political differences prevent the Scots from making the same flaccid identification which the English Chaucerians had made with their master. Even James I, the least independent of the Scots Chaucerians,14 has little difficulty in retaining his individuality, this in spite of the fact that he makes no appreciable effort to do so. As a necessary preliminary to an investigation of the Scots Chaucerians individually, there are three critical problems which must be discussed: 1) the Scottish literary tradition as opposed to the English, 2) the nature and extent of the Chaucer apocrypha, 3) the forms which Chaucerian influence can take, including the possibility of indirect Chaucerian influence. It is a curious fact that much of what is called "Fifteenth-Century English Literature" is, like Skelton and most of Dunbar, not of the fifteenth century, or, like the Scots Chaucerians, not English, or, like the ballads, not literature. The only major writers who satisfy all three requirements are Lydgate and Malory, a monk and a prisoner, apparently the only occupations in fifteenth-century England conducive to the production of substantial literary works. Whatever may be said about the effects of the Wars of the Roses on English life, their effect on English literature seems 12See Deanna D. Evans, "William Dunbar as a 'Scottish Chaucerian,'" unpub. Ph.D. dissertation (Case Western Reserve U., 1971), esp. pp See the discussion of Chaucer's use of the decasyllabic couplet in William B. Piper, The Heroic Couplet (Cleveland & London, 1969), pp Piper's remarks on Chaucer apply equally well to Douglas, and Douglas's citation of the Legend of Good Women, referred to above, suggests that he was influenced in his Aeneid by Chaucer's metrical practices in a work whose prosody is among its most salient characteristics. 14See my essay, "Chaucerian Synthesis: The Art of The Kingis QUIlir," SSL, 8 (1971), pp , and Caroline Spurgeon, I, xvi.

55 48 Walter Scheps to have been to bring it to a virtual standstill;15 even the two writers of importance are looking back rather than forward, Malory to the Golden Age of Arthur, and Lydgate, through Chaucer, to Troy and Thebes. In Scotland the tendency to abandon the present for the mythic past is limited primarily to a very few romances and to some of the popular ballads. The past in which the Scots are most interested is their own, which is at once both historical and immediately relevant, since for them history must have seemed to consist only of endlessly repetitive attempts by the English to destroy their sovereignty. Before the fifteenth century, the most important literary document of Scottish authorship is Barbour's Bruce (1375), a panegyric the popularity of which may have prompted Blind Harry to write his life of Wallace one hundred years later.1 6 The precariousness of Scotland's existence as an independent nation appears to have exerted a profound influence on her literature. In addition to Bruce and Wallace, both of whom achieved renown at the expense of the English, the great heroes in fifteenth-century Scotland are the borderers, many of whose exploits are celebrated in the ballads. Since these men were usually hunted by forces of their own king as well as by the English, their bravery captured the popular, if not the literary, imagination-a poet seeking the king's favor could hardly praise his enemies-, and stories about them seem to have been much in demand, as the subject matter of many of the early ballads suggests. Robin Hood, too, was quite popular in Scotland and for essentially the same reason.!7 The Scots could not fail to see the similarity between his struggle against tyranny and their own, and more particularly between him and heroes like Douglas and Wallace. In fact there is good reason to believe that Blind Harry to a large extent bases his description of Wallace on traditional accounts of Robin Hood,18 and should this be so it would hardly be surprising. Typical of the Scots' preference for their own heroes to those of antiquity is the fact that the author of the Ballad of the Nine Nobles 151 realize that this antique view has lost much credit in recent years, but those who reject it have yet to put forward a more credible or persuasive explanation for the decline in the quality of English, as opposed to Scottish, nondramatic writing during this period. 16See my essay, "Barbour's Bruce and Harry's Wallace: The Question of Influence," TLS, 17 (1972), pp In their first year of operation as printers (1508) Chepman and Myllar published "The Lytle Gest of Robin Hood." 18Some similarities are noted in passing by Joost De Lange, The Relation and Development of English and Icelandic Outlaw Traditions (Haarlem, 1935) and Maurice Keen, The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (London, 1961).

56 Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets 49 adds Bruce to the Nine Worthies because he "venkust the mychty Kyng / Off England, Edward, twyse in fycht."19 Characteristic of their dislike for authority even when embodied in Robin Hood, the popular audience, after having invested him with great physical strength enfeebles him to the point that he is bested by an assortment of tradesmen, tinkers, tanners, butchers, et al. But even though this is a later development, the interest of Scottish authors, and presumably their audiences, in ordinary people who are faced with extraordinary situations can be amply documented in the earlier literature. In the tale of Rauf Coilyear, for example, the hero is a seller of charcoal whose spirited discussion with Charlemagne about the nature and extent of imperial, as opposed to individual, sovereignty sets up the context, and to a lesser extent the tone, for similar confrontations in Dunbar's numerous petitions to the King and in several of Henryson's Fables, especially The Parliament of forfuttit Beistis and The Lyoun and the Mous. We tend to regard an author's preoccupation with the events of daily life as peculiarly modern, but this interest is one of the features which distinguishes medieval Scottish literature from most English literature of the same period. One reason for this phenomenon, the ever-present danger of Scotland's extinction, which required constant attention to those elements in Scottish life which made it worth preserving, has already been suggested. The avenues of escape into the past had been closed, the mythic past being either irrelevant, as in the case of Troy and Thebes, or merely "Suthron" as in the Arthurian material, and the historical past being little different from the present. Another reason, this one literary rather than historical or cultural, is given by Henderson who notes the relative superiority, in both quality and quantity, of minstrelsy to romance in medieval Scotland: In those early times the carols, and rounds, and rude rhymes were almost the only means of voicing the nation's sentiments, and formed a sort of presage of our present daily press. On the other hand, the more elaborate poems scarcely touched the present at all. In these long Romances we have passing glimpses of ancient manners and customs, but they make known little or nothing of the main concerns of the nation; they are mainly translations or paraphrases of translations, and deal with times already remote from those of the narrator, and with adventures in love and war of heroes and heroines belonging to a partly mythical antiquity.20 In short, the Scots poets, oral and lettered, are primarily secularists concerned with this world and its affairs, writing about military skill and individual courage for example, not as abstract heroic qualities, but as neces- 19This is quoted by A.W. Ward and A.R. Waller, The End of the Middle Ages, CHEL II (Cambridge, 1908), p.280. See also W.H. Schofield, English Literature from the Norman COfUJuest to Chaucer (New York, 1906), p Scottish Vernacular Literature, p. 19.

57 50 Walter Scheps sities for national survival and devoting their attention even to colliers, tailors and shoemakers (Dunbar), and frogs and mice (Henryson). When we turn to medieval English literature we find, not unexpectedly, that there is more of everything, homiletic and religious documents, romances, chronicles, etc., except the realistic description which characterizes the Scottish material. To be sure there are glimpses of daily life in the Ancrene Riwle, in the bourgeois romances like Guy o/warwick, and elsewhere, but these are usually fleeting and are almost always incidental to some larger purpose. Even Piers Plowman, which contains a wealth of realistic detail, does not present the real world as being significant except insofar as it reveals, and is emblematic of, Christian truths, a statement which with minimal modification would apply with equal validity to middle-english hagiography and mystical writings as well.21 Many middle-english carols and lyrics are realistic, but in England these are almost totally cut off from the literature written contemporaneously with them. Oral and written, or popular and literary, poetry seem to diverge much earlier in England than they do in Scotland. There is little if any evidence of lyric, ballad, or carol influence on fifteenth-century English poetry, whereas in Scotland Henryson feels no compunction about adopting the tone and form of the popular ballad in the Bludy Serk, and Blind Harry combines literary and oral conventions for his portrait of Wallace.22 The one middle-english poet whose concerns answer most closely to those of the Scots is, of course, Chaucer. It is here that Gower falls by the way, for he demonstrates no appreciable interest in the physical universe for its own sake. The Man of Law's jocular comments on "Chaucer" are perfectly applicable to Gower: 21It may be objected that for the Scots writers, particularly Henryson, realistic detail is no less emblematic than for Langland. The crucial distinction, however, is that in Langland, no attempt is made to separate the literal from the allegorical; both levels are simultaneously operative as in Meed's trial at Westminster. In Henryson, on the other hand, the allegorical interpretation is invariably presented after the literal description and is most often denoted explicitly as the nwralitas. In short, Henryson's passages containing realistic detail can exist independent of their allegorical signification, Langland's cannot. 22The Scots seem always to have felt much more comfortable with their early literature than the English with theirs. Macpherson, for example, was esteemed for doing the same sort of thing for which Chatterton was driven to suicide, and Ramsay and Bums, because they presented themselves as unequivocal Scotsmen writing in their native tongue, were able to avoid the later censure heaped upon Bishop Percy even though the latter was considerably more altruistic and less devious in his revision of traditional material, Ramsay and Bums simply appropriating it and passing it off as their own.

58 Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets 51 But nathelees, certeyn, I kan right now no thrifty tale seyn That Chaucer, thogh he kan but lewedly On metres and on rymyng craftily, Hath seyd hem in swich Englissh as he kan Of olde tyme, as knoweth many a man; And if he have noght seyd hem, leve brother, In 0 book, he hath seyd hem in another. (lntro., MLT, 45-52)23 It is in Chaucer, not in Gower, that we find realistic descriptions of a widow and her humble farm, a hard-headed miller, squawking geese, and perhaps even a Golden Spangled Hamburg 24 Given the Scots' interest in such things, little wonder that their poets select Chaucer as a model worthy of emulation. Although we are now closer to establishing the Chaucer canon than at any other time since the poet's death, a definitive solution to the problem seems unlikely. The fifteenth-century manuscripts in which the works are contained are far more helpful in establishing the text than the canon, and the ascription to Chaucer of works written by someone else is an error which even the best modern editions may make.25 When we go back to the fifteenth century, the possibility of error is so great that it seems almost a certainty. From the specific references cited earlier we know that Henryson and Douglas assumed Chaucer to have written Troilus and Criseyde and the Legend of Good Woman respectively. From internal evidence it is probable that Dunbar ascribed to Chaucer Sir Thopas and The Wife of Bath's Prologue. James I may have known Chaucer as the author of part or all of the English Romaunt of the Rose, Troilus and Criseyde, The Knight's Tale, and the translation of Boethius, whereas Blind Harry, as Skeat points out, uses Troilus and Criseyde, the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and the Knight's Tale. 23The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson, 2nd rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1957). All citations are to this edition. 24See Lalia P. Boone, "Chauntecleer and Partlet Identified," MIN, 54 (1949), What is significant here is not the identification of Chauntecleer with a specific kind of rooster, but the fact that Chaucer's description of him is sufficiently detailed to encourage such speculation. 25See Robinson's discussion of the problem of the English Romo.unt of the Rose in The Works of Geoffrey Clw.ucer. pp

59 52 Walter Scheps The crucial question, however, is whether the Scots Chaucerians could have been able to separate these works from others which, though not written by Chaucer, continued to be attributed to him well into the nineteenth century. All of the Scottish writers except James had the advantage, if such it can be called, of being able to consult printed editions of Chaucer, but these fifteenth-century editions were not of the collected works, the first collected editions being those of Pynson (1526) and Thynne (1532), each of which contained spurious poems as well as the authentic ones. Not printed in the fifteenth century are the following: Book of the Duchess (Thynne, 1532), Legend of Good Women (Thynne, 1532), Romaunt of the Rose (Thynne, 1532; ll ), Treatise on the Astrolabe (Thynne, 1532), and fourteen of the twenty-one short poems.26 It is interesting to note that Douglas's reference to the Legend of Good Women precedes the fitst publication of that work by nineteen years; obviously Douglas had access to manuscripts of Chaucer's works, and it is reasonable to assume that the other Scots Chaucerians consulted manuscripts as well. When we turn from the printed editions to the manuscripts, we can see how fluid the Chaucer canon was during the fifteenth century. For example, although neither of Caxton's fifteenth-century editions of the Canterbury Tales includes Gamelyn,27 this tale is preserved in twenty-five of the eighty-three (or eighty-four if the Morgan fragment of the Pardoner's Tale is incluaed) manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales.28 So closely associated is Gamelyn with the Canterbury Tales that it appears only in manuscripts which also contain the authentic tales. Various manuscripts also ascribe to Chaucer the following: Beryn, The Court of Love, The Isle of Ladies, The Complaint of the Black Knight, La Belle Dame sans MerGi, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, The Lamentation of Mary Magdalen and more than twenty others.29 In addition to these are works with either no manuscript ascription or ascription to someone other than Chaucer which appear in the same manuscript containing the 260f the shorter poems, only the following were printed in the fifteenth century: The Complaint of Mars, Fortune. Truth. Gentilesse. The Complaint of Venus. Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan. and The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse. 27See Eleanor P. Hammond, "On the Order of the Canterbury Tales: Caxton's Two Editions," MP, 3 ( ), pp Por a list of the Gamelyn manuscripts, see Francis R. Rogers, "The Tale of Gamelyn and the Editing of the Canterbury Tales," JEGP, 58 (1959), p An excellent study of the Chaucer apocrypha has been made by Francis W. Bonner, "The Genesis of the Chaucer Apocrypha," SP, 47 (1951), See also W.W. Skeat, The Chaucer Canon (Oxford, 1900).

60 Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets 53 authentic works. The extent of the problem is indicated by Bonner: "Almost all of the more than three-score pieces of the Chaucer apocrypha make their first appearance in the manuscripts of the fifteenth century."30 Two notable exceptions are The Testament of Love (Thynne, 1532) and The Flower and the Leaf (Speght, 1598). The absorption of apocryphal works into the Chaucer corpus is a process which is clearly documented by Skeat, Hammond,31 Bonner, and Miskimin, and hardly needs to be described here.32 What becomes clear from even this brief discussion is the crucial importance of the apocryphal material to any study of Chaucer's influence on fifteenth-century literature. For most of the century, the manuscripts provide the only evidence for ascribing specific works to Chaucer, and the absence of a collected edition before 1526 tends to perpetuate their authority, there being no authority of equal weight to dispute them. And when such an authority does appear, it supports, rather than refutes, the tendency of the manuscripts to ascribe anonymous poems, especially love poems,33 to Chaucer. That the Scots Chaucerians accepted all the manuscript ascriptions to Chaucer is unlikely, but it is even less likely that they rejected all of them; and only intensive analysis of a kind which is beyond the scope of this essay can help to make clear the highly selective process by which Chaucer came for each of these very different poets to occupy the place of master. Because Chaucer is such a compendious writer, his influence on subsequent literature manifests itself in ways which are often barely discernible, taking the form of a characteristic attitude, situation, or rhetorical pattern which may not seem peculiarly Chaucerian but which comes to be 30p Eleanor P. Hammond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (New York, 1908), esp. pp Perhaps a single example will serve to illustrate the general tendency. Robert Toye's edition of Chaucer (1545), the third collected edition, contains the same material as Thynne's edition of There is, however, one important change in the order of the Canterbury Tales; the Plowman's Tale. which Thynne prints after the Parson's Tale, is moved to a position anterior to it. Thus, what in Thynne had been a "Chaucerian piece" is in Toye a part of the Canterbury Tales. 33See Bonner, p. 465, who says, "The fact that Chaucer was renowned in his own day and during the fifteenth century as the chief English poet of love and was supposed to have composed a large body of love poetry [see his own statement to this effect in The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, G ] very probably influenced his early editors to assign to him many' unclaimed' compositions of that genre."

61 54 Walter Scheps associated exclusively with him. The reasons for this tendency are clearly Chaucer's popularity and the availability of his work, the latter being in part merely a reflection of the former. Honored by his contemporaries, Gower and Usk, rewarded by the king and other members of the court, Chaucer is renowned well before his death. As his fame and importance increase, so too does the number of manuscripts containing his work, and because he writes in a dialect intelligible throughout England and the lowlands of Scotland, his writings receive wide dissemination. In some ways the fifteenth-century reaction to Chaucer must have been much like ours, for although he is certainly not the first middle-english poet to discuss the meaning of dreams or to describe the coming of Spring, his descriptions are the ones we tend to think of first, and, they therefore become the standard against which all similar descriptions are measured. The dream-vision is perfectly illustrative of this phenomenon. In Old English the "tradition" begins and ends with Dream of the Rood: in middle English the great progenitor is the Roman de la Rose, Dante being generally less accessible and less concerned with the form itself. Although the form is employed before the fourteenth century, its full efflorescence is not reached until Chaucer, Langland. and the Pearl-poet. Of the three, Pearl seems to exert no influence at all. It has come down to us in only one manuscript, its dialect severely limits its intelligibility outside the West Midlands, and, as a stylistic and highly technical tour de force, it discourages imitation. Piers Plowman, which seems to have been an enormously popular work-if the number of manuscript copies is any indication of popularity-nevertheless exerts only limited influence. Like Pearl, Piers is a difficult and idiosyncratic work; the alliterative tradition does not continue unabated into the fifteenth century, and an explicitly allegorical poem written in alliterative staves is not likely to excite emulation. The influence which is exerted by Piers is essentially stylistic and is limited almost exclusively to the imitation of Langland's verbal and satirical brilliance by Dunbar and Skelton, who, when they come to employ the dream-vision form, ignore Langland and turn instead to Chaucer. With regard to the influence of Chaucer's dream-visions, as opposed to Pearl or Piers, one possible explanation is the authoritative way in which Chaucer identifies himself with this kind of poem. He has, he says, translated at least part of the Roman de la Rose. He also translates The Consolation of Philosophy, which while not a dream is nevertheless a vision, and in his other works constantly refers to the leading medieval authority on dreams, Macrobius, whose commentary he uses as the point of departure for the discussions of dreams in Troilus, the Nun's Priest's Tale, and elsewhere. These discussions, as has often been noted, are heavily Boethian, and the combination of Boethius and Macrobius is to help characterize Chaucer for at least one Scottish poet, namely James I. In addition to the passages on the nature and meaning of dreams, are comparable passages dealing with vision, in the Knight's Tale, for example, and these are connected

62 Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets 55 with the discussions of dreams by the Boethian influence which permeates both. What Chaucer attempts, and accomplishes, is truly remarkable. He establishes himself as the translator of the most famous medieval dreamvision poem and uses it as the model for his own efforts in this form. He describes his copy of Macrobius's's Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis as "myn olde bok totorn" and gives ample evidence of his knowledge of the various kinds of dreams and how they should be interpreted. He explores the relationship between prophetic dreams and the operation of man's free will as well as that between dream and vision. Each of these elements if separated from the others would not be especially significant, but taken together they serve to make Chaucer what he in fact becomes for the fifteenth century, an authority on dreams whose practical use of them in his poetry is complemented by theoretical discussions of their origin, nature, interpretation, and significance. That fifteenth-century authors should model their dream visions on Chaucer then is not only natural but inevitable. For poets not interested in dreams, of course, the Chaucerian standard is entirely different. The case of Blind Harry is an especially interesting one. Here we have a poet who, like most Scottish poets of this century, is at his best in descriptions which require realistic detail. Although there is a sameness to his battle descriptions-after all, far greater poets suffer from the same affliction-they are generally immediate and effective. Even more effective are his detailed descriptions of Scottish topography, so effective in fact that it has been suggested that he must have been a herald because only a professional traveler would have access to the specialized information which Harry obviously has at his disposal.34 Yet in spite of his pointed observations about the Scottish landscape, all of his long nature descriptions are patently Chaucerian. With an easy familiarity, apparently bred by long acquaintance with such places, he describes a "strength" on the water of Cree as follows: A strenth thar was on the wattir off Cre, With-in a roch, rycht stalwart, wrocht off tre; A gait befor, mycht no man to It wyn But the consent off thaim that duelt with-in. On the bak sid a Roch, and wattir was A strait entre forsuth it was to pas. (VI, )35 34For discussions of Harry's vocation see J.T.T. Brown, The "Wallace" and the "Bruce" Restudied (Bonn, 1900); W.H. Schofield. Mythical Bards and "The Life of William Wallace" (Cambridge, Mass., 1920). pp Harry's "Wallace", ed. Matthew p, McDiarmid, STS,4th Series 4, 5 (Edinburgh & London ), All references are to this edition.

63 56 Walter Scheps In the battle which follows (809-33), each of the above details is to be significant. But when Harry comes to describe nature in more general terms, the change of seasons for example, his description is radically different. In Aperill the one and twenty day, The hie calend, thus Cancer, as we say The lusty tym off Mayus fresche cummyng Celestiall gret blythnes in to bryng; PryncypaiU moeth forsuth it may be seyn, The hewynly hewis apon the tendyr greyn; Quhen old Saturn his cloudy cours had gon, The quhilk had beyn bath best and byrdis bon; Zepherus ek, with his suet vapour, He comfort has, be wyrking off natour, All fructuous thing in-till the erd adoun At rewllyt is wndyr the hie Regioun; Sobyr Luna, in flowyng off the se; Quhen brycht Phebus is in his chemage hie, The Bulys cours so takin had his place; And Iupiter was in the Crabbis face; Quhen Aryet the hot syng [sic] coloryk, In-to the Ram quhilk had his Rowmys Ryk, He chosyn had his place and his mansuun In Capricorn, the sygn off the Lioun; Gentill Iupiter with his myld ordinance Bath Erb and tre reuertis in plesance, And fresch Flora his floury mantill spreid In euery waill, bath hop, hycht, hill, and meide This sammyn tym, for thus myn auctor sayis, Wallace to pass off Scotland tuk his wayis. (IX, ) All of Chaucer's rhetorical furniture is here: astrological allusions, references to classical deities, etc. Even the time of year is the same as in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and in addition to the verbal echoes (e.g., I. 133), we might note that the syntax of the transition (ll ) is almost identical to Chaucer's (General Prologue, fl ). As Skeat noted many years ago, Harry is a bona-fide Chaucerian, but passages similar to the one from the WaUace appear also in a poem which seems to have inherited little from Chaucer. I refer to the romance of Lancelot of the Laik (ca ) in which the following nature descriptions appear: The soft morrow ande The lustee Aperill, The wynter wet, the stormys in exiil, Quhen that the brycht & fresch illumynare

64 Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets 57 Upristh arly in his fyre chare His hot courss in to the orient, And frome his spere his goldine stremis sent Wpone the grond, in maner off mesag, One euery thing to valkyne thar curage, That natur haith set wnder hire mycht, Boith gyrss, and flour, & euery lusty vicht; And namly thame that felith the assay Oflufe, to schew the kalendis of may, Throw birdis songe with opine wox one hy, That sessit not one lufaris for to cry, Lest thai foryhet, throw slewth of Ignorans, The old wsage of lowis obseruans. (1-16)36 Quhen tytan, withe his slsty heit, Twenty dais In to the aryeit Haith maid his courss, and all with diuerss hewis Aparalit haith the feldis and the bewis, The birdis amyd the erbis and the flouris, And one the branchis, makyne gone thar bouris, And be the morow singing in ther chere Welcum the lusty sessone of the yere. (335-42) The long dirk pasag of the vinter, & the lycht Of phebus comprochit with his mycht; The which, ascending In his altitud, Awodith saturn with his stormys Rude; The soft dew one fra the hewyne doune valis Apone the erth, one hiilis and on valis, And throw the sobir & the mwst hwmouris Vp nurisit ar the erbis, and in the flouris Natur the erth of many diuerss hew Ourfret, and cled with the tendir new. The birdis may them hiding in the grawis WeI frome the halk, that oft ther lyf berevis; And scilla hie ascending in the ayre, That euery vight may heryng hir declar Of the sessone and passing lustynes. ( ) 36Ed. W.W. Skeat, EETS 6 (London, 1865). All references are to this edition.

65 58 Walter Scheps Stylistically, these passages are reminiscent of Chaucer, but as Miss Gray points out, they are even closer to Harry.37 What we seem to have here is a case of indirect Chaucerian influence, the agent of transmission being Harry's Wallace. This indirect Chaucerian influence is not limited to the passages on nature. The treatment of prophetic dreams, for example ( ; ) is very much like Harry's (VII, ) which in tum is somewhat like Chaucer's (e.g., Nun's Priest's Tale, VII, ; Troilus and Criseyde, V, ) and the same process is illustrated by the Lancelot-poet's handling of the decasyllabic couplet. 38 If an essentially non-chaucerian poem like Lance/ot can be shown to demonstrate certain Chaucerian characteristics at one remove from their source, it is obvious that the limits of Chaucerian influence on fifteenthcentury Scottish literature cannot be ascertained by examining only the overtly Chaucerian pieces. Others, like the How/at, Jack Up/and, Golagros and Gawain, and Raul Coilyear, must be studied as well, and although such a study has not, to my knowledge, yet been attempted, I suspect the results would indicate that the case of Lance/ot is far from unique. When we turn back to direct Chaucerian influence the categories remain the same, substantive and stylistic, but the evidence is more readily accessible. Under substantive influence would come the various attempts to add tales to the Canterbury group and to complete tales which Chaucer left unfinished, verbal echoes and, in some instances, even direct quotation, poems which are written to complement, extend or refute Chaucer's opinions on various issues raised in his poetry, appropriation of characters, situations and attitudes found in Chaucer, etc. Stylistic influence includes imitation of Chaucer's rhetoric his metrics, his imagery, his diction (including perhaps some words of his own coinage), his particular use of traditional forms like the dream-vision and the fabliau, his distinction between the narrator and the author, his use of transitions, his irony, even his humor. Each of these kinds of influence must be studied in some detail before we can document Chaucer's influence upon Scottish poets; but such documentation will not suffice unless we are willing to take up the more general, and far more difficult, problems of the Chaucer canon in fifteenth-century Scotland and the overall relationship between medieval Scottish poetry and English poetry of the same era. Which poems, for example, did the Scottish "makaris" attribute to Chaucer? How did rhetorical theory and practice in Scotland, which culturally as well as politically was closely allied to France, differ from English rhetorical usage? And, most importantly, how are the peculiar and idiosyncratic facts of existence in 37Lancelot of the Laik, ed. M.M. Gray, STS, NS2 (Edinburgh & London, 1912); xiv. 38See my essay, "William Wallace and his 'Buke': Some Instances of their Influence on Subsequent Literature," SSL. 6 (1969), pp

66 Chaucer and the Middle Scots Poets 59 fifteenth-century Scotland reflected in that nation's literature, and how do they serve to separate it from the English? Unless we are capable of answering these and related questions, we cannot, with any degree of confidence, expect to resolve the vexing problem of the nature of Chaucerian influence upon fifteenth-century Scottish poetry. State University of New York Stony Brook

67 R.D.S.Jack Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist: A Study of "Walker London" In 1892 three authors, until then primarily associated with other branches of literature, chose to present, in London, their first full-length plays. One of these was J.M. Barrie, who had earlier written a biqgraphical tragedy, Richard Savage (with Marriott Watson) and a oneact parody, Ibsen's Ghost.1 Of these the former had been judged a failure, the latter a minor success. But for Barrie neither a collaboration nor a curtain-raiser constituted a real test of his abilities as a writer for the stage. The first serious judgment on J.M. Barrie playwright would come when his comedy Walker London was produced in Toole's Theatre in late February. As it happened, Oscar Wilde's first play, Lady Windermere's Fan, opened at the St. James's five nights before Walker London and on December ninth Bernard Shaw made his dramatic debut with Widowers' Houses at the Royalty. Reading the contemporary reviews one soon gathers that of the three Barrie's contribution was the most popular with critics and public alike. A variety of factors determine these judgments, but one crucial distinction appears over and over again. Wilde and Shaw, it is argued, thought that talents nurtured in non-theatrical writing would automatically produce good drama. Only Barrie took real care to adapt to the new mode, to study IBoth plays were produced in 1891, Richard Savage at the Criterion and Ibsen's Ghost at Toole's.

68 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 61 trends in the theater, to listen to his actor-manager, to attend rehearsals regularly and so discovered that a successful novelist cannot become a good dramatist overnight. Thus The Times declares that the open stage has exposed Wilde as one of those "literary and anistic triflers" whose reputation depends on their remaining unintelligible while Lloyds regrets that Widowers' Houses is "In no sense a drama, but a succession of dialogues in which the author sets forth his views concerning Socialist questions." Clement Scott, on the other hand, greets Walker London as the answer to a drama critic's prayer: We do not need to go to Norway or Belgium, or Spain for the new dramatist when we can get so good a one from bonny Scotland.2 Many modern critics would overturn the value judgments made by these late Victorian critics on the grounds that they are the products of a selfsatisfied, populist dramatic tradition which, especially in the case of Shaw, was not ready for new challenges. Yet the leitmotiv I have highlighted does seem valid. In 1892 neither Wilde nor Shaw paid much attention to the unique challenge of the dramatic mode. Lady Windermere's Fan is a much more successful vehicle for epigrammatic wit than it is a planned dramatic plot. Widowers' Houses does pay more attention to its polemical message than the best dramatic means of conveying it. Only Barrie had the modesty to admit that, whatever his achievements in other fields, he was still a journeyman-dramatist. The purpose of this article is to study the various types of preparation Barrie made before presenting Walker London in finalized form to the public.3 From that point of view the "journeyman" image proves apt on two levels. It implies care in craftsmanship and the latter pan of the study will be concerned with analyzing this aspect in depth. The text will be discussed in relation to Barrie's biography, his Notebooks, his earlier novels and-most importantly-to earlier drafts of the work. "Journeyman" also implies a "master" however, and this is where the young playwright's knowledge of theatrical traditions generally and his relationship with one actor-manager in particular assumes importance. But first there is the play itself. Walker London is set on a houseboat on the Thames, and its slight plot centers on three love affairs, carefully differentiated and each bound on a troubled course towards marriage. Of these the relationship between the talented cricketer Kit Upjohn and the Girton graduate Bell Golightly is developed so as to satirize excessive re- 2111ustrated London News, March A.E. Wilson's edition of the play in the one volume "Definitive" edition of The Plays (Hodder and Stoughton, 1942) follows the 1907 acting edition closely and may be said to represent the play in the final form intended by the author. Barrie did not himself wish Walker London to appear in any collection of the dramatic works.

69 62 R.D.S. Jack Hance on brawn or brains. Kit gets off more lightly than Bell, who embodies all the fads and eccentricities of the Victorian blue stocking. Contrasting with this extremely volatile match is the quieter relationship between Andrew MacPhail and Nanny O'Brien. This is on one level the stock opposition between serious Scotsman and vivacious Irish girl, but the main comic focus is on MacPhail's morbid fears that he will fail his final medical examinations. It is the third partnership which acts as the catalyst for all the misunderstandings and regroupings which constitute the storyline. The comic lead, Jasper Phipps (played by Toole), is a barber who jilts his faithful fiancee Sarah in order to have one last fling among the upper classes. Passing himself off as one of his clients, to whom he bears a striking resemblance, he becomes "Colonel Neil," famed African explorer, falsely gains credit for rescuing Bell from drowning and so becomes one of the houseboat guests. He flirts determinedly with all the women aboard and even, briefly, becomes engaged to Bell but is caught finally by the persevering Sarah to whom, in his own way, he has remained faithful. Certain themes do emerge from this lighthearted story. The capacity of lovers to delude themselves; the folly of judging life on intellectual grounds alone; the barriers that need to be broken before one social class can mix easily with another-all of these are considered, but Barrie is much more concerned to amuse than instruct. What is noticeable already, even in this rather trivial context, is the care he takes to present his material clearly and dramatically. The love affairs are defined and differentiated in Act I; the complications develop in Act II and are gradually unraveled in Act lll. Two humorized characters, Mrs. Golightly, the knittingobsessed mateifamijias and young W.G. who sees love as a passion designed to unman heroes and prevent cricket practices are introduced not only to add comic variety but also to provide the contrasting commentaries of youth and age. At the conclusion of each act Jasper and Sarah become the center of attention establishing a neat pattern of repetition and variation. In the first two acts Jasper cunningly prevents a face-to-face confrontation but at the end is only too pleased to escape with her. His growing knowledge that there is no serious emotion behind his flirtations and that he longs to return to his old life is thus formally underlined. It is evident that much thought has gone into the construction of the plot even if it has no profound message to impart. In writing such a play at this time Barrie was trying to prove his skill to two masters. The first was the London Theatre. As a journalist and drama critic Barrie knew what that theater wished and at this early stage was only too anxious to meet known tastes and establish himself. Later he could become more ambitious, more original, but the journeyman had first to be accepted. That he gauged his audience correctly can simply be demonstrated by reference to the Box Office. Walker London had an opening run of 511 performances, the longest single run of any of his

70 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 63 plays. But The Times' review of drama in 1891, which appeared on January 7th 1892, when Walker London was going into rehearsal, had earlier confirmed that he was working on the right lines. Foreseeably this review begins with the major new force in European drama, Ibsen. Now that experimental productions of Rosmersholm, Hedda Gabler, The Lady from the Sea and Ghosts have been seen on the London stage a clear judgment can be made. Ibsen has been "weighed in the balance and found wanting." Two principal reasons are advanced for this conclusion. Ibsenism presents an unrealistically pessimistic view of life, depicting "the exceptions rather than the rules of human nature." Linked to this quasicritical criterion is another based solely on commercial fact. Such an unhealthy vision will be "fatal to [its] acceptance on stage, so long as the drama maintains its place as a popular entertainment." What is wanted is not revolution--even Henry Jones's less radical attempts to establish a "literary drama" are viewed with suspicion4-but more skill within the traditional formulae. Comedy is preferred to tragedy and the call is for a "new Moliere." Interestingly this leads the writer to think of Barrie and Ibsen's Ghost, which is then dismissed as promising but "too slight to be of much consequence." If the writer could only produce lighthearted drama paying more attention to characterization, plot and style than those writers currently holding the popular stage he would find both critics and audience ready to welcome him. Barrie, that avid reader of The Times, must have been immensely encouraged by this article. Walker London seemed to meet all of these (not very rigorous) demands and, given some re-writing, it seemed likely to satisfy one master. That re-writing, dependent largely on the experience of rehearsal, would be done under the eye of the second master, James Lawrence Toole-actor-manager of the theater where the play was to be performed. His "little house in King William Street" was acknowledged to be the center for light comedy and as such was contrasted with Henry Irving's center for tragedy, "the big house in Wellington Street." Toole had already produced and acted in Ibsen's Ghost and was ready to take on the role of Jasper Phipps. But his connection with Barrie stretched back much further than that. When still at school in Dumfries, Barrie had attended a performance given by Toole on one of his provincial tours. Shortly afterwards the Dumfries Academy Dramatic Society put on a triple bill. Two of the plays were works in which Toole had starred and the third was Barrie's own juvenile play Bandalero the Bandit. The show produced some self-righteous outrage in Dumfries but also a generous letter from the great man himself in which he jokingly suggested that one of the boys might later 4Jones sets out his views most fully in The Theatre of Ideas (New York, 1915).

71 64 R.D.S. Jack write a play for him. Doubtless to his extreme surprise this prophecy was twice realized. That Barrie listened to Toole's advice at rehearsals, that they discussed alterations to dialogue and characterization can be established through the evidence of eyewitnessess and through comparing successive drafts of the play. Indeed so successful was Toole in his role as Jasper Phipps that he forced the young dramatist to take a back seat. The program, for example, has Toole's name emblazoned on it three times to Barrie's one; the performance is billed as celebrating not Barrie's first three-act play but Toole's return to the stage after illness (Toole specialized in "returns" either from illness or the provinces); Toole it is who makes the final curtain speech, and the vast majority of reviewers begin by hailing Toole's triumph only coming later to the dramatist's contribution. The contrast between this and the self-advertisement of Wilde in particular6 could not be more complete, and it might at first seem to work against Barrie. But in designing his plot to suit the cult of the actor-manager, he guaranteed that at the journeyman stage of his career he had both the advice of Toole to profit from and the influential theatrical figure of Toole to stand behind. Far from condescending to the theater he was making himself pan of it and willingly learning from those who had dedicated their lives to it. This is why the drama critics warmed to his example rather than that of Wilde or Shaw. They welcomed Walker London as a fine piece of teamwork between author, actor-manager and production team. The Scotsman went so far as to find the major excellence of the performance lying in stage management.? But even in this context it was stressed that the author had chosen, in the houseboat, a novel setting which got away from the usual exits and entrances of the conventional drawing room yet allowed a variety of clever stage effects. As Clement Scott put it, "No one who did not possess a strong dramatic instinct would have chosen the upper deck and cosy cabin of a Thames house-boat as the scene of an elaborate comic play."8 Barrie's natural instinct for the theater was to make itself felt much more powerfully in later works. As he gained confidence he would SSee H.M. Walbrook, I.M. Barrie and the Theatre (London, 1922), Chapt. 2. 6At the end of the first production of Lady Windermere's Fan Wilde came on to the stage, garishly dressed (and smoking!) to give a flamboyant speech consisting largely of self-congratulation. 7The Scotsman, 24th February "Singularly enough, it is in stage management not in dialogue that the play excels." 811Iustrated London News, March 1892.

72 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 65 become a more dominant figure at rehearsal and perhaps his earlier idolization of Toole and hesitance to overrule him was one of the reasons for his never returning to that particular theater. But it was with Toole, the second master in his journeyman phase, that he learned the all-important lesson that the craft of the dramatist does not end in the study but has to be carried in to the theater and there meet a whole series of new challenges. This returns us to the idea of journeyman in the sense of careful craftsman and, in the first place, to Barrie's famous Notebooks9 in which he copied down ideas and scraps of dialogue if and when they occurred to him. They were initially a product of his busy days as a journalist and to the end he retained the journalist's desire to use as many of these ideas as possible. But he did make a clear distinction between ephemeral newspaper articles and those works (especially those dramatic works) on which he hoped to found his literary reputation. For these the ideas were usually given a longer period of incubation and he writes, revises and re-revises with an enthusiasm born partly of literary perfectionism and partly of an awareness of the practical difficulties posed by different stages and different audiences. The Notebooks reveal that the ideas behind Walker London were already being actively explored in 1888, four years before the frrst production. In that year there are entries which show Barrie to be considering a comedy set on the Thames and called The Houseboat Granny. From then until 1891 they contain suggestions and scraps of dialogue intended for this work. The journeyman has not therefore rushed into composition but planned well in advance, allowing his ideas to mature before assessing the best time to begin writing. Not all of Barrie's dramas wander through the pages of the Notebooks for such a long time but there they all begin in some form or another. Usually, too, his personal life is worked to a greater or lesser degree into his plots. Partly this is because he found it difficult to separate art from selfrevelation; partly it was because he knew that the late Victorian theater, although generally sympathetic towards fantasy, liked those fantasies to work from a realistic base. Lady Windermere's Fan was to be condemned on just those groundslo but Walker London avoided such criticism because Barrie founded a plot which sometimes verges on fantasy on a lifestyle which he had closely observed. In 1887 he actually shared a houseboat on the Thames with his friend Thomas Gilmour. Thus, however stylized the characters in his drama may be, the boat and its machinery, the songs being sung and the musical instruments played all evoke the river life as it 9The notebooks are among the extensive Barrie holdings in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. JOTIle Times. 22nd February 1892.

73 66 R.D.S. Jack really was. Barrie's friend Jerome K. Jerome had earlier produced his own famous vision of this popular craze in Three Men in a Boat. In following him, Barrie knew not only that a dramatic variation on the theme was likely to be well received but that he had specific and detailed knowledge of the life he was describing. Another major influence on Walker London comes from his earlier prose works. Aware of the generic leap he was about to make and its attendant problems Barrie was naturally anxious to minimize the dangers. When A Man's Single, Lady Nicotine and An Edinburgh Eleven had already proved themselves capable of arousing the public imagination and, having few scruples about re-using the same material in different contexts, he based a large part of Walker London on characters and situations which he had first explored in his prose works. As these often had a strong autobiographical emphasis themselves it becomes rather difficult to distinguish between the influences of life and art. The houseboat setting and the idyllic atmosphere surrounding it had already been evoked in When a Man's Single: Rob stood on the deck of the house-boat Tawny Owl, looking down at Nell, who sat in the stern, her mother beside her, amid a blaze of Chinese Lanterns. Dick lay near them, prone, as he had fallen from a hammock whose one flaw was that it gave way when anyone got into it...mary, in a little blue nautical jacket with a cap to match, lay back in a camp-chair on deck with a silent banjo in her hands. Rob was brazening it out in flannels, and had been at such pains to select colours to suit him that the effect was atrocious'! 1 Similarly in the play W.G.'s obsession with cricket reflects Barrie's own passion for the game and the matches he was then playing at Shere.!2 As a child figure, however, W.G. clearly develops from Will in When a Man's Single, even at times sharing brief snatches of dialogue with his predecessor. When a Man's Single provides not only the original of W.G. There too we find a flirtatious barber passing himself off as a gentleman, and there too Jasper's philosophy of flirting as a brother rather than a lover is anticipated. But the specific role he chooses to carry off his deception-that of African explorer-is most fully developed in the essay collection An Edinburgh Eleven. There, "African us Neil's" prototype is discovered in Joseph Thomson, the explorer whose identity could "always be proved by simply mentioning Africa in his presence."13 From this source too comes Andrew Macphail's farcical fear of failing his medical examinations and his attempt to conceal it beneath a facade of worldly nonchalance. An 11J.M. Barrie, When a Man's Single (London, 1888), p Dennis Mackail, The Story of JMB (London, 1941), pp J.M. Barrie, An Edinburgh Eleven (London, 1889), p. 101.

74 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 67 Edinburgh Eleven mainly consists of portraits of those Edinburgh University staff members who had impressed Barrie when he was a student there. In the chapter devoted to Professor Chrystal of the medical faculty, Barrie tells the story of an anonymous student who, with lordly air and cigar in hand, had persuaded his friends that he much preferred to remain sheltered from life within the University's walls. But on learning that he has passed, he shrieks: "I'm through! I'm through!"... His cigar was dashed aside and he sped like an arrow from the bow to the nearest telegraph office, shouting ''I'm through!" as he ran.14 Barrie's wish to rely on material drawn from work which had already proved to be popular is wholly understandable. Yet, despite quite extensive borrowing, he avoided any criticisms that he was plagiarizing himself. Indeed very few critics mentioned the relationship between Walker London and his earlier work at all. There are three major reasons for this. The central plot was new; he borrowed lightly from different prose works rather than concentrating on one and, in later drafts, cut down particular dialogue echoes to a minimum. As a result he was congratulated on his dramatic originality rather than condemned for excessive reliance on earlier "novels." The drafts referred to above are of crucial importance in assessing the vast amount of work Barrie devoted even to such a lightweight drama as Walker London.15 A study of the changes made between the flrst draft for the play, now among the holdings of the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana16 and the text deposited with the Lord Chamberlain17 shortly before production, followed by an analysis of the changes between the latter text and the flnalized version will enable us to chart in more detail the process by which Barrie learned the craft of drama. It will also provide an accurate model for his later practice. When he became a leading playwright he did not forget these earlier lessons but still maintained the discipline of almost constant revision. Many of the changes introduced into the Lord Chamberlain's text are simply those we would expect in any transition from draft to full text. In 14Ibid., p Even Hugh MacDiarmid, alienated from Barrie's writing in almost every other respect, was impressed by his workaholic nature. 161 am grateful to the curators and the librarians of the Lilly Library for allowing me to consult this MS. and to the British Academy and the Carnegie Trust for providing grants to make the visit possible. 17British Library MS., Add

75 68 RD.S. Jack the Indiana MS. Barrie occasionally leaves gaps. In Act I of the Lord Chamberlain's text the letter sent by Jasper to Sarah explaining his reasons for deserting her is read out in full by Mrs. Golightly.l8 In the Indiana MS. there is a space in mid-page with only two words "The Letter," indicating that Barrie has delayed composition. Similarly the word "Soliloquy" in the draft prepares us for Bell's lengthy weighing up of the rival claims of her two suitors near the start of Act In each case it seems likely that Barrie wished to develop the personalities of his major characters before returning to speeches in which they give detailed accounts of their respective philosophies. In this category too we may place those occasions when Barrie simply changes his mind during composition. The clearest evidence for this centers on names. In the Indiana MS. Jasper begins his adventures as Colonel Kay but becomes Colonel Neil. More subtly, although Nanny O'Brien and Bell Golightly are throughout the Indiana MS. called Baby O'Brien and Nanny Golightly, there are internal signs that Barrie is already having doubts, as when W.G. remarks that they call Miss O'Brien "Baby," adding "though it is a rotter of a name." Certainly it becomes less and less apposite as Nanny's mature, worldlywise character unfolds. This evidence is especially important because Barrie was an author who laid great stress on getting exactly the right name for his creations. Only when that name harmonizes with the character's personality does he feel that the latter comes fmoly into focus. As Colonel Kay, Baby and Nanny develop from vague ideas into individual dramatic roles Barrie becomes dissatisfied with the names he had chosen somewhat arbitrarily for them at the outset and alters them either within the draft or in revision. If the Notebooks show care being taken over the broad conception of plot, so a comparison between the Indiana MS. and the Lord Chamberlain's text reveals those changes in detail made by an artist who is wholly absorbed in the development of his fictional world. Always he is working towards greater character consistency, clearer plot formulation and more powerful dramatic effects. And he is so completely involved in this process that he can follow through the implications anyone variation has for the rest of the plot. A good illustration of this can be provided without moving from the topic of names. The major problem of nomenclature in Walker London concerned the title. The Indiana MS. is headed The Houseboat. This was changed to Walker London after the discovery that a play with this title already existed. There is irony in this because Barrie's Notebooks reveal no fewer than forty suggested titles, each rejected in favor of the one now outlawed 18The Plays, op. cit., p bid., p. 26.

76 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 69 by copyright. Toole and Barrie are known to have worked together in efforts to find a substitute and there is general agreement that the final choice was a good one. "Walker," while obviously a surname suitable for the telegraphic address announced at the end, also had connotations of "practical joker" or "one clearing off to prevent discovery."20 Both of these fitted in perfectly with Jasper's character and situation. What has not been appreciated is that the name "Walker" had been applied to Jasper in the Indiana MS. at an earlier stage in the action as well When first describing her fiance to Mrs. Golightly, Sarah had called him "a barber by trade, hookey walker by nature." When the new title was decided upon Barrie substituted "deceiver" for "hookey walker," thus reserving the first use of the word for the very last moment of the play when the disappearing Jasper shouts it across the water to Mrs. Golightly. Careful revision preserves both the suddenness and the unexpectedness of the climax. If detailed changes such as these help to sharpen the effect of the drama, other alterations suggest that even in his gentle and genteel world by the Thames, Barrie is anxious to avoid stretching the credulity of his audience unnecessarily. He does not strive for naturalism, but by maintaining consistency of character and plot and avoiding excessive exaggeration he observes the theatrical code of the day and so avoids the strictures leveled, on grounds of improbability, against Lady Windermere's Fan.2 l In his revision, therefore, he is at some pains to correct the wilder imaginings of his draft, toning down both farcical and melodramatic effects. Notably, while the minor characters are still essentially defmed by their humors (Mrs. Golightly's knitting; W.G.'s love of cricket), those humors are played down. More care is also taken to lead naturally into highpoints of comedy. It is, for example, necessary that Jasper's enthusiastic wooing of Bell be conducted safe in the knowledge that she already loves Kit. In the Indiana MS. he is given this information after abruptly saying to Mrs. Golightly, "Let's talk of something else." Although he is not on familiar terms with her, he then proceeds to ask for intimate details about her daughter. In the Lord Chamberlain's text he makes sure that the information comes from a more likely source (W.G.) and is freely offered rather than awkwardly elicited. The exact status of the Lord Chamberlain's text must be borne in mind when considering changes such as these. The play received its license on the 24th February 1892, one day before the first performance. Although the text had certainly been handed in some time earlier, its final format is largely the result of Barrie's experience in rehearsal. What he appears to 20See Harry M. Geduld. James Barrie (New York, 1971). p William Archer in The Old Drama and the New (London, 1923), p. 331 in reviewing Barrie's work praises him for adapting dramas of fantasy "to the stem exigencies of the modem realistic technique."

77 70 R.D.S. Jack have learned above all is that the leisurely, anecdotal style of the Indiana draft still betrayed his earlier training as a novelist. Sharpening of dialogue, highlighting of dramatic climaxes and simplification of form were all necessary to convert the material conceived in the study into powerful drama. This implied a good deal of cutting, and revisions aimed at achieving these goals were to continue even after he had received the Lord Chamberlain's license. In terms of the evolution of the play, therefore, this text represents an intermediary, if important, form. But two further types of alteration made at this stage, must be analyzed before looking at the final version. Of these the first directly reflects the problem of changing mode. When discussing this point earlier I noted that the finalized text contained one or two passages which had discreetly been borrowed from the proseworks. Many more are to be found in the Indiana MS. but the majority are deleted in the Lord Chamberlain's text and are not resuscitated. It is, therefore, at this intermediary stage that Barrie most resolutely breaks the direct links between prose narrative and play. Usually the deletion simply speeds up dialogue. In the Indiana draft, for example, W.G.'s initial bantering with Baby (Nanny) included the following exchange: Baby: The time will come when you'll give anything for a kiss. W.G.: Look here, Baby, you have no right to bring such a charge against a fellow. And him as big as you. Little boyt Why you should just have seen me at breakfast with our tutor, old Jerry, that's all. The other fellows were frightened to open their mouths, but what do you think I did? Baby: Something silly, Will. W.G.: I asked old Jerry as cool as you like, to pass the butter! And I won't be called Will. My name is W.G. In the Lord Chamberlain's text and the finalized version the joke about Jerry and the butter, which has been borrowed almost verbatim from chapter 4 of When a Man's Single, is omitted, so that the script reads: Nanny: Pooh! the time will come when you will be willing to give anything fora kiss. W.G.: Rot! You have no right to bring such charges against a fellow. Nanny: A fellow! You horrid little boy. W.G.: Little boy! I'm as tall as you! Here the effect is simply to speed up the action by deleting a quietly amusing joke, more likely to please a leisurely reader than a theater audience. In Act II another borrowed passage disappears, but this time the decision is related to a more complex dramatic situation. In all versions the subject of smoking----one of Barrie's lasting obsessions and the ostensible topic of his prose narrative Lady Nicotine-is used to clever comic effect when Kit tries to give it up as proof of his love for Bell. In the Indiana MS. alone it is Jasper who first expatiates on the problem at length in

78 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 71 answer to an abrupt question from Baby. It has not been prepared for dramatically and serves only as an amusing digression: Baby: Why do men smoke? Jasper: Some so as not to get sick in the company of smokers, and some because they begin it at school and are afraid to leave off. A lot smoke for economy, because it makes them work harder, and then at picnics it drives away the midges from the ladies, and it keeps you cool in summer and warm in winter. Baby: Does nobody smoke because he likes it? Jasper: None. Jasper's ideas have all been anticipated by Dick Abinger in Chapter XII of When a Man's Single: I know some men who smoke because they might get sick otherwise when in the company of smokers. Others smoke because they began to do so at school, and are now afraid to leave off. A great many men smoke for philanthropic motives, smoking enabling them to work harder, and so being for the family's good. At picnics men smoke because it is the only way to keep the midges off the ladies. Smoking keeps you cool in summer and warm in winter, and is an excellent disinfectant. There are even said to be men who admit that they smoke because they like it, but for my own part I fancy I smoke because I forget not to do so.22 The clumsiness of this interpolation would be highlighted on stage, but the deletion also confines the problems of smoking to Kit alone, clearly contrasting his genuine problems with love and the weed against Jasper's lighthearted flirtations and contented pipesmoking. The second category of alteration is at first sight a surprising one. Walker London was in large part conceived as a vehicle for Toole. Yet seven lengthy speeches or soliloquys spoken by Jasper, the character he represented, disappear or are drastically shortened in the Lord Chamberlain's text and all subsequent versions. If, as seems certain, the former is a text influenced by theatrical performance, why does the actor-manager permit his own part to be cut? The answer once more relates to Barrie's inexperience as a dramatist. The vast majority of these speeches come in Act III. They concern the barber's discovery of Sarah and his plan to convey her by the pulley and ropes used by W.O. for his cricket practice on deck down to the dinghy. Almost without exception they describe events and situations which are rendered self-evident by the visual dimension of the stage or can be conveyed more effectively by expression or gesture. Here, for example, is what Barrie originally intended Jasper to say towards the end of the play just before the clock strikes ten: 22J.M. Barrie, When a Man's Single (London, 1888), p. 174.

79 72 RD.S. Jack Jasper: If they were to go inside, I wonder if I could carry her down to the dingey and... and pull off with her. I'm a desperate man. I can't get her down the ladder. No, she would wake up and expose me. Expose! That's the word and I don't like it. Apart from the overly melodramatic nature of the content, this speech which disappears entirely in later versions could be much more comically conveyed through mime, especially by an actor whose reputation for comedy had largely been built up on the expressiveness of his face. In giving Toole more words to speak, Barrie is ironically underestimating the actor's art. The acting edition received by the Lord Chamberlain, then, was a text which made much fuller allowance for the demands of the theater than the Indiana draft. It was also much shorter. But it is not the last stage of Barrie's revision as a comparison between it and the finalized version reveals. The emphasis in this last stage of revision (for Barrie did not include Walker London in the Collected Works of 1928 and so did not make changes after the theatrical run was over) is on creating a clearer overall form; on strengthening an, until then quite minim'>,.l, symbolic level of application; and on adding passages or theatrical effects which would increase the play's popular appeal. Most of these changes seem to have been made either at the late rehearsal stage or very early in the run, but here exactitude is impossible. Barrie kept making changes and Walbrook notes that he even added new jokes specifically for the 300th performance.23 The additions aimed at increasing the play's popular appeal often suggest cooperation between dramatist and theater staff. The phrase "Sarah, I'm slipping" or variations on it recurs with greater frequency almost certainly because one of the advertising posters showed Toole in costume uttering those words.24 The potential offered by the various enclosed compartments of the houseboat permitting separate conversations to continue contemporaneously or highlighting Jasper's final solitude had been quite fully exploited by Barrie even in the earliest drafts. But theatrical effects were increasingly drawn in to highlight these moments. In Act III of the final version, for example, Jasper's desperate situation as he struggles on the upper deck is highlighted by having the blinds in the saloon beneath drawn and using limelights to contrast his isolation against the shadows of those dancing happily inside. The major addition at this stage, though, is the comic exchange between Nanny and Andrew in Act I, where they discuss national stereotypes: 23Walbrook, op. cit., p The poster is preserved in the Drama Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum-"Toole's Theatre, 1892."

80 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 73 Andrew: You're a bonny wee lassie. Nanny: No compliments, but I see you're a Scotchman now, and I used to doubt it. Andrew: Why? Nanny: Because you never say 'Bang went saxpence whatever,' and then you don't wear the national costume. Andrew: What national costume? (Nanny points to her skirts and to his legs.) Oh, it's only the English tourists that wear that; besides, you're not national either, for though you're an Irish girl, you don't flirt! Nanny: No, never. Oh! there's a fly in my eye! Andrew: Fly in your eye! Oh I must operate at once.25 The introduction of this episode suggests that the audience enjoyed comedy which depended for its effect on the interplay of generally accepted myths of nationality. A study of contemporary plays would confirm that this was, indeed, a popular element in many light comedies. It assumes a particular importance for Barrie, because evidence such as this is used by some (mostly Scottish) critics as part of an argument aimed at depicting Barrie as a betrayer of his national heritage. Such attacks seem to this Scottish critic often to betray an overly serious view of comic conventions andlor failure to view the whole dramatic context. This first example of "Scotch stereotyping" in his plays is a late revision in which the stereotype, having been suggested by another (Irish) stereotype, is rejected and turned against yet another stereotype, that of the English tourist. The humor derives not from Andrew's use of the word "lassie" but from his failure to see that Nanny is flirting and so fulfilling her national stereotype while he so determinedly denies his. Neither Nanny nor Andrew discusses the subject again, nor do they load their conversation with the "Hoots mons" and "Sure and begorrahs" of contemporary farce or music hall. In Andrew's seriousness and lack of romantic fervor Barrie draws on another myth about Scotsmen, one which he will use in later dramas. But in Walker London he creates a situation which involves gentle mockery of all three nations, making as slight and reserved a bow to the comic potential of stage Scotsmen as he can. The second and more important addition concerns the call of the cuckoo. There is no cuckoo in the Indiana MS. In the Lord Chamberlain's text its call is heard only after Jasper has been cross-examined on his African experiences in Act II. On hearing it, he becomes dizzy and when it calls out three times, Nanny draws attention to it: Nanny: Listen to that cuckoo. 25The Plays, op. cil., p. 7.

81 74 R.D.S. Jack Mrs. Golightly: Yes, we never heard it till you came to us Colonel and now we hear it a dozen times a day.26 It sounds once more immediately afterwards and Jasper vows to shoot it. But, despite this melodramatic intention there is no further reference to it. In the final version, however, the cuckoo is so firmly related to the action that Walbrook entitles his chapter on Walker London, "J.L. Toole and the Cuckoo." This is because in the final version the cuckoo's call is heard at almost every crucial moment in Jasper's career. The symbolism is not subtle but it does effectively underline Jasper's position, concentrating on the more melancholy aspects of his swashbuckling. The houseboat thus becomes the nest into which Jasper has infiltrated himself in the disguise of gentility. He successfully passes himself off to the mother (Mrs. Golightly) and her fledglings as one of the family. In the end the nest becomes overcrowded, nature reasserts itself and he returns to his own kind (Sarah). The leitmotiv is very clearly established and its implications are explicitly spelled out for an audience who would not expect to be intellectually challenged. Thus in the final version the bird's first call is accompanied by an explanation, provided by Jasper's mercenary ally old Ben: I tell you what, I believe--you're the cuckoo in the hen's nest and that's your mate a-calling to youp The mate is Sarah and the call is usually heard when she is nearby. At the end of Act I, for example, its cry annoys Jasper and shortly afterwards he sees Sarah searching for him. As it represents the call of nature, urging him to return to its own kind, it inevitably helps Sarah, the girl from his own class. At the end of Act II his shout of "Damn that cuckoo" alerts her to his whereabouts and he only narrowly escapes discovery, while in Act III it is the bird's call which awakens her and finally brings them face to face. In various ways Barrie's dialogue has suggested that the medieval law of "kynde" still works strongly in Victorian England. The symbolic use of the cuckoo underlines this. Those critics who detect a sadder, more wistful message underlying the dominant farcical tone of the play are in part reacting to the implied associations of this symbolism. Jasper is an intruder, his adventure is doomed to failure and its continuation can only result in destruction of the idyllic family group. The story line, however, does not obey the fuller logic of the symbolism, and the end is conceived through a retreat from illusion and a happy resolution involving three marriages. A distinction is made between those who hear and understand the cuckoo's warning 26This exchange is retained in the final version. See The Plays, op. Cil., p Ibid., p. 17.

82 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 75 (Sarah and Jasper) and those who hear but ignore it (the women on the houseboat). They are puzzled by the cuckoo but question no further because they are anxious to accept Jasper as the romantic adventurer of his and their imaginings. This tension between happy narrative conclusion and a more complex, ultimately melancholy, logic of metaphor or symbol will be used much more ambitiously by Barrie in later plays where the latter level is part of the initial conception of the work, not added at a late stage of revision. Already, however, he is experimenting with a technique which can allow him to remain within the conventions of light comedy while exploring means of escaping from them. The cuckoo symbolism also becomes part of a re-ordering of his material to produce a more clear-cut, balanced form. In this he is already moving towards the model of the "well-made" play. Throughout his career in the theater this remains a constant goal. It betrays itself in an obsessional concem with dramatic highpoints, especially the ends of acts, which are almost always a major focus for revisions. This compulsion is first revealed in Walker London. In no case does the ending of an act in the final version coincide with that of either the Indiana MS. or the Lord Chamberlain's text, and in every case the cuckoo is introduced as part of the alteration. In Act I the change is slight but important, showing Barrie once more concerned to play down unnecessary exaggeration and to eliminate inconsistency of character, while achieving maximum dramatic effect. In the Indiana MS. the sight of Sarah caused Jasper to faint. This was rather melodramatic and at odds with the self-possession he had displayed until then. In the Lord Chamberlain's text he does not faint but hides by pulling down the blind, while in the final version Barrie precedes the incident with a triple call from the cuckoo and makes his character duck out of sight, a contrived action wholly in key with his flirtatiousness and faked dizzy spells. The change maintains all the elements of surprise and suspense but keeps Jasper true to his role of self-serving deceiver. The finale of Act II involves Sarah coming closer to her prey and discovering that Jasper is on the houseboat. In the Indiana MS. and Lord Chamberlain's text she does so by finding the straw hat he has earlier thrown away. In the final version it is the cuckoo which alerts her. Its call causes him to shout aloud and so introduces a tighter dramatic situation with symbolic undertones of the sort discussed earlier. But the most radical change is reserved for Act III. Jasper's plan to spirit away Sarah at the end involves the most ambitious stage effect in the whole play. The crane which W.G. has set up for cricket practice is used in both the earlier versions to lift his sleeping fiancee from her chair on the upper deck down to the punt, so that they can make their escape. In practice this must have involved a deal of movement and noise, likely to awaken more lethargic mortals than Sarah. There was the danger that if she remained resolutely asleep while the crane creaked and the chair

83 76 R.D.S. Jack dropped, farce might intervene at an inopportune moment By having her wakened by the cuckoo, in the final version, Barrie at once achieved a more realistic finale and maintained the symmetry of introducing his key symbol at the end of each act. Once Sarah and Jasper are sailing away, yet another variation is introduced in the final version. The words "Walker London" end the play in all texts but the context alters. In the Indiana MS. and the Lord Chamberlain's text Jasper and Sarah have passed out of earshot when Mrs. Golightly reveals that yesterday the "Colonel" had given her his telegraphic address. After searching in her purse she finds a scrap of paper and reads out the two words. In the final version this becomes part of a shouted exchange between houseboat and punt: Mrs. Golightly: Your address? Jasper (off): Walker, London. All: Walker, London.28 This minor alteration brings together many of the improvements detected in Barrie's revisions. It is more dramatic, being part of a dialogue with chorus; it is shouted out rather than read quietly; it gives the last effective word to the comic lead and it is more realistic-why should Jasper have written down a demonstrably false address? Why had Mrs. Golightly not read and questioned it earlier? Above all, it shows a dramatist whose second thoughts are usually an improvement on his first and who is so deeply concerned with his work that such detailed alterations are a matter of concern to him. The importance of Walker London in a study of Barrie's dramatic career does not lie in the quality of the play itself. However popular it was then, it remains a slight piece which does not age well and did not even survive an Atlantic crossing, lasting only two weeks at the Park Theatre in New York. 2 9 What is does reveal is Barrie's complete commitedness to this new form, his determination to make a successful transition from novel to drama and growing awareness of where the two modes reinforced each other and where they conflicted His thorough revisions, ranging from minor details to radical alterations of form and symbolism, aim always at a clearer, more dramatic presentation of the tale and usually these aims are achieved. The real question is not whether as dramatic journeyman Barrie will eventually master his craft. All the signs suggest that he will The remaining question is whether he will have anything of importance to say. And although there are already some signs of a unique vision 28Ibid., p Geduld, QP. cit., p. 99.

84 Barrie as Journeyman-Dramatist 77 where comedy and pathos, naturalism and fantasy mingle, Walker London in its determined triviality cannot on its own provide an answer. University of Edinburgh

85 Steven R. McKenna Spontaneity and the Strategy of Transcendence in Bums's KilmarnocK Verse-Epistles As a group, Robert Bums's verse-epistles have been consistently ignored by commentators, or at best have received only passing attention by those who expend their energies in analyzing his better known (and in many cases better) poems and songs. Two notable exceptions to this rule are the essays by John C. Westonl and G. Scott Wilson.2 Weston views the epistles of Ramsay and Hamilton, Fergusson, and Bums in terms of a distinct sub-genre--the Scots verse-epistle-whose conventions Bums inherited and utilized for the purposes of creating a self-portrait. Wilson~ more narrowly, views Bums's epistles strictly in terms of the financial and psychological motives behind the poet's image-making. In addition to these studies, I offer a thematic and structural analysis of Bums's flist published epistles in the hope that it will shed additional light on his artistic purposes, achievements and shortcomings in this special and problematic poetic genre. The epistle-as-poem creates certain structural and stylistic problems. Because Bums's early epistles were written as private communications IJohn C. Weston,"Bums's Use of the Scots Verse-Epistle Fonn," Philological Quarterly, 49 (April 1970), Scott Wilson,"Robert Bums: The Image and the Verse-epistles," in The Art of Robert Burns, eds. R.D.S. Jack and Andrew Noble (London. 1982). pp

86 Burns's Kilmarnock Verse Epistles 79 before becoming public poetic matter, transitions from the particular to the universal within the epistles had to occur if they were to be of more than arcane historical or scholarly interest to the wider universal audience that the poet undoubtedly envisioned. Indeed, for an epistle to be a great poem in its own right it must speak: to a wider audience than the person or persons to whom it was nominally written. The problem inherent in this poetic genre (though certainly not limited to epistles alone) is that if the poet strives to create universally applicable themes in the epistle, then the epistle runs the risk of evolving into a poem with a salutation and a conclusion awkwardly appended. At worst, the universal sentiments may be clumsily inserted so that the movement from the particular to the universal and vice versa will appear abrupt and unnatural. The perfect resolution of these tensions would be to have the particular epistolary message itself be a universal statement-and this is no mean feat. With varying degrees of success, Burns's Kilmarnock verse-epistles illustrate the poet's struggles with and attempts to overcome just such problems of integration and balance. Furthermore, in the order they are arranged, the epistles display Burns's growing self-confidence as a poet not only in relationship to his art, but to his place within the social order as well. The epistle to James Smith, though not Burns's first attempt at the epistle form, is the first epistle to appear in the Kilmarnock edition. This epistle opens with a three-stanza epistolary introduction wherein Burns intimately and with good humor greets and flatters Smith. Burns then easily launches forth into seven stanzas of self-referential poetic theorizing. The transition from Burns's particular communication with Smith in the introduction to the more universal poetic concerns is facilitated by what I call Burns's "spontaneity formula": Just now I've taen the fit 0' rhyme, My barmie noddle's working prime, My fancy yerket up sublime Wi' hasty summon: Rae ye a leisure-moment's time To hear what's comin? (ll )3 Burns here, and elsewhere, uses the spontaneity formula in an attempt to give the illusion that the epistle is an effortless and unpremeditated outpouring of thought and feeling neatly arranged in the intricacies of the Habbie Stanza form. The spontaneity formula is in fact an illusion of art. Burns no doubt worked for hours over these seemingly spontaneous stanzas. 3All quotations are from The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ed. by James Kinsley, 3 vols (Oxford, 1968).

87 80 Steven R. McKenna Weston, it should be noted, sees this sort of spontaneity in terms of the Scots epistolary conventions: Since all Scots epistles before him discuss the poetic productions of the correspondents, he includes quite naturally theories of poetic composition in keeping with his view of himself: the true poet is always untaught and only composes carelessly for the pleasure and as a spontaneous emotional release of feeling, generally for women and nature, thus awakening those feelings in others. 4 This is true on the thematic level. However, Burns's use of spontaneity is quite a bit more utilitarian than Weston indicates here. For Burns, spontaneity formulas become structurally significant as transitional devices whereby Burns moves from the epistolary particulars, relevant solely to the addressee, to poetic universals, as will be seen especially in regard to the epistles to William Simson, the fitst and second epistles to Lapraik, "To a Young Friend," and to David Sillar. In addition, a spontaneity formula is sometimes used to conclude the epistles as well-as in the epistles to John Rankine, Sillar, the fitst epistle to Lapraik, and to Smith. In the self-referential section of the epistle to James Smith, Burns views himself from two perspectives: the poet in relation to other people and, more importantly, the poet in relation to an external power principle. (This principle assumes various forms in the different epistles, but essentially it is made manifest by "Fortune" and the "Muse.") For Burns, this principle is intimately connected with the second function of the spontaneity formula-the introduction of self-referential artistic themes. The basis of this professedly spontaneous outpouring of verse is, of course, his "Muse" in her various disguises: The star that rules my luckless lot, Has fated me the russet coat, An' damn' d my fortune to the groat; But, in requit, Has blest me with a random-shot 0' countra wit. (II. 31-6) Though Burns makes clearer the interconnectedness of the Muse, fortune, and his own spontaneity in other epistles, he here illustrates a central epistolary theme. Burns sees himself as the passive recipient and observer of the workings of the external power principle. Verbs such as "rules," "has fated," "damn'd," and "has blest" all indicate that he is at the mercy of powers far larger than himself. Indeed, Burns vows to "wander on with 4Weston, p. 200.

88 Burns's Kilmarnock Verse Epistles 81 tentless heed /... Till fate shall snap the brittle thread" (U. 55, 57). Though these sentiments were poetic commonplaces long before his day, Burns uses them to lay the groundwork for the more general and more universal philosophical interlude on life, death and fate (II ). By means of the epistle's general concern with fortune's (or more specifically, misfortune's) application to existence, Burns's own struggles become representative of every person's philosophical struggles with life's meaning. He transcends the potentially bleak vision of existence with the optimism of defiance: And others, like your humble servan', Poor wights! nae rules nor roads observin; To right or left, eternal swervin, They zig-zag on; Till curst with Age, obscure an' starvin, They aften groan. Alas! what bitter toil an' straining- But truce with peevish, poor complaining! Is Fortune's fickle Luna waning? E'en let her gang! Beneath what light she has remaining, Let's sing our Sang. (II ) This brings Burns back to an intense preoccupation with his own creative powers, centering on a defiant affirmation of poetry's transcendent value and on his growing self-confidence as a poet. Fortune may indeed be unfair, and life may indeed be a struggle, but Burns claims he will be content with a "rowth 0' rhymes" (I. 126) and "sterling Wit" (I. 137). This poetic gift and the exploitation of it to the utmost represent his more general key to transcendence, as will be seen in regard to the other epistles. Regrettably, the power and force of Burns's proclamation of poetic confidence loses its climactic vitality in the clumsy, overt address to the wider audience that he uses to terminate the epistle. Here is Burns's attempt to relate didactically and blatantly the particular personal application of the epistle to the universal human condition of the wider audience he envisions for himself. Yet, bombast aside, the last stanza, by means of another spontaneity formula, abruptly breaks the address to the universal audience and returns to Smith for a fond farewell:

89 82 Steven R. McKenna Whilst I-but I shall haud me there Wi' you I'll scarce gang ony where Then Jamie, I shall say nae mair, But quat my sang, Content with You to mak a pair, Whare'erJgang. (II ) And quit he does. This seemingly chatty epistle has no real conclusion. It merely stops, as though it were in fact composed on the spot in a single draft. If it were composed on the spot, as the spontaneity formula would have us believe, this would account for the abrupt termination. But since in all likelihood it was not composed as a one-shot fmished product, this problem of ending an epistle thus becomes a function of the poet having to strike a balance between the particular and the universal, by having in effect two vastly different audiences simultaneously. Nowhere is this problem of the conclusion more evident than in the "Epistle to Davie." The lapse into Shenstonian sentiment at the epistle's end has been noted by numerous commentators, so I will not rehearse their arguments here. Yet this epistle also demonstrates a remarkable degree of internal coherence and universal application. As Kinsley notes in his commentary,s this epistle in all likelihood was composed as a poem before Burns made an epistle of it, and in essence it still remains a poem of social commentary with an epistolary conclusion appended to it. However, a striking feature of this epistle, in contrast to so many others, is the ease and fluidity with which it moves to it's universal theme. Burns dispenses with the traditional epistolary introduction. By the end of the ftrst stanza he gives us a traditional Scottish poetic introduction involving the gloomy winter exterior contrasted to the warm and snug interior of his home. By means of a spontaneity formula (II. 4-6) he makes a passing reference to himself, and then he plunges into the heart of his matter-his social commentary on the beneftts of simple poverty, which is a theme common to many of Burns's epistles as well as to much of his poetry. This epistle's thematic core comes in stanza ftve, concluding that neither titles, money, learning, nor any of the superftcial social rewards are of transcendent value because "The heart ay's the part ay, I That makes us right or wrang" (i/ ). We can witness this theme actually operating in many of his satires. Throughout the social commentary in the "Epistle to Davie" we ftnd a consistent focus on the role of fortune in controlling people's lives. Fortune makes Burns, as well as the "Great- folk," who and what they are; it gives them their respective gifts. Again, fortune is the active agent, the power principle, and people are the passive beneftciaries or victims. Yet SKinsley, p

90 Burns's Kilmarnock Verse Epistles 83 one of the key elements of the social commentary here is Burns's insistence on the vast difference in attitude toward fortune between himself and the "Great-folk." They are "careless, and fearless, I Of either Heaven or Hell" (ll. 81), whereas Burns recognizes his own helplessness in the face of the external forces. Burns resolves this theme, as he does in most of the other epistles, by passively and graciously accepting his lot and by using the gifts of fortune (and the Muse) to fullest advantage, thereby asserting a measure of creative free will. Though he focusses on the predominance of fortune in life, Burns in his epistles is not a strict determinist by any means. As we can see in the spontaneity formulas, the muse inspires him, but he will ultimately determine the direction his creation will take. Unfortunately, when the focus of "The Epistle to Davie" turns to the addressee the insight and force drown in the saccharine sentimentality of English neoclassical poetics. Stanza eight provides the flimsiest of transitions from the probing insight of his social consciousness to the transparent superficialities of the Shenstonian hymn to love. As if sensing this, Burns excuses himself and provides a conclusion for the epistle-again by using a spontaneity formula: 0, how that name inspires my style! The words come skelpan, rank and file, Amaist before I ken! The ready measure rins as fine, As Phoebus and the famous Nine Were glowran owre my pen. (ll ) The next epistle that appears in the Kilmarnock edition is the "Epistle to a Young Friend." Structurally, this one bears many similarities to the "Epistle to Davie." Both epistles have only brief introductions and then plunge into the central thematic issue by way of a transitional spontaneity formula: But how the subject theme may gang, Let time and chance determine; Perhaps it may turn out a Sang; Perhaps, turn out a Sermon. (ll. 5-8) Of course, the "Epistle to a Young Friend" turns out to be a sermon of a type unusual in Burns's canon. Like that to David Sillar, the "Epistle to a Young Friend" concerns the interplay of fortune and life. More so than the "Epistle to Davie," the one to Burns's young friend Andrew Aiken functions structurally and thematically as a genuine epistle, as opposed to being a poem with a salutation and conclusion added. Burns skillfully moves from the salutation to the beginning of his meditation on life by

91 84 Steven R. McKenna keeping Andrew's presence before us (and before Andrew himself) through the flrst two stanzas, by which time the poet eases us into the subject matter of the epistle-the paternal advice to Andrew (and by extension, to all innocent, idealistic youth) on how to get along in a less than ideal world. The apparent tone of Burns's sermon in the "Epistle to a Young Friend" is unlike that in any of the other Kilmarnock epistles in that he takes a dim view of life at the capricious hands of fortune, yet he does so without the overt, optimistic corrective that characterizes the epistle to James Smith. He preaches not merely acceptance but placation of the external power principles as the means by which to overcome life's seemingly inescapable potential for unpleasantness.6 As advice on how to get on in the world, we can take Burns's epistle at face value, believing in the momentary sincerity of "... may ye better reck the rede, I Than ever did th' Adviser!" (ll. 87-8). Indeed, the dark view expressed in this epistle flts well thematically with the poems immediately preceding it in the Kilmarnock edition: "Despondency, an Ode," "Man was made to Mourn," "Winter, a Dirge," "A Prayer, in the Prospect of Death," "To a Mountain Daisy," and "To Ruin." Burns uses the epistle to his young friend in a seemingly deliberate attempt to point out his own weaknesses, thereby lending force and sincerity to the last line. Yet, the epistle preaches the beneflt of a divided self, of a self insulated and isolated from the necessary joys and shocks of life that form the experiences by which everyone, especially the young and innocent, must learn and grow. Since the import of this epistle is so out of character given what we know about the poet (and presumably what Bums's immediate audience knew as well), an interpretation of this epistle as being at least partially ironic is too tempting to be resisted. The two epistles to Lapraik included in the Kilmarnock edition best illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the epistle genre and of Burns's skill in employing it. The "Epistle to J. L*****k, An Old Scotch Bard" opens with a poetic setting reminiscent of the "Epistle to Davie." Yet, whereas the epistle to Sillar begins in a serious tone and remains so, Burns in the flrst stanza of the epistle to Lapraik undercuts the serious call to the Muse by having the sources of his inspiration be "briers an' woodbines... Paitricks... And morning Poosie whiddan seen" (II. 1-3). Hardly the stuff of which epic invocations are made. Burns carries this light, comic tone throughout the epistle by means of self-deprecating humor and by the satire on schooling. 6Parts of his message to his young friend echo Hamlet. Specifically, in stanza five of the epistle Burns echoes Polonius's advice to Laertes (I,iii,58-81), and in I. 87 he echoes Ophelia's admonishment of Laertes' advice to her (I,iii,46-51). For a further discussion of the advice in the epistle see Thomas Crawford, Burns: A Study of the Poems and Songs (Stanford, 1960), pp

92 Burns's Kilmarnock Verse Epistles 85 As a poetic letter to the addressee, the first epistle to Lapraik fulfllls its nominal function-namely introducing Burns's personality and character (or the image of these) to a man who has never met him. For this reason, Lapraik would have no doubt taken a great interest in Burns's six-stanza homage to his (Lapraik's) talent as a song writer. Yet this homage also illustrates the chronic problem of self-referential material in the epistle-aspoem. We can admire the poetic skill employed in writing the epistle, but in the final analysis Burns's intimate communication to Lapraik forms a closed world to which we are afforded little access. However, the epistle to Lapraik, in typical Burns fashion, does move from the closed world of paniculars to the more universal concerns of the relationship of an and the artist to society-a favorite theme in these Kilmarnock epistles. Burns skillfully maneuvers away from his immediate relation to Lapraik and, while still keeping himself in the foreground, moves to the discussion of himself as poet in relation to the social forces around him. The result is not only poetic theorizing, but pointed social satire as well. This satire, similar to the themes of the other epistles, centers on the role of fortune in human affairs. Burns portrays himself as "just a Rhymer like by chance" (I. 50), and he links his poetic abilities to the Muse by way of another, albeit oblique, spontaneity formula: "Whene'er my Muse does on me glance, I I jingle at her" (ll. 53-4). This formula leads Burns to the hean of his universal theme wherein he illustrates the relative merits of inspiration versus formal learning. This culminates in stanza twelve: A set 0' dull, conceited Hashes, Confuse their brains in Colledge-classes! They gang in Stirks, and come out Asses, Plain truth to speak; An' syne they think to climb Parnassus By dint 0' Greek! (II ) The remainder of this epistle addresses itself primarily to Lapraik and does not carry the satiric edge of the central section. In striving for a conclusion Burns verges on lapsing into sentimentality similar to that found at the end of the "Epistle to Davie," though fortunately Burns holds his climactic sentiment in check by again relying on a spontaneity formula in the last stanza: "But to conclude my lang epistle, I As my auld pen's worn to the grissle... " (ll ). This epistle is one of the more successful in accomplishing its nominal task-namely to introduce Burns to a man whose poetic talent he admires but whom he does not know. Yet, the elevation of particulars to universals in the epistle-as-poem is less effective here than in other epistles. The second epistle to Lapraik, however, is a masterpiece of the epistle genre. Here Burns adroitly moves from the panicular to the universal and back again with supreme craftsmanship and rhetorical power of a kind only panially realized in the other epistles. The particular message of the

93 86 Steven R. McKenna personal communication is itself a universal vision of the glorification of simple, poetic poverty. This epistle no doubt was inspired as a response to and commentary on Lapraik's financial misfortunes in the years before Burns made his acquaintance as well as on Burns's own precarious financial state. Burns elevates the topic of poverty to a matter of fate and utilizes this to make a scathing statement on the nature of the materialist versus that of the artist. Burns's ringing conclusion boasts of the poet's transcendent nature. Initially, the epistle opens with the traditional epistolary acknowledgement of the addressee's previous letter. It then moves to a self-referential comic discussion of the Muse-as-wench, echoing Fergusson's similar treatment of the Muse in his "King's Birth-Day in Edinburgh." However, unlike Burns's treatment of the Muse in his other epistles, here he boastfully attempts to control her. The feeling produced by this epistle is that, in relation to his poetic powers, he controls this "ramfeezl'd hizzie" as much as she controls him. The ultimate effect of the extended introduction is, of course, a highly comic boast about Burns's own creative powers. This characterization of the Muse-as-wench culminates in Burns's longest and most complex spontaneity formula: Sae I gat paper in a blink, An' down gaed stumpie in the ink: Quoth I, 'Before I sleep a wink, 'I vow I'll close it; 'An' if ye [the Muse] winna mak it clink, 'By Jove I'll prose it!' Sae I've begun to scrawl, but whether In rhyme, or prose, or baith thegither, Or some hotch-potch that's rightly neither, Let time mak proof; But I shall scribble down some blether Just clean aff-loof. (ll ) These lines create the impression of present rime by means of the shifting tenses of the verbs from past to future in each of the stanzas. Burns is seemingly poised between the past moment of inspiration and the future act of actually writing what turns out to be the well-integrated content of the epistle. Burns's boastful, defiant address to the Muse in the introduction is later echoed in his view of fortune; he begins the philosophizing on fortune and Lapraik's poverty in equally defiant terms:

94 Burns's Kilmarnock Verse Epistles 87 My worthy friend, ne'er grudge an' carp, Tho' Fonune use you hard an' sharp; Come, kittle up your moorlan harp Wi' gleesome touch! Ne' er mind how Fonune waft an' warp; She's but a b-tch. (il. 43-8) And just as Bums triumphs over the lethargic Muse, he similarly triumphs over fonune's eternal torment: "I, Rob, am here" (I. 60). The only thing he desires from this external power is that it '''Gie me 0' wit an' sense a lift... '" (I. 74). Bums skillfully interweaves the themes of fonune and poetic ability with the class consciousness of rich versus poor. And unlike most of the other epistles, the second epistle to Lapraik does not falter or lose its focus at the end. Bums here needs no spontaneity formula by which to conclude because he effectively unites the temporal and universal thematic strands into a rhetorically powerful and universally applicable coda in the last stanzas: o Mandate, glorious and divine! The followers 0' the ragged Nine, Poor, thoughtless devils! yet may shine In glorious light, While sordid sons 0' Mammon's line Are dark as night! Tho' here they scrape, an' squeeze, an' growl, Their wonhless nievfu' of a soul, May in some future carcase howl, The forest's fright; Or in some day-detesting owl May shun the light Then may L*****k and B**** arise, To reach their native, kindred skies, And sing their pleasures, hopes an' joys, In some mild sphere, Still closer knit in friendship's ties Each passing year! (ii ) Thus, he resolves the issue of fonune's negative social effects on the anist by means of the anist's own transcendent power, though he couches this power in the passivity of reincarnation. "To W. S****n, Ochiltree" lacks the unity and cohesiveness of the second epistle to Lapraik. The epistle to Simson begins with two traditionally epistolary stanzas followed by three self- referential stanzas

95 88 Steven R. McKenna apparently following up on the theme of Simson's previous letter to Burns. Then quite abruptly in stanza six Burns begins his panegyric to Scotland, which occupies eleven stanzas. This praise of Scotland's glorious past offers a development on the theme of the poet's transcendent nature as it culminated in the second epistle to Lapraik. The poet not only transcends, but like a god he can also bestow transcendence. The epistle to Simson serves not only as a boast of Scotland's onetime (and future) glory; it simultaneously praises the native, vernacular poetic traditions that in large part have helped create for Burns this glorious past and will poetically elevate Scotland's rivers to the universal stature of the Tiber, Thames, and the Seine. Burns is indeed speaking from his own experience of reading Blind Hary's Wallace when he (Burns) writes: At Wallace' name, what Scottish blood, But boils up in a spring-tide flood! Oft have our fearless fathers strode By Wallace' side, Still pressing onward, red-wat-shod, Or glorious dy'd! (ll. 61-6) Through nature--particularly Scottish nature-the poet will find his Muse, whereby he will fulfill the great role of singing the praises of Scotland and transcend the mean, base existence of the worldly folk: The warly race may drudge an' drive, Hog-shouther, jundie, stretch an' strive Let me fair Nature's face descrive, And I, wi' pleasure, Shall let the busy, grumbling hive Bum owre their treasure. (II. 91-6) Thomas Crawford sees this stanza as being the real conclusion of the epistle. 7 This is true only if we wish to view the panegyric as stating the central thematic purpose of the epistle and to view the postscript as merely an addition, an afterthought. Indeed, Burns would have us believe that this is the case. He employs yet another spontaneity formula to create the impression that his charming little lunar allegory was not the idea closest to his heart at the time of composing the epistle; and, as Crawford 7Crawford, p. 98.

96 Burns's Kilmarnock Verse Epistles 89 affirms,8 the introduction to the postscript serves to heighten the epistle's infonnality: My memory's no worth a preen; I had amaist forgotten clean, Ye bad me write you what they mean By this new-light... (II ) Again Bums utilizes the spontaneity fonnula as a transitional device to get to his central concern. In this epistle, however, there are two messages, two themes, that Bums wants to convey. One is the universal-the nature of the poet's role in creating a national myth. The other is more particular-the Auld Licht I New Licht argument-though through the use of allegory even this narrow historic subject becomes comically emblematic for all the dogmatic conflicts between old truths and the new ones that challenge them. Though these two thematic purposes appear divergent given the epistle's structure, they are not unrelated to Bums's larger poetic philosophy as expressed in the epistles. There is in fact thematic unity to the epistle to Simson. Both the hymn to Scotland and the allegory of the moon conclude with Bums proclaiming the poet's ability and need to transcend the myopic values and parochial concerns of the un-poetic people. The epistle to Rankine is Bums's earliest epistle, though the last to appear in the Kilmarnock edition. In many ways it is quite unremarkable when placed in comparison with the other, more philosophical epistles.9 However, beyond the biographical element there are several characteristics that are worthy of note. There exists the chronic problem of transition from the particular epistolary intimacy to the more universal allegory of the partridge. Here Bums has no transition. The epistle moves abruptly into its comic core. Yet this little story does echo (and in reality prefigures) the defiant attitudes found in many of the other epistles. Bums, through particularly bawdy humor, undercuts the seriousness with which the Kirk views fornication and its punishment. And in keeping with many of the other epistles, Bums relies on a spontaneity fonnula to conclude his epistle to Rankine: "It pits me ay as mad's a hare; I So I can rhyme nor 8Crawford, p Franklyn Bliss Snyder in his The Life of Robert Burns (New York, 1932), p. 1l8. responding to the apparent biographical content. says of the "Epistle to John Rankine": Bruns rarely wrote with more verve than when composing the thirteen stanzas of this clever but blackguardly epistle. Never again was he to be so successful in this vein.

97 90 Steven R. McKenna write nae moor" (II. 73-4). The speaker gets in trouble, but he has the last laugh at the restricting social value system whose rules and parochialism he adroitly satirizes. This theme of transcendence characterizes, to a greater or lesser degree, all of the Kilmarnock epistles. Burns capitalizes on the fact that most people, regardless of rank or circumstance, believe at one time or another in some sort of external force that controls life-the Muse, fortune, God, or whatever-and to which all people are answerable. Indeed, most people at one time or another feel, as Burns does, that they have been blessed with gifts or cursed by forces beyond human control, that there is no choice but to be thankful for the good and strive as hard as possible to overcome the bad. Additionally, Burns's epistles grapple with the problems and philosophies of life within the social organizations. He raises the fundamental and eternal considerations of the relationships between art, the artist, and society. In Weston's words, He keeps the formula of an elite group in conflict with the majority by dramatizing his idea that poets, lovers, and sentimentalists are at basic odds with the materialists of this world.10 In this sense, the Kilmarnock epistles serve as a poetic manifesto, a defense of poetry in the classic sense, whereby Burns provides his audience the context and criteria by which to view the other works in his first volume and by which the wider audience can also view itself. University of Rhode Island loweston, p. 204.

98 Rodger L. Tarr "Let us bum our sbips": Carlyle, Sarah Austin, and House-Hunting in London Carlyle's decision in 1834 to move from Craigenputtoch to London to seek his literary fortunes was not easily reached, and was one fraught with paradox. Indeed, it was, as he was to describe it later, a time of "heavy fields of memory, laborious, beautiful, sad and sacred," a time of "diligences, strenuous and sometimes happy," and a time in the words of Jane Welsh Carlyle to "bum our ships... and get on march,"l However, as the appointed time for departure from Scotland neared, the situation of removal became traumatized by the fact that no suitable lodging in London had yet been found. It was not as if Carlyle had not tried to relieve the burden of uncertainty that haunted both him and Jane. For several months, but principally from March through April, he had been using London contacts with the hope of circumventing the trials of househunting. Sarah Austin was his principal resource, and in fact in the second week of March she had managed to locate in Kensington a potential residence for the Carlyles.2 However, because of the remoteness of lsee Reminiscences, ed. Charles Eliot Norton (London, 1887), n, Even though the efforts to secure the Kensington home proved unsuccessful, Carlyle continued to accept the good graces of Sara Taylor Austin ( ) when he arrived in London in May to begin his own search for a residence. However, he was later to

99 92 Rodger L. Tarr Craigenputtoch, Mrs. Austin's letter infomrlng them of the letting procedures did not reach the Carlyles for more than a week after it was written. Exasperated but not defeated, Carlyle answered immediately with commitment and gratitude-and questions-on 20 March This letter, one of the last to be written from Craigenputtoch, is printed here in full from manuscript for the first time.3 The totality of the letter provides unique insight into the machinations the Carlyles went through during those fateful months in It also provides unique insight into Carlyle himself and his willingness to accept the domestic duties of husband while facing the uncertain literary challenges ahead. My Dear Mrs. Austin, Craigenputtoch, 20th March, If the Kensington Householders are like the Medes and Persians whose law alterth not, our completely little speculation has all gone awry, and this sheet is already little other than waste paper. My date, you perceive is the 20th; and your Letter did not reach us till late in the evening of the appointed 19th. We have at the utmost only two Postdays weekly here; in general only one (the Wednesday, which answers to your London Monday); and tho', last week, as it chanced, both Postdays did their duty, your Express unhappily fell between them; and so here we are!4 I much fear, our Ladyday Competitor will have carried the palm; the rather as he remember her for her "rather poorly done" translations from the German and came to characterize her as "femme alors celebre." Still, he concludes, "Mrs. Austin affected much sisterhood with us." See RerrUniscences, 1,172. 3A portion of this letter was first printed in Janet Ross's Three Generations of English Women (London, 1888), I, 84-86; and has been reprinted without change in The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Durham, NC, 1981), IX, The above printings omit significant portions of the letter and, of course, are not founded upon the manuscript. For convenience of reference, I have adopted here the policies of presentation from the Collected Letters. This letter is part of the Rodger L. Tarr Carlyle Collection, and is printed here with the kind pennission of Anthony Garnett. 40n 27 March 1834, Carlyle writes to his brother John, "Mrs. Austin writes in the most cheerful way about undertaking to get us a house; nay last week there came a Letter that she had already got one (in Kensington, rent 32, and seemingly quite suitable to us); only that we 'must decide before the 19th,' and, alas, the 19th was within three hours or so of terminating when the Letter arrived! I walked over to Minnyhive, next day, with an Answer: 'Take it by all means'; but I fancy it would be too late, and so we are still at sea in that respect" (Collected Letters, VII, 123).

100 Carlyle and House-hunting in London 93 has now only some four free days before Ladyday itself arrive. What is to be attempted, however, we will still attempt. A Moorland Post-office lies some six miles from us, over the Mountains: thither will I, this blessed spring day, with the sheet in my pocket; that in me, whatever be Destiny, there be no delay. You are very kind and helpful; and yet it is almost cruel so to task your kindness. With clamorous Printer's Devils one has enough to do; no need of the Devils to join in the hunt! For the rest, as to "responsibility", take no thought of if. I am well persuaded you can please us better than we could ourselves were we already on the spot. My whole soul grows sick in the business of house-seeking; I get to think, with a kind of comfort, of the grim house six feet by three, which will need no seeking. In return, I ought to profess myself humble in my requisitions as to that matter. I must have air to breathe; I must have sleep also, for which latter object, procu/, 0 procul erte [away, away with you], ye accursed hives of Bugs, ye loudbawling Watchmen, that awaken the world every half hour to say what o'clock it isis Other indispensable requisitions I have none. The House which Lucykin6 and you describe so hopefully, seems as if it had been expressly built for us. Our answer is at once: secure it for Whitsunday,7 if it be still attainable. Till we hear otherwise, we will still have a kind of hope that it may. If you do so proper there will then be various other inquiries to trouble you with, various minor arrangements to tax your kind discretion with. For example, what are the fixtures beyond grates? We have window-curtains, venetian blinds &c &c which will be useless here, which might chance to fit them. The measured Dimensions of all rooms and windows (if you can procure them) will bring the whole matter before us. The general outline of the Housekin I already have, by assurance of Imagination: a sunk story, three raised ones; the little bedquilt of garden before the house or behind it, as it shall please the Fates. - You must, on the whole, consent to consider us as a Brother & Sister in this matter, and freely lend us your head as well as your affection. My Dame bids me say that as to Carpets (since those here, not indeed of great value, will go to waste if left), nothing can be decided, till we know the sizes, and according to your judgement the quality and 5Carlyle is perhaps thinking here of his watchman-metaphor from Sartor Resartus (1833-4); cr. Book I, Chapter I; and Book III, Chapter XII. 6Lucy Austin ( ). 7Pentecost, or the seventh Sunday after Easter. Carlyle is mistaken here in his assumption that in London Whitsunday would be a recognized term-day, or quarter-day, from which to rent a house, as was the custom in Scotland. See Collected Letters, VII, 149.

101 94 Rodger L. Tarr cheapness. The only thing that will be certain, of that sort, is perhaps a fixture already: some sort of wax-cloth for a lobby And now if the Ladyday Pretender only find himself thrown out, as we prey the Heavens he may-! -In the other case, we will still console ourselves with the Scotch adage: "As good fish is in the Sea as ever came out of it"; which, if it have served for broken-hearted Scotch Werters, and healed them more than once, may well do for us. Und damit Gott befohlen [And commend it to God]. I look to London with Bodings of a huge, dim, most varied character. You shall, with my whole hean, have as much of the "Hoping to do yourself', as you can undertake in me is little hope, or only Hope of a kind that I shall call "desperate"; a Hope that recognizes all earthly things to be Lug' und Trug [Falsehood and Deceit], and yet under them, and symbolically hid in them are Ewiger und Wahres [Eternity and Truth]: oft this same desperate Hope I have for many years (God be thanked for it!) never been bereft, nay on the whole grown full and fuller of it. For the present, I be quite becalmed; not calm; alas, that is a very different matter. I am doing and can set a ti[me]8 doing, nothing, or as good as that. No line have I written for months; only [word missing?] read whole heaps of Books, with little profit. In any case, befall what may, I see it to be the hest of the Unseen Guide that I should come to you; so I come getrosten muthes [sustained by Courage]. You, my dear Friend, and your kind hopeful and helpful words, fall like Sunlight thro' the waste weltering chaos: may the Heavens bless you for it! And so with all manner of good wishes, and as much of Hope, "desperate", and other as may be, Ever your Affectionate, T. Carlyle. My wife full of cares, tumults and headaches, and I doubt also of indolence, bribes me to write this Letter not unwillingly, which you are to take as hers and her love with it. Illinois State University 8Here part of a word---and below a whole word-is missing because the manuscript is tom where the original seal was placed.

102 Deanna Delmar Evans Ambivalent Artifice in Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rois Dunbar's splendid garden of allegorical figures in The Thrissill and the Rois constitutes a problem for many serious students because the dazzling imagery in a "landscape splashed with exuberant color"l seems to communicate little, to use the words of Legouis, that "touches the heart or the mind."2 Moreover, even after one allows for permissible extravagance to announce a politically-arranged marriage, the poet's borrowed conventions of the traditional May morning, the dream vision, the lovely garden, the heraldic symbolism provoke many of his warmest admirers to decry the artificiality, the foreignness of the poem.3 Its studied elegance turns lalbert C. Baugh, A Literary History of England (New York, 1948), p Emile Legouis, A History of English Literature, tr. Helen Douglas Irvine (New York, Macmillan, 1960; 1st pub. 1926), p Por example, Tom Scott in Dunbar: A Critical Exposition of the Poems (Edinburgh, 1966), p. 48, contends that the poem suffers from excessive imitation of convention and calls it corrupted by "the decadence of the court poetry of the time"; Edmund Reiss, William Dunbar (Boston, 1979), pp observes that the poem is "excessive in the use of artifice" and urges the modem reader to be tolerant because aureate terms "were a way of poetic experimentation, a means of allowing the vernacular to participate in the high style and to equal the languages of Antiquity."

103 96 Deanna Delmar Evans away readers who seek a more genuine Dunbar in poems with colloquial Scots language, political satire, and earthly realism. We may allay the "problem" of excessive artifice, however, by studying the poet's tactics as he in fact encourages our awareness of the problem. The problem is part of his message. By his very use of a dream vision, Dunbar invites us to wonder about the reliability of his description; his reluctant narrator persona complains of being asked to write about that which he does not believe in; contrasts in levels of language underscore this discrepancy. Moreover, the series of formal contracts in the three parliaments, allegorized as beasts, birds, and flowers, could be seen in light of preceding signals, not just as ennobled causes for celebration but also as warnings against wishful thinking. In short, there is ambivalence in this artifice.4 While Dunbar, through the narrator, communicates a truly beautiful and idealistic scene which every Scotsman would like to believe is true, he also warns us to remember that all this loveliness gilds over the harsher reality of contemporary political and social life. The important signal of rhetorical intention comes in the poor "slugird's" response to Lady May's command to wake up and write something in her honor about the beautiful day: Quhairto, quod I, Sall I uprys at morrow For in this May few birdis herd I sing? Thai haif moir caus to weip and plane thair sorrow, Thy air it is nocht holsum nor benyng; Lord Eolus dois in thy sessone ring; So busteous ar the blastis of his horne, Amang thy bewis to walk I haif forborne. (1/ )5 In this response, we find more than a homely, comic touch characterizing an inept poet persona. The references to foul weather alert us to the discrepancy between observable Scots reality and the glorified tone of what the lady asks for and receives. To awaken a questioning attitude in his audience as well, Dunbar combines the inevitable uncertainties of a dream 4Professor David V. Harrington of Gustavus Adolphus College suggested the term ambivalent artifice to me after reading through an earlier version of this paper; I am grateful to him for this and other suggestions which I have incorporated into the present version. 5The Poems of William Dunbar, edited by James Kinsley (Oxford, 1979), pp This and all other line references to the poem are from this edition.

104 William Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rois 97 vision with a grouchy narrator who directly challenges the legitimacy of his writing assignment. Parallel contrasts in diction further enhance this early signal of rhetorical design. The narrator ends his stanza describing the unpleasant god of the winds in homely, alliterative lines. In contrast, Lady May renews her demand for a song, this time in praise of the rose, finishing her stanza in concentrated aureate terms: Go see the birdis how thay sing and dance, Illumynit our with orient skyis brycht Annamyllit richely with new asur lycht (fl ) Dunbar, of course, cannot be accused of telling us that his narrator is right and Lady May is wrong. Rather, he shows us that a court poet is sometimes encouraged to describe things more favorably than seems natural in a grumpy, early morning mood. Such was Dunbar's attitude towards the task he had at hand, praising the royal wedding of James IV and Margaret Tudor. Clearly its history was not the stuff of which drams are made, and Dunbar was neither hypocrite nor fool. Margaret Tudor was a child when her father, Henry VII, offered her to James as a bride in No doubt Henry's proposal was prompted by James' activity at the time, providing military support to Perkin Warbeck, a Yorkist pretender to Henry's throne. James, instead of accepting the proposal, collaborated with Henry's enemy-margaret, Duchess of Burgundy and sister to the late Edward IV-and with her troops mounted an unsuccessful invasion of England. Only after suffering military defeat and ratifying a truce with Henry in 1499,6 did James agree to the marriage proposal. In the fall of 1501, James sent a delegation to England, which seems to have included William Dunbar among its members,7 to negotiate treaties for the marriage. Eventually three separate documents were drawn up and signed by the commissioners on January 24, The royal wedding took place on August 8, 1503 at Holyrood Abbey; then James waited yet another month to claim his bride so that Margaret would have attained the mature age of thirteen years and ten months. 8 By this time James was nearly middle-aged and notorious for 6R.L. Mackie, King James N of Scotland: A Brief Survey of His Life and Times (Edinburgh. 1958). p John W. Baxter, William Dunbar: A Biographical Study (Edinburgh, 1952), pp. 89; Mackie. p. 97.

105 98 Deanna Delmar Evans libertine activities. Indeed it was rumored that Margaret Drummond, one of his favorite companions, was poisoned so that he would have no second thoughts about entering the marriage.9 The royal wedding was performed with great pomp and ceremony. Perhaps, as in Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale," Venus laughed; for James did become a knight in armor for his bride, riding out to Dalkeith to meet her entourage as it journeyed north from England. There unhelmeted, with red hair and beard waving in the wind, he greeted Margaret with a kiss and escorted her to jousts, pageants, balls, and feasts held in their honor along the way.l0 Festivities continued throughout the time before the wedding and for five days thereafter.ll A fortune was spent on dress,12 feasts, music architectural renovations (such as new windows for Holyrood Palace adorned with thistles and roses),13 at least one magnificent book of hours,14 and no doubt a few commissioned poems. The Thrissill and the Rois was Dunbar's contribution to the wedding festivities. For a poet inclined to satire, the task of honoring this arranged marriage must have appeared difficult. Dunbar need not have been part of the marriage delegation to discern the discrepancies in age and sophistication between James and Margaret. Indeed, we see hints of the January May motif in the poem: in the introductory stanzas the personification of 9Ian Simpson Ross, William Dunbar (Leiden, 1981), p. 53; Ross also points out that shortly after the wedding James goes to visit Janet Kennedy, Drummond's replacement, at the Castle of Damaway, which he had given to her (p. 58); Ranald Nicolson, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (New York, 1974), pp , discusses James' three favorites and his children by them. lobaxter, pp : Ross, pp llross, p Ross, p. 58, indicates that James' two gowns cost 600 apiece; Leslie MacFarlane, "The Book of Hours of James IV and Margaret Tudor," The Innes Review, 11 (1960), 6, indicates that the cloth alone of Margaret's state dress cost Baxter, p. 113; Ross, p This book is described in great detail by Leslie MacFarlane, pp. 3-21, who also provides several illustrations; presently it is housed in the manuscript collection in the Osterreichische National bibliothek in Vienna, Codex Lat. 1897; according to MacFarlane it "was almost certainly a gift to Margaret Tudor on the occasion of her marriage to J ames IV."

106 William Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rois 99 May is dressed in the Tudor colorsls-"quhyt, reid, broun and blew" (l.19)-and thereby linked with Margaret; the older James, bold and impetuous, is suggested by the allegorical figure of the cold, blustery wind god Eolus who rings in his "sessone" (/.33). (A pun on season/session surely is intended here as a humorous comment on James' oratorical power in the Scottish Parliament.) Yet the joke is gentle, and Dunbar succeeds in creating a majestic epithalamium that offends no one. In this respect the poem is "a triumph of fruitful obedience to conventions," as C.S. Lewis once commented.l6 Dunbar's triumph, however, results not from slavish imitation of earlier courtly poems but from his innovative manipulation of diction and exploitation of the dream vision form. As A.C. Spearing observes, Dunbar uses the dream vision structure to explore ideas, especially to grapple with the problem of reality versus fiction: "In the more specific terms of this particular poem, the art of poetry merges into that of heraldry-both modes of artifice which convey meaning not by imitating the surface appearance of every day reality, but by stepping back from it, selecting certain objects, and transforming them into the symbols of ideas."l7 By mythopoeic transformation of real people and events into fictional personae and heraldic symbols, Dunbar depicts first his own struggles in writing the poems and then honors the marriage and Scotland's new queen without violating his artistic integrity. He does this by honoring the marriage for what it was intended to be-a peace treaty-and Margaret for her role in it-a peace token. Had he tried to present a young woman named Margaret as a peace symbol, he would have degraded her by ignoring all other aspects of her personality; however, by reducing her to the Tudor rose, he was able to focus on a single aspect of her existence. Similarly, he so reduced James and the marriage treaties. In the process Dunbar explained the political hopes for the marriage and included a brief lesson on kingship, possibly incorporating ideas gamered from De regno, Ad Regem Cypri by St. Thomas Aquinas.l8 lsbouteu's Heraldry, revised by C.W. Scott-Giles and J.P. Brook-Little (London, 1950; rev., 1966), p. 211, lists the Tudor colors and indicates also that the Tudor badge is a rising sun or half sun. l6engiish Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford, 1952; rpt. 1962), p. 91. l7medievai Dream-Poetry (Cambridge, 1976), p l8j.c. Nitzche, "The Rose of Kingship in William Dunbar's Thrissill and the Rois," University of Mississippi Studies in English, 2 (1981), 25-35, argues that Dunbar incorporates Aquinas' ideas into the poem.

107 100 Deanna Delmar Evans Only a master of ambivalent artifice could succeed in such a task. Dunbar carefully blends colloquial, heraldic, and aureate diction throughout the poem to convey multiple meanings. The opening lines of the poem demonstrate his verbal artistry: Quhen Merche wes with variand windis past And Appryll had with hir silver schouris Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast.... (II. 1-3) These lines are an obvious imitation of the opening lines of Chaucer's "General Prologue," but the final word, blast, is our signal that this poem is not another "Chaucerian" imitation. With onomatopoeic effect this colloquial word forces us to re-evaluate what we are reading. At the same time it is our first clue that the poem's narrator is an inept, reluctant, and uninspired poet. Simultaneously, the same lines prepare us for the heraldic allegory to follow. The modifier orient (which Dunbar places parallel to the word silver in the line before it) has a semantic relationship with or. Hence ambiguity enriches the first lines of the poem, subtly preparing the reader for the allegory to follow, while allowing Dunbar, through the voice of the reluctant narrator, to expose his own misgivings about writing the poem. The portrait of the inept narrator is sustained throughout the introductory stanzas. His speaking vocabulary consists of homely single and disyllabic words and simple phrasing: "For in this May few birdis herd I sing" (/.30). Yet even such a line is not without artifice: the narrator's insistence on a specific time advises us that the poem is being written for a particular occasion. Moreover, the presence of allegorical personifications and the need to describe them in aureate and heraldic diction result in a kind of ambivalence that sustains the portrait of the uninspired narrator and, at the same time, prepares the reader for the heraldic allegory to follow. For example, in the first stanza Dunbar introduces a heraldic personification of May; as this figure enters the narrator's bed chamber, the narrator becomes aware of "the tendir odouris reid and quhyt" (1.6); the subtle presence of the Tudor colors here foreshadows the later appearance of the heraldic Tudor rose in the garden scene. Moreover, shifts in types of diction contribute to the action of the poem. Dunbar uses such a shift to signal the narrator's arrival in the garden "illumynit our with orient skyis brycht / Anarnillit richely with new asur lycht" (1l.41-2), which is also the fictional narrator's moment of inspiration: In serk and mantill eftir hir I went In to this garth, most dulce and redolent... ( )

108 William Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rois 101 In this couplet, the narrator's colloquial diction dominates until the word garth; the pair of aureate adjectives following indicates that when the narrator enters the garden, his vocabulary becomes inspired, creating a change of tone. In the garden portion of the poem, the narrator's is no longer the dominant voice; Dame Nature, the handmaiden of God, is in charge. Her presence in the garden accounts for its being a type of Eden before the Fall: a perfectly ordered hierarchy governed according to uncorrupted Natural Law. The parliaments convened by Dame Nature suggest a way humans can achieve a hannonious political state where each person knows his place and all submit to a benevolent ruler who maintains the peace and governs according to the dictates of Reason. By introducing Dame Nature into the allegory, Dunbar idealizes the royal marriage. The presence of the Medieval literary goddess suggests that the English-Scottish marriage was prompted by Reason and blessed by God; consequently, the once inimical nations should flourish now in peace and harmony. Using aureate personification, Dunbar symbolizes the royal wedding day as the dawning of a new day in Scotland's history: The purpour sone with tendir bemys reid In orient bricht as angell did appeir Throw goldin skyis putting up his heid, Quhois gilt tressis schone so wondir cleir That all the world tuke confort fer and neir To luke upone his fresche and blisfull face... (1l.50-55) The action of the allegory begins when Dame Nature issues commands to her subordinates. Her summonses and injunctions allegorize the actual treaties that preceded the royal marriage; in this way Dunbar suggests that those diplomatic acts were motivated by reason. The first injunction commands the warring kings to make peace and reprimands those who encourage them in making war: Dame Nature gaif ane inhibitioun thair To fers Neptunus and Eolus the bawld Nocht to perturb the wattir nor the air, (//.64-6) Scho bad eik Juno, goddes of the sky, That scho the hevin suld keip amene and dry. (//.69-70)

109 102 Deanna Delmar Evans In this passage Dunbar alludes to the peace treaty of 1499, signed after the Warbeck incident.19 Henry, the royal commander of England's navy, is allegorized as Neptunus while James, who impetuously took up arms for Warbeck's cause, is "eolus the bawld." Margaret of Burgundy becomes Juno, an appropriate identification for the woman who actually bore this nickname at Henry's court because "she made trouble in heaven and in earth."20 Dame Nature's next activity is to summon the three parliaments. In these Dunbar uses allegory and heraldic diction to describe the contents of the three marriage documents drawn up in Dame Nature, the voice of Reason, advises )ames of his obligations in each. The first, the peace treaty, is symbolized by the heraldic animal parliament with James being represented by the red lion on the Scottish arms.22 His military prowess is suggested by the description: "awfull beist full terrible" (11.92). The peace treaty provided for "a good, real, sincere, true, entire, and firm peace, band, league, and confederation on land and sea, to endure for ever."23 In the fiction of the poem Dunbar translates these terms into poetry, having Dame Nature command: Onto thi leigis go furth, and keip the lawis" (/.105). She further advises the lion to "Exerce justice with mercy and conscience" (1.106) and to "Do law elyk to aipis and unicomis (1.109). The second parliament corresponds to the second treaty, the indenture against border warfare. In this treaty each king agreed to restrain the unlawful acts of his respective subjects and to turn over to each other's respective warden those malefactors taking refuge over the border. Subjects could be given the right of reprisal only if the provisions of the border treaty were not observed.24 In allegorizing this treaty, Dunbar has Dame Nature sharpen the eagle's quills "as steill dertis" (1.21) so that this regal bird of prey, another heraldic symbol for James, can enforce the conditions; moreover, the eagle is urged to treat all his subjects alike: 19Mackie, p Mary Clive, This Sun of York: A Biography of Edward N (New York, 1974), p Baxter, pp. 91-2; R.L. Mackie, pp In two portraits of James, included in R.L. Mackie, facing p. 36 and facing p. 149, the former by Hugo van der Goes and the latter referred to as The Seton Armorial, the lion is depicted graphically exactly as Dunbar describes him: "Reid of his cullour... On feild of gold... With flour delycis sirculit lustely" ( ). 23Mackie, p Mackie, p. 98.

110 William Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rois 103 And bawd him be als just to awppis and owlis As unto pacokkis, papingais or crennis, And mak a law for wycht fowlis and for wrennis; And lat no fowll of ravyne do efferay Nor devoir birdis bot his awin pray. (/ ) It is noteworthy that Dunbar perhaps further enriches this part of the allegory by referring to the heraldic bird emblems of some of Scotland's noble families.25 The third parliament, the parliament of flowers, corresponds to the marriage contract. flowers are most appropriate here because the actual document was decorated in the margin with a border of roses, thistles, and marguerites.26 Dunbar represents James as the Scottish thistle and Margaret as the Tudor rose. Perhaps Dunbar suspected that the everamorous James would fmd it difficult to honor his marriage vows, for Dame Nature gives the thistle a double set of instructions. first, he is told to conduct himself according to his station in his personal and family relationships: And sen thow art king, thow be descreit; Herb without vertew thow hold nocht of sic pryce As herb of vertew and odor sueit.... ( ) Then she reminds him to "forsake all others": Nor hald non udir flour in sic denty As the fresche Ros of cull our reid and quhyt... (/ ) When Dame Nature completes her advice to the king, she turns to the rose and offers her blessing. At this point in the allegory Dunbar shifts his emphasis from the marriage contract to praise for Scotland's new queen and the hope she brings for peace. The remaining garden stanzas are all tributes to Margaret. The diction is more formal and considerably more aureate; the tone becomes reverent. The final stanza of the allegory resembles a medieval Latin 25JoOO Woodward and George Burnett, Woodward's A Treatise on Heraldry British and Foreign (Rutland, Vennont, 1969), pp , list some of the following birds as heraldic emblems: the crane in the arms of the Scottish Lords Cranstoun, the Parrot (papingais) in the coat of Perdie, the peacock in the arms of Pawne, and the eagle in the arms of the Ramseys. 26Baxter, p. 114.

111 104 Deanna Delmar Evans hymn in honor of the Blessed Virgin and concludes with a benediction for Margaret sung by "the commoun voce uprais of birdis small" (1.176). Their prayer is for Margaret's well being: Our perle, our pleasans and our paramour, Our peax, our play, our plane felicite: Chryst the con serf frome all adversite. ( ) There is a sharp contrast in diction and tone between this passage revealing the collective Scottish hope for the royal marriage and the final stanza of the poem wherein the narrator quite realistically and unimaginatively states that he was awakened. The sudden change in diction signals the re-entry of the narrator's personality. Than all the birdis sang with sic a schout That Iannone awolk quhair that I lay... ( ) The narrator's awakening response to the bird motet of his vision contributes to the poem's closure and at the same time links this frame stanza to the fictional allegory preceding it The homely word sehout awakens the reader as well as the narrator to the real world. Its onomatopoeic effect in this line parallels the function of blast in the frrst stanza. By thus enabling the reader to share the narrator's waking experience, Dunbar emphasizes that the idealized world of Dame Nature's garden is fiction. Once again Dunbar has used ambivalent artifice to call attention to the discrepancy between literature and life. The diction and substance of the remainder of the final stanza sustain the realistic atmosphere. The disillusioned narrator appears to be as uninspired as he was in the early stanzas. Ostensibly grappling for words, he concludes his narrative in a plain, literal style: And with a braid I turnyt me about To se this court, bot all wer went away. (1l.185-6) Here the narrator exhibits more than disappointment that his vision of a new Eden has vanished. He confesses that he is "halflingis in affrey" as he writes "Off lusty May upone the nynte morrow" (/189). His reference to a particular date is yet another indication that he is back in his real world. The narrator's literal and self-conscious statements have constituted an essential part of Dunbar's ambivalent artifice throughout the poem. By having the narrator describe feelings of frustration, Dunbar subtly draws attention to his actual artistic achievement in the poem and simultaneously disguises his ambivalent feelings about its subject. The narrator's confession of feeling "halflingis in affrey" reminds the reader that the poem's lovely garden-an imaginative, idyllic picture of Scotland transformed by

112 William Dunbar's The Thrissill and the Rois 105 the royal wedding-has not been realized. It is significant that the narrator's fear does not appear to result from his poetic activity but from his rude awakening; he seems upset that "all wer went away" (1.186). The persona of the anxious narrator enables Dunbar to express his genuine fear that Scotland's political hopes for the marriage are as unrealistic as the dream garden he has created. Dunbar, like his narrator, remains a pragmatist; he also understands human nature. While he undoubtedly hoped that the marriage would bring peace to Scotland, Dunbar apparently also realized that ideal kings governed by natural reason existed only in the fictitious gardens of poets' dreams. His experience had taught him that "fers Neptunus" and "Eolus the bawld" would have difficulty keeping even a temporary truce. Thus, Dunbar's skillful use of ambivalent artifice enabled him to honor a royal wedding with dignity and at the same time to express his own reservations about its success. In so doing, Dunbar carried on that ancient, bardic tradition of poet as prophet, for a decade later his worst fears were realized at flodden field. Bemidji State University

113 Elizabeth Huberman The Growth ora Poem: Edwin Muir's "Day and Night" Because it is not often that the original seed from which a poem grew can be identified, and that growth traced, a single manuscript sentence in an undated notebook among Edwin Muir's papers in the National Library of Scotland is of particular importance. For that sentence, "Now 1 lie down and wrap the night about me,"l is manifestly the seed out of which developed the entire poem, "Day and Night," printed in Muir's last collection, One Foot in Eden. But merely to say this, of course, is not enough. The case requires proof. Just how did the poem emerge from this beginning? How did its three stanzas unfold, image by image and syllable by syllable, from this one sentence? Naturally, there is now no way to reconstruct the process of composition in Muir's mind; yet from careful study of both poem and sentence, as well as of Muir's other writings-particularly his Collected Poems and the two versions of his autobiography-it is possible to show a pattern of development from manuscript to poem, from seed to final flower. Obviously, no proof is needed to show the likeness between the original sentence and the first two lines of the poem: "I wrap the blanket of the lundated manuscript note, Muir Collection, Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

114 Edwin Muir's "Day and Night" lo7 night I About me, fold on fold."2 The two are almost identical. But once the poem continues, different ideas and images inevitably appear. Take the four lines: And remember how as a child Lost in the newness of the light I first discovered what is old From the night and the soft night wind. Now there is a child, there is daylight and a contrast of day with night and new with old, none of which were apparently present in that first sentence. Yet when carefully considered, that sentence does contain all these elements in latent fonn. For although it mentions no child, it definitely suggests a child's action in wrapping the night, like a security blanket, about him. More, the first lines of the poem confmn this suggestion. Both sentence and poem evoke a childhood scene, with the child lying bundled in bed, secure and warm. Again, the first clause of the manuscript sentence-"now I lie down"-points plainly to a child's world and a child's trust in the protection of sleep, since these are words that echo the traditional children's bedtime prayer: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I I pray the Lord my soul to keep." When the child himself materializes in the third line of the poem, therefore, his appearance simply makes explicit what was implicit in the original note. So, too, are the other major themes and structural patterns which detennine the course of the poem implicit in that note. For instance, the image of night as the child's blanket, a source of warmth and comfort, readily leads to the contrasting idea that the day is somehow less trustworthy, while this in tum leads both to the child's daytime confusion in the poem's fourth line and to the continuing opposition, throughout the poem, of day and night, light and dark. What is more, diction and structure of the manuscript sentence indicate that the speaker, the "I," is not a child. Rather, it is an adult-indeed, according to the third stanza, an old man-who by repeating a childhood gesture recaptures the child he used to be. As the poem's third line states, he "remembers" that child's feelings, and by this remembering, which is rooted in the manuscript note, he sets up the contrast between man and child, present and past, which becomes another ongoing pattern in the poem, reflected not only in the imagery but even in the syntax, in the alternation of present and past tenses. Still another pair of opposites-new and old-likewise develops logically from that original sentence, since where present and past are implied, 2Edwin Muir, "Day and Night," Collected Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp

115 108 Elizabeth Hubennan as we have just seen, there must necessarily be new and old. According to ancient tradition, too, there must also be new and old where there are day and night. For in all creation myths the day is secondary. Night is primary, pre-existent; the day is made new. Yet here a paradox develops. Although day and the present suggest the new, and night and the past the old, it is the old man in the poem who is nevertheless associated with the new, and the child with the old. Is the thread of argument tangled? No; what seems a tangle is actually a prefiguring of the poem's eventual reconciliation of the opposite poles on which it is structured. As in so many of his poems, here too in "Day and Night" Muir has used paradox to arrive at the final harmony his vision perceived; and the discernible presence of paradox in the very genn of the poem is simply one more proof that the shape of the whole is indeed there, in that genn. Yet the seed is not the whole, only the beginning. The next step, therefore, is to follow the poem as it grows by attracting related images from Muir's entire range of experience, memory, and dream into the pattern preordained in the seed. The child, for example, who already in the manuscript sentence was safely folded in the night and by implication lost in the day, is very much an embodiment of Muir's own childhood experience, as he recorded it in An Autobiography. Seeking the cause of his early sense of closeness to little things, such as certain flowers and leaves, lichen on rocks, even a yellow toy whistle, he suggests that a "reasonable" explanation might be the "fact that every object is new to a child, that he sees it without understanding it, or understands it with a different understanding from that of experience...'» What, indeed, then, could be more bewildering than the multitude of strange objects from an adult world that the child sees all around him, and sees moreover, as Muir points out (p. 20), from a level of only two or three feet from the ground? No wonder he is, in the poem's fourth line, "Lost in the newness of the light," not at home in a country where he lacks experience to judge things, and where the only relationship to be found is with things as small as himself. On the other hand-and until the end there is always an "other hand" in this poem, since it grows by swinging from one pole to its contrary-the night is a refuge from this newness; and in the sixth and seventh lines: "I first discovered what is old I From the night and the soft night wind," the poem shifts back from the day to the protecting dark. But more than a shift to an opposite pole takes place here. Because the night has now become teacher as well as protector, there is a crucial change in the character of the poem. Mystery enters, suspense develops, the pace quickens, all as a result of the question suggested in these two lines: What is it that is "old," that the night teaches? To increase the suspense and the 3(New York: Seabury Press, 1968), p. 20. Succeeding references to this volume are included in my text.

116 Edwin Muir's "Day and Night" 109 pace and compound the mystery, the poem provides no immediate answer. Instead, it veers back once more to the day and for the remaining five lines of the stanza elaborates on a child's experience of the day, as Muir remembered it: For in the daytime all was new, Moving in the light and in the mind All at once, thought, shape and hue. Extravagant novelty too wild For the new eyes of a child. But underneath these lines, the question of the preceding lines goes on working, accelerating the drive to the second stanza, with its powerful, provocative opening line: "The night, the night alone is old," and intensifying the force of the answer that stanza gives. All the while, too, the sound pattern of the poem accentuates and channels this drive towards the second stanza. The "fold/child" rhyme of the first quatrain of course refers back to the manuscript association of the child with the protective character of the night, but it also leads forward to the crucial "old" of the fifth line, where the question of what the night teaches is first posed. Then the "wild/child" rhyme of the first stanza's final couplet joins in, to make a persistent chiming that points directly to the first line of the second stanza, where "old" is the rhyme word once more. Clearly, this line is charged with a special significance, which its own distinctive arrangement of sounds makes even clearer. There are the emphatically repeated "night", the alliteration of "night" with the "n" of "alone," and the echoing vowels in "alone" and "old." With all this, there can be no coubt but that something important is to be said. What is said, however, depends on two very special areas of Muir's life-his childhood in the Orkney Islands and his dreams. We have seen that he retained from his early years the feeling of what is was like to be little and lost in adult surroundings. But he retained as well a rather contrary memory, which he believed is every child's heritage: an original vision of existence, a sense of being in a place where he is at home and where, according to An Autobiography, "the earth, the houses on the earth, and the life of every human being are related to the sky overarching them, as if the sky fitted the earth and the earth the sky" (p. 33). This is of course an image of the Orkney Muir knew, but it was also, for him, the world as it was first created; it was Eden. Since Eden is already lost, however, although as Muir observed, the child does not realize this until he grows into adolescence, it is really a world that lies far back in time, both in the child's past and in the history of the race. It is "old" in the very special sense of the word peculiar to Muir. For what "old" connotes in this sense and in the poem is neither "ancient" nor "outworn," but something

117 110 Elizabeth Huberman altogether different, from Muir's feelings about a child's first "old" ev6kes the world as it was -derived perceptions of the life around him. This in the beginning, before the Fall. Along with this childhood sense of an unfallen world, Muir's dream th9 poem. Most adults, he recognized, no longer remember their early illuition 9f the world, nor would-muir perhaps hive remembered, dgrprtg his recollection of so many childhood'impr6ssions, were it not for his dreams. Throughout his life, ihey kept that fint vision..certain {ive fo1!im, as repeated passagei in An Autobioimhi tell us. dr ams," he -wrote, convinced him that every "cliild Las this vision, in which there is a completer harmony of all things with each other than he will ever know again" (p. 33). or later, "sleep-tells us things both about ourselves and the world which we could not &scover othenfuise,' (p. 54). Dreamg sleep, the niglrc in other words, played a part in Muir,s tile thit most of us ngver-imagrg9.-they taggh! him iuout fllat part of reality that thgwaking day keeps hidden;-and-when we see this,-we see whit lies behind the mysterious transition in the poem, fiiom night as protector to $glt $ teacher and guide. For Muir, night and dreams-were tlie source of buri d knowledge, a connection with t[e "old" first world; and it is this world, that still rernains beneath the conscious business of daily living, that is invoked in Muir's repeated use of the word "old" and in the content of the entire second stanza: experie-nces- e.nter The night, the night alone is old And showed me only what I knew Knew, yet never had been told: A speech tfrat from the darkness grew Too deep for daily tongues to say, Archaic dialogue of a few Upon the sixth of the seventh day. And shapes too simple for a place Ig the day's shrill complexity Came, and wer more naturdl, more Expected than my father's face Smiling af,:ross the open door, More simple than the sanded floor In unexplained simplicity. Because it is this "old." world that a child naturally inhabits until he of experience, of the "day's shrill 6omplexity," he is enters the world coqplgpjr at home in this first, simple place. It is a place.ir wnich tre atl""dy 'lkrgy, yet ne-ver had been-told." Further, ihe language spoken there, the "speech that from the darkness grew / Too deef for^daily tongues to say," is already familiar to him, too. For although ii one sense

118 Edwin Muirt s "Day and Nighf' 111 this language of the dark is the language of dreams, the speech Muir referred to when he wrote that "our drea:ns and ancestral memories speak a different language" (p. 48) from that of the waking world, and tell us different things, in another sense it is far more. It is also the language spoken on the "sixth,or the seventh day" of Cheation, since from "Ballad of the Soul" in his Firsr Poems to an entire sequence in his last volume, the question of what the world was like in the beginning continued to fascinate Muir. He experimented with it in poem afterpoem. No wonder, then, that when the child's perception of the "old," the early world, took shape in "Day and Night," Muir's own preoccupation with the Genesis theme should be drawn into the poem too, and with marvelous effect. When the two trisyllabic Greek derivatives, "archaic dialogue," of the fifth line in this second stanza suddenly b,reak into the slow march of Anglo-Saxon monosyllables in the preceding lines, it is as if the tongues of those few creatures inhabiting Eden then had miraculously for the first time broken into speech. In the remaining lines of this stanza there is yet another instance of the accretion of dream and memory around ttre poem's central seed, since what these lines present is a clearcr picture of the "old" world, the child's country where everything is accepted because everything is familiar and expected. The miracle of speech astonishes the reader, but not, apparently, the child. In his mind, the way things are is the way they should be, because that is how they have always been. Whatever the "shapes" about him, they are naturally a part of this original society. They are more simple and reassuring than his own father's smiling face, because it was actually as such images of immemorial changelessness and simplicity, Muir remembered n An Autobiograplry, that he first saw his father and mother. Looking back over the years when he knew them "as a man and a woman, like, or almost like, other men and women," Muir recalled that as a child he did not see them this way. To him then "they were fixed allegorical figures in a timeless landscape." Further, "their allegorical changelessness made them more, not less solid, as if they were condensed into something more real than humanity..." (p. 24). As if, indeed, they were the primeval "shapes" of Eden, so that in the poem's movement back in time, back beyond father or mother, both parents arc naturally displaced by their own images, and the undefined "shapes" assume their simplicity, solidity, and timelessness. From that farthest point in ttre past and the dark, however, the poem now swings back once mor to the light and returns to the present where it began.in the last stanza, it is again the adult speaker ofthe first few lines who is speaking, again looking back on his childhood:

119 112 Elizabeth Huberman A man now, gone with time so long My youth to myself grown fabulous As an old land's memories, a song To trouble or to pleasure us-- I try to fit that world to this, The hidden to the visible play, Would have them both, would nothing miss, Learn from the shepherd of the dark, Here in the light, the paths to know That thread the labyrinthine park, And the great Roman roads that go Striding across the untrodden day But now there is a difference. Now instead of trying to recover his childhood in his imagination, he steps back to view his youth from the distance of age, and with this shift in perspective attracts to the poem still another cluster of perceptions that are peculiarly Muir's, and that need to be recognized as such to be fully understood. When the speaker calls his youth "fabulous," for example, in the line: "My youth to myself grown fabulous," he uses a word that not only bears Muir's signature but carries his particular slant of meaning. "Fabulous" to him was not "fantastic," as it is often understood, but more real that everyday reality. The title of the first version of An Autobiography, for instance, was The Story and the Fable, with the story referring to the narrative of surface events and the fable to the underlying universal reality revealed, as we have seen in discussing this poem, in childhood, in dreams, and in moments of vision. In a famous passage in An Autobiography, where he describes the Orkneys where he was born, he says they were "a place where there was no great distinction between the ordinary and the fabulous" (p. 14); and again the "fabulous" is not unreal, but an extension of reality--an extension now being lost, Muir grieved, "under the pressure of compulsory [and therefore standardized] education" (p. 14). To give just one more example: in his 1946 collection, The Voyage, a poem called "The Myth" applies this approximate synonym of "fable" to his childhood: "My childhood all a myth I Enacted in a distant isle."4 But there too the myth is the true reality; it is what endures. After the passage of a lifetime, "Unshakeable arise alone I The reverie and the name." Thus although the "fabulous" in "Day and Night," so smoothly equated to a "song" or an "old land's memories," may seem at first glance to dissolve the speaker's youth into mere shadow, in terms of Muir's usage it does quite the opposite. Both "song" and "memories," indeed, like "fable," are the stuff of the timeless reality that underlies time. 4Collected Poems, p. 144.

120 Edwin Muir's "Day and Night" 113 Once this is understood, the rest of the stanza follows logically, as otherwise it does not. It is because the "fabulous," the "hidden" world is so real, as the entire poem up to this point has demonstrated, that the speaker wants to fit it together with the world whose reality we all take for granted: the "visible," the ordinary. A life in which the two worlds are at variance is inevitably fragmented. A life where they are integrated can recover, on a new level which incorporates the shock of experience, the wholeness and harmony of the child's first vision. And it is the purpose of this final stanza, as was prefigured in the original manuscript sentence, to achieve this reconciliation and recover this vision. In a strong rhythmic pulse, like a wave gathering weaker currents into its rush, the stanza brings all the opposites on which the poem has been built-man and child, present and past, day and dark, new and old-into a final harmony as the speaker seeks "to fit that world to this, / The hidden to the visible play." Yet seeking through personal effort alone is not enough. With a sudden lift of tone and an opening of meaning to still wider reaches than have so far been touched, the poem turns from the simple volition implied in "I try to fit" and "Would have them both, would nothing miss," to a kind of prayer, which recalls the prayer embedded in the manuscript note from which the whole poem has grown. There, in that sentence, was the hint of the child's "Now I lay me down to sleep." Here, in the phrase, "shepherd of the dark," is a hint of the Twenty-third Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd." Certainly both are related, so that the poem comes full circle on this level too, as in the return to the present tense. Almost as certainly the second prayer springs from the first. But in any case both acknowledge that the deliberate will is not sufficient to achieve the unity of conscious and unconscious life---of day and night-that the speaker here desires. Only through the power of the hidden reality made known to us in dream and vision can that unity be won; and it is therefore to the "shepherd of the dark," the night as yet more than teacher-as priest, and even perhaps as Christ, since Muir decided near the end of his life that he was a Christian-that the speaker turns for guidance through both day and night. Just as the meaning of night is once more enlarged here, so the paths through which the night must guide us are further complicated, since even as the poem draws to its close--curving back to the manuscript prayer and asserting on a deeper level the original need for night-it still continues to exert a magnetic pull on related images in Muir's mind. With "the paths.../ That thread the labyrinthine park" the whole constellation of labyrinths and mazes, roads running crooked and leading nowhere, that recur over and over in Muir's poems, particularly in his long poem called "The Labyrinth," now all enter into this poem too. Yet the case is not the same. Where earlier the labyrinth had no exit, or only a dubious one--even the relatively affirmative "The Labyrinth" concludes with a return of the image in dreams-here there is no question but that a way out does exist. The key to that way can be learned from the shepherd of the dark. What was an image of frustration and despair in other poems now becomes a

121 114 Elizabeth Huberman measure of this poem's triumph over frustration and despair. Inevitably, that earlier desperation continues to sound here, like background noise, but it serves to emphasize by contrast the speaker's new mood of affirmation, possibly even of faith. Similarly, the prayer here recalls a much earlier poem, "The Day," from Muir's 1943 volume, The Narrow Place. That too was a prayer for the speaker to be shown the right road, or rather to be given the "clarity and love" to know and choose the already "in eternity written and hidden way"5 that was his own. And that sense, that the road is there waiting, if one has the "clarity and love," the insight, to recognize it, of course underlies and reinforces the plea in "Day and Night." It is such insight that the speaker would learn from the "shepherd of the dark." At the same time, the concept of an eternally established road on which "The Day" was based, not only foreshadows the tremendous image of the concluding lines in "Day and Night": "... the great Roman roads that go / striding across the untrodden day." but also illustrates a shade of meaning in that image which might not otherwise be apparent: the direction to be followed, the direction that leads out of the endless maze and into a life where day and night fit together in harmony, is a direction imprinted from the beginning on the soul. "Before I took the road, / Direction ravished my soul,"6 Muir wrote in "A Birthday" in The Voyage, and that intimation of a road that is right because it is one's own, of a way clear and straight as any of the Roman roads that can still be seen, cutting across the landscape of contemporary Britain, if one only listens to the true sources of wisdom, brings the whole structure of "Day and Night" to a fitting close. For the poem too has followed a predestined course, from the original picture of the child lying down at night and praying the Lord his soul to keep from the day's confusion, to the final image of the grown man praying likewise, to the "shepherd of the dark" for the knowledge to keep his soul on the right road through both day and night. All along the way, as Muir's deepest intuitions, memories and dreams have clustered around the original seed noted in his manuscript book, that seed, that sentence: "Now I lie down and wrap the night about me," has determined the pattern in which all the poem's images have been arranged, the meanings they have accumulated, and the direction in which they have led. Kean College o/new Jersey 5/bid., p /bid., p. 158.

122 David Reid Royalty and Self-Absorption in Drummond's Poetry One of the ideas Christopher Hill throws off in Milton and the English Revolution is that Milton was brought up on a tradition of political dissent in poetry) He suggests that Milton's headmaster, Alexander Gill, saw to it that the boys of St. Paul's formed their taste in English poetry on Spenser and the Spenserians, Drayton, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Browne and Wither. The Spenserians in the reign of James-and this is a story recently told at greater length and with more nuance in David Norbrook's Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance-the Spenserians were poetically out. In style and in politics they looked back to the previous reign. What was in was above all Ben Jonson, who contrived a sort of emperor worship for James in his masques. Jonson's was the style of the Jacobean peace; the Spenserians' was the style of the Protestant jingoism of Elizabeth's poets and of the Leicester party, if not of Elizabeth herself. Norbrook distinguishes the Spenserian and the Jonsonian styles as follows. The Spenserians "attempted at times to achieve a prophetic strain which Jonson normally denied himself:'2 They "tended to adopt a style which drew attention to its own artifice and thus highlighted the inability of language fully to embody transcendent truths; where Jonson's verse l(london. 1977), p. 19, Norbrook, (London. 1984), p.200.

123 116 David Reid gives the impression that ideals can be organically embodied in existing institutions and linguistic formulations, Spenserian verse constantly confesses to its inadequacy:'3 The Spenserians "frequently associate God and poetic inspiration with light and water, infinite and indeterminate essences; they do not share Jonson's fondness for imagery of organic growth:'4 They write a poetry of transcendence that tends to apocalyptic themes.s Though Norbrook has an axe to grind, these distinctions are handy enough and aptly suggest a Spenserian genealogy for the politically discontented Milton of "Lycidas" from whom the Milton of Paradise Lost is clearly emerging. But they put Drummond in odd political company. We may not want to call Drummond's poetic style Spenserian exactly; it owes more to Sidney than to Spenser. But that is a detail. If we want to place Drummond among the English poets of the seventeenth century, in his Arcadian style and the forms he uses he looks back to the Elizabethans as the Spenserians are supposed to. His poetry has almost all the characteristics that Norbrook says distinguish the Spenserians-imagery of light and water, a transcendental impulse, and a use of artifice that points by its stylization to the ineffable ideas it cannot adequately realize. Only the tendency to prophecy and apocalyptic themes is missing, except in "The Shadow of the Ivdgement," which is incomplete. On the whole, though he longed to leave the world by dying or living as a recluse, Drummond was too conservative and too self-preoccupied to look forward to an overturning of the human order and an end to the world that would involve other people. The absence of the prophetic strain and the insignificance of apocalyptic themes point us to a more considerable difference between him and the English Spenserians. Stylistically his affinities may be with them but politically there is nothing to suggest that he was critical of the policies of James, during whose reign most of his poetry was written.6 He did share some of the general irritation with Charles. Like most Scots, he 3lbid. 41bid, p Slbid. 60n Drummond's politics, see Thomas I. Rae, "The Political Attitudes of Drummond of Hawthomden," in The Scottish Tradition: Essays Presented to R.G. Cant, ed. G.W.S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1974), pp See also David Stevenson, "'The Letter on Sovereign Power' and the influence of Bodin's Political Thought on Scotland," Scottish History Review. 61 (1982), 40, who points out that Drummond's conservatism owes something to Bodin.

124 Royalty in Drummond' s Poetry 117 complained that the country could not support Charles's taxes.7 Like most of his class, he was upset by the way Charles's Laudian policies advanced the interest of the clerical estate and promoted bishops to jobs in the government that had traditionally gone to the aristocracy and gentry.s And he seems to have been vexed by a heraldic slight to the house of Drummond.9 He was critical of Charles as he had not been of James. But criticism of Charles did not mean disaffection and Drummond remained a steady, if somewhat retiring, royalist throughout the Civil Wars. He expressed his views on the course of the Scottish Revolution in a series of pamphlets, which he didn't publish, though he probably circulated them in manuscript among his friends. "Irene," the best known of these, celebrates the peace and order he hoped Charles's statesmanship would bring about. It is true that the piece of statesmanship was actually a compromise with the Covenanting rebels and it is true that Drummond repeats the sentiment of "Forth Feasting," "No Guard so sure as loue vnto a Crowne," (/.246), and both of these might suggest reservations about how the king's sovereignty should be exercised. lo But the general drift of the tract is to warn the three estates of the kingdom of the dangers of rebellion and to recommend unlimited obedience to the sovereignty of the king whom God has appointed. When every allowance has been made for rhetorical occasion and for arguments for the king's authority based simply on expediency, Drummond's political principles still emerge very close to those James himself put forward in The Trew Law of Free Monarchies or his Speech to Parliament of If the Prince hold not his crown of [his peers] but of God (who distributeth honours as seemeth best unto him) and the aundent )awes of his kingdom; if his crown be not by election but by a lineal1 succession; if he be not a conditionall Prince but an absolute sovereign; if hee be lawfully invested, anointed and 7"An Apologetical Letter," The Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden, ed. J. Sage (Edinburgh, 1711), p The statement of Jove in 'The Entertainment," , that Charles will not plunder his subjects with unjust taxes sounds like respectful protest On dislike of Charles's taxes, see Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: James V-James VII (Edinburgh, 1971), pp On Drummond's "Apologetical Letter," see David Masson, Drummond of Hawthornden: The Story of his Life and Writings (London, 1873), pp S"Apologetical Letter," p. 134; Masson. p comments on anti-episcopal implications. 9See "Considerations to the King," Works, pp ; Masson, pp ''1be Love of the People is the surest Guard of a Prince," "Irene," Works, p. 164; All citations of Drummond's poetry. unless otherwise noted, are to The Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden, ed. L.E. Kastner, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1913).

125 118 David Reid crowned Wby should ye servants give a law to your maister? ("Irene," Works, p. 168) That surely commits Drummond to absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings. One recalls that in 1617 in "Forth Feasting" Drummond calls James "that Man divine" (1.17) and that in the "Entertainment" he devised for Charles's entry to Edinburgh in 1633 he has Caledonia exhort the Scots: "God's sacred picture in this man adore" (1.85). Because Drummond deprecates extremes and recommends moderation and toleration it is easy to think that he was a middle-of-the-way man in politics. In fact he was a moderate only in the sense that he believed with James that the sovereign exercise of power was to moderate, to keep order in the state by tempering extremes.ll He thought all political blessings flowed from the sun-king: For as Moones splendor from her brother springs, The peoples welfare floweth from their Kings. ("The Entertainment," ). If he criticized Charles's policies, it was because he thought they undermined the monarchy by contradicting the principle that the sovereign power should moderate the kingdom. By that principle, for example, Charles was wrong to have given so much power to churchmen, for in doing so he upset the balance between the three estates, which his power should have maintained and indeed rested on. Drummond was, in short, a thorough-going Jacobean monarchist of the school of Napier.l2 And when it came to the Civil War, he sided consistently with the king (at least in private), on whose sovereign power the political frame of the country as he saw it depended. Drummond's politics, then, his glorifying of the monarchy and his sharing the ideals of the Jacobean peace set him apart from the Spenserians with whom on stylistic grounds we might wish to group him. And yet he wrote on occasions and on subjects that particularly excited Protestant jingoism and dissatisfaction with the court. The death of Prince Henry in 1613 was an occasion for a remarkable outburst of poetic grief. Among those who were discontented with James and his pacific ways the hope had been that Henry would lead Britain into glorious Protestant wars. Norbrook thinks it significant that the unofficial poet laureate, Jonson, IICf. Rae, p. 143, on Drummond's irenicism. 12"Practice, Sir, the temperat Government": "A Letter of 1641" clearly written by Lord Napier to Charles but wrongly attributed by Mark Napier, Memorials of Montrose and his Time (Edinburgh, 1848), I, 210, to Montrose. See Stevenson "'The Letter on Sovereign Power,'" pp

126 Royalty in Drummond's Poetry 119 ignored the occasion, while the Spenserians Browne and Wither made much of it.13 Drummond in his elegy, "Tears for the Death of Moeliades" is with the Spenserians, not just in style, but in politics. He deplores among other things that Henry died too young to make good his promise of becoming a Christian hero leading crusades against the Turk and Rome. The same enthusiasm for Protestant warfare informs his "Paraineticon," or exhortation, a short poem prefixed to Sir Thomas Kellie's Pallas Armata of 1627, which urges armed intervention on the side of Elizabeth of Bohemia in The Thirty Years' War.14 And finally Drummond pinches some conceits from Donne's "The Crosse" and turns them into anti Catholic abuse in a commendatory poem prefixed to the equally abusive True Crucifixe for True Catholikes of 1629 by Sir William Mure whose religious, or at least ecclesiastical, feelings led him later to side with the Covenanters. IS Drummond then appears to be an anomaly. His poetic style links him with the Spenserians but he did not share their discontent with James. He not only recommended the divine right but celebrated the divine nature of James and Charles. And yet at the same time he expressed wishes for militant Protestant action characteristic of the political opposition and characteristic also of the poetical opposition of the uncourtly Spenserian poets. There is an obvious way of dealing with the first contradiction, the one between his Spenserian poetic style and his unspenserian Stuart royalism. We had better not think of Drummond as an English Spenserian, in spite of his literary correspondence with Drayton. We should think of him rather as a Scots Elizabethan, only his Elizabeth was James. He was the last and most refined of the Scots who tried to do what the English had done a generation or so earlier, the translation in the widest sense of the word of the European Petrarchan movement. In this he succeeds naturally the courtier poets of James's Castalian band. Left behind in Scotland, he was bent on wringing a few lilies from the acorns they had scattered. And so when he wrote in a mode no longer fashionable at the English court, he 13Norbrook, pp. 2fX:U.; "Teares," , Kastner, I, Kastner, n, ; See Norbrook, p. 217, for poetic enthusiasm for Elizabeth of Bohemia in the early By 1627 the political situation had admittedly changed. 15Kastner, n, 168. Though "The Crosse" does not appear among Drummond's transcriptions of Donne's poems (National Library of Scotland, MS. 2067), it does appear among the Donne poems in the commonplace book of Sir John Wedderburn (National Library of Scotland, MS. 6504). Alan MacColl "A New Manuscript of Donne's Poems," RES, n.s. 19 (1968), 294, argues that the poems in the Wedderburn MS. were most probably transcribed from the same source as Drummond's copies, and if he is right, Drummond would have seen "lbe Crosse" there.

127 120 David Reid was in no sense expressing a distaste for the Stuart regime or casting a invidious backward glance at the reign of Elizabeth. In Scottish terms his was the style of James's court, only the court had left the country. But if there is no contradiction between post-castalian style and monarchocentric politics, there remains the discrepancy between Protestant jingoism and the ideals of the Jacobean peace. Here again, though, the Scottish context of Drummond's poetry does away with what would have been a discrepancy in an English writer. James, at least as king of Great Britain, supplied Scotsmen of Drummond's political views with the ideal of protestant monarch. The Elizabethan myth was not a Scottish story. It would not have seemed to Drummond that James, or even Charles, had fallen away from an Elizabethan ideal of making war on Spain. And so when Drummond dallies occasionally with the idea that the Stuarts might lead the Protestant cause, he is not muttering, as an Englishman probably would be, that James or Charles is truckling to Spain. He could in all innocence and loyalty celebrate the glories of the king's peace and yet occasionally wish for the glories of Protestant war. Drummond's politics, especially under Charles, are almost sure to be more complicated than I have allowed. But I think the outline I have given of his royalism does justice to the main points. I want now to turn to some of the oblique ways in which Drummond's poetry conforms to the monarchical idea. The same imaginative cast, the same turns of poetic idealizing, serve Drummond whether he is writing about his love, his God, or his prince. Drummond is not a fertile author. He copied others and he copied himself as well. But I don't think he copied himself only to make a meager store of ideas go as far as possible. He copied himself in love, politics and religion because conventional idealizing drew correspondences among the three realms of experience. And then within the conventions, his working and reworking of the same ideas brings his poetry to a certain intensity, an aesthetic not an emotional intensity, that somehow stays in the mind as a distinct coloring. He made his favorite themes his own to the point where they suggest a cast of mind, where they set up his peculiar tonality as a poet, the inner signature of his writing. This cast of mind is inturned and self-absorbed. Self-absorption is standard among love poets and religious poets. In Spenser the concerns of even the political man are involved with the concerns of the inner man. So there is nothing unusual in tying up love, religion and politics together subjectively. But amidst so much that is highly conventional, the quality of Drummond's self-absorption seems to me curious, and that and the way the royal idea enters into it are what I shall discuss first before turning to more obvious expressions of his royalism.

128 Royalty in Drummond's Poetry 121 Everyone agrees that Drummond's poetry is peculiarly literary. He says so himself: "I flrst beganne to reade, then loue to write. "16 The world in which he pictures himself in love or grieving for the death of Prince Henry or celebrating James's visit to Scotland, as also the universe of his religious poems, are poetic otherworlds imagined out of books, not experience. The bay, the palm and the myrtle grow in Fife.!7 The Forth rushes among her Cyclades-Drummond means the Isle of May and Inverkeithing.18 And the landscape is haunted by Mediterranean supernaturals. He adds the merle and the daisy of the medieval tradition to the hyacinth and the nightingale of the classical one.19 In one place he describes 'the Lockes of Amber/Of new-bloom'd Sicamors."20 Though hardly the product of an eye on the object, this is not, as far as I know, a detail he borrowed from someone else. Drummond has at least noticed a sycamore in flower and his opportunity to work it into the conventional idiom of amber locks. That is about as far as he goes in letting what he saw intrude on his poetry. Generally the setting of his poems is an Arcadia where rivers and sometimes mountains have Scottish names but the rest of Scotland has been kept out. Sir William Alexander compares the labyrinth of love he flnds himself in to the links of Forth.21 The Spenserians, Browne and Wither, enliven their pastorals with imagery of the English scene. Browne for example notices a dog purging itself with grass or a girl's difflculty in leaming to play the virginals.22 But no such lively notice of the world around him comes into Drummond's poetry. Nor does he make any of the teasing play between fantasy and fact that one can flnd in Spenser or Drayton. 16Sonnet i. Poems, Pt.1, Kastner, I Song i, 1l.23, 24,84, Poems, Pt 1, Kastner, I, See also Sonnet xv, Poems, Pt.l, }Castner, 1,20. 18"'feares for the Death of Moeliades," 1.77, }Castner, I, Daisy: Song i,1.w7, Poems, Pt2, }Castner, I, 58. Merles: Song i,i.wi, Poems, Pt2, }Castner I, 58. Nightingales: Song ii, 1.6, Poems, Pt.l, }Castner, I, 32. Hyacinth: "'feares," 1.127, Kastner, I, Song i, , Poems, Ptl. Kastner, 1,10. 21Aurora, Song 3, The Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander, ed. L.E. }Castner and H.B. Charlton (Edinburgh, 1921), I, Britannia's Pastorals, Song 5 (dogs: ; virginals: 1l.62'1/f.), The Poems of William Browne oftavistock. ed. Gordon Goodwin (London, 1894), voll.

129 122 David Reid Arcadian or pastoral worlds picture landscapes of the mind. Those who feel these need defending say that the imaginary world may simplify but does not abolish the troubled nature of human experience. With Drummond, however, the simplification has gone too far for that defense to sound convincing. His is an Arcadia for himself, not for other people. It contains no pastoral society. He addresses one sonnet in the poems on the Auristella affair to Sir William Alexander under the name of Alexis, and in "Teares on the Death of Moeliades" Alexis hangs up his shepherd's pipe and with his tears makes the River "Doven great to be" somewhere near Menstrie.23 Otherwise Drummond's Arcadian Scotland is a rural solitude apart from Auristella herself, the occasion of his love poems. She is barely present in them, though sometimes addressed. She comes in mostly as a dream while she is alive and a spirit when she is dead. Even in "Forth Feasting" it is Scottish geography not Scottish people that rejoices at James's return. And the blazon of James's virtues stands by itself as a portrait in a landscape that symbolizes loyalty and devotion without the help of any human figures. It is typical of Arcadian or pastoral worlds that they reflect human feeling. As landscapes of the mind they answer to states of mind.24 And so Drummond's poetry abounds in pathetic fallacy. Drummond's Tweed floods with tears for the death of Prince Henry and the Forth billows with joy at James's return.25 The rose, "whose Blush makes blushe the morne," is to wear funeral purple for Prince Henry's death.26 And so on. These are entirely conventional ways of turning inside out, of making a world sympathetic to human feeling. What is perhaps unusual about Drummond's Arcadian Scotland is its solitariness, its having to answer only to his mind.27 Poe thought melancholy the most poetic of emotions. It is certainly Drummond's favorite. Sir William Alexander praises him quite rightly for making sorrow a pleasure.28 The pleasure Drummond extracts from 23Sonnet xlvi, Poems, Pt.l, Kastner, I, 41; ''Teares,'' See Helen Cooper, Pastoral: Medieval into Renaissance (Ipswich, 1977), p ''Teares,'' ; "Forth Feasting," ''Teares,'' Renato Poggioli, The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), pp. 181Jf., remarks that solitude was not part of the pastoral tradition before the seventeenth century. 28 Then thou so sweetly SO"Ow makes to sing, And troubled Passions dost so well accord,

130 Royalty in Drummond's Poetry 123 melancholy is unsociable. The relish of self-absorption in melancholy is most obvious in those many love sonnets in which as it were he stares at himself in a mirror and draws a picture of what Auristella is doing to him.29 But even when, mourning Auristella, he seems to leave himself out and let the countryside express sadness, there remains something reflexive about the feeling. The feeling and so the feeler, not the object or cause of the feeling, are the real object of his attention. In the following passage this self-absorption, or more simply sentimentality, arises from a certain aesthetic refinement. That Zephyre euerie Yeere, So soone was heard to sigh in Forrests heere, It was for Her: that wrapt in Gownes of Greene, Meads were so earelie seene, That in the saddest Months oft sung the Mearles, It was for Her: for her Trees dropt foorth Pearles. That proud and statelie Courts, Did enuie those our Shades, and calme Resorts It was for Her: and she is gone, 0 Woe! Woods cut, againe doe grow, Budde doth the Rose, and Dazie, Winter done, But wee once dead no more doe see the Sunne. (Song, 1, , Poems, Pt. 2) Drummond supposes Auristella causes various happy springtime things but these are turned by the memory of loss into sadness. The repeated half-line, "it was for her," reminds him of his loss with a sort of sob. But even the happy things sound a bit sad before loss makes them sad. The zephyrs sigh. In four heavy monosyllables the trees drop pearls, perhaps of gum, perhaps of honeydew, but rather like tears. The shades the courts envy are in Drummond always ambivalent between peace and melancholy. The blackbirds that sing in winter ought to promise spring but somehow suggest desolation as well. The past happiness remembered is already deliciously tinged with sadness and the present consciousness of loss is absorbed into that deliciousness. Drummond produces not a simple feeling of loss but a double feeling in which pleasure and pain are held in suspension and instead of directing the mind to their objects arrest the attention in the state of mind itself, "my rare mind" as Drummond That more Delight Thy Anguish doth afford. Than others loyes can Satisfaction bring. From the sonnet prefixed to "Teares for the Death of Moeliades," Alexander, Poetical Works. II Consider. for example, sonnets iv,xvi, xxiv,poems, Ptl, Kastner, I, S,

131 124 David Reid elsewhere calls it)o And the reminiscence of Catullus or Horace ("wee once dead no more doe see the Sunne") helps to detach the state of mind from any specific thing by speaking of a universal sadness in things. The same arrest of feeling in its own sensation occurs in Song ii, "Phoebus arise," in which Drummond eagerly awaits Auristella, only to say in the last line that she has not turned up.31 This preserves the feeling of expectation from the fulfillment that would end it. It pickles it in regret. This is the song that contains the remarkable line about Zephyr "Kissing sometimes these purple Ports of Death" (/.37). The purple ports are Auristella's lips. Drummond thinks he would die if he kissed them, probably according to the platonic theory that his soul would come out at his mouth and expire into hers; that is why her lips are gates of death)2 But the line not only expresses rather complicated feelings about kissing and indeed about death (one recalls another remarkable line: "I long to kisse the Image 0/ my Death"»)3 It fixes the feelings in a puzzle. It takes us a moment to think what he means; the image does not give way immediately to its tenor. And what makes the image particularly stick out is that the song is full of color words, often rather choice ones, like "sable" and "ensaffroning." We are made sensitive to color effects and consequently the ports of death bloom with a purpleness almost Swinburnian. The preciosity here, the exaggeration of the image and its aesthetic effect together with the curiosity of being attracted by death, has a way of arresting the ostensible love expectation, even before the last line preserves it in Auristella's absence. Even in this apparently eager song Drummond manages to brood on his feelings and give them an introverted twist. Perhaps Drummond's fondness for reflections in water goes with the way his poetry turns outside in. Reflections in water are commonplace in 30Sonnet iv, Poems, Pt.l, Kasmer, 1,5. Ruth Wallerstein, "The Style of Drummond ofhawthomden in Relation to his Translations," PMLA, 48 (1933),1091, notes the static quality of Drummond's writing. 31Song ii, Poems, Ptl, Kasmer, I, n the kiss see Castiglione The Courtier, BleA, trans. T. Hoby (London, 1588), Do 4v; and compare Drummond's sonnet xli, Poems. Pt.l, Kasmer, 1,36; "The QuaIitie of a Kisse," "Madrigalls and Epigrammes," xiv, Kasmer, I, 105; "Desired Death," Madrigalls, xvii, Kasmer, fi, 157; Madrigal viii, William Drummond of Hawthornden: Poems and Prose, ed. Robert H. MacDonald (Edinburgh, 1976), p Sonnet IX,Poems,PtI, Kastner, I, 7. Cf. Song ii, 1.14, Poems, Pt.2, Kastner, I, 65.

132 Royalty in Drummond's Poetry 125 Arcadian poetry but in Drummond they seem more common than usual.34 One use of reflection is to imprint a loved person on the Arcadian landscape and so suggest a special sympathy between them. This is a special case of the way the world reflects the poet's mind in Arcadia. For example the Forth shares Drummond's grief for Prince Henry because she received his image when as a boy he used to look into her from the bank; she used to smile "oft on her Glassefl'o see [him] gaze" ("Moeliades," 71-2). Again in "Forth Feasting" the Forth is overcome with joy to see James's "Lookes/Which with Delight wont to amaze my Brookes" (II ). The most exuberant mirroring, however, is the Ore's, an obscure tributary of the Leven but Auristella's native stream. There in a dream Drummond sees her, or at least her inviting side, bathing naked and transfers his wishes to the water: Draw thousand Pourtraits of Her on your Face, Pourtraits which in my Heart be more apparent If like to yours my Brest but were transparent. (Song i, 1l , Poems, Pt.I) Drummond by no means limits himself, though, to reflections of those he loves. He seems to like reflections for their own sake. In Sonnet xxii of the Poems, Part I, he talks of "Ideal Woods in euery Crooke" of the stream.35 The phrasing of that may suggest a reason for his liking. Arcadia is a landscape of the mind. Reflection is already a step towards dematerializing the world, turning it to an effect of light and water, making it an ideal thing. Arcadian or pastoral fiction has perhaps a tendency to multiply images of the world it pictures. It has already produced an other world and the process of othering repeats itself. In Spenser's "Colin Clout's Come Home Again" Cynthia has a kingdom of land shepherds and another kingdom of shepherds of the sea. The process of othering is certainly at work in Drummond. In "Teares for the Death of Moeliades" heaven is another Arcadia, only better: "Other Rilles and Fo"ests, other sumptuous TowreslAmaz'd thou find'st" ( ).36 Again when Auristella returns 34They are common among the Castalian Band, e.g. Alexander, sonnet 98 and song 3, 1l.25-8, Aurora. Poetical Works, II, 515. and Fowler Tarantula of Love. xxii, The Works of William Fowler, ed. Henry W. Meikle (Edinburgh, 1914), I, Kastner, I The otherness formula for the heavenly Arcadia seems to have originated in Eclogue 5 of Sannazaro' s Arcadia.

133 126 David Reid as a spirit after death to tell Drummond of the next world, her explanation involves, not just two, but three worlds,37 She imagines a submarine world with caves, "dampish Bowres" (1.150), flowers and flocks and compares the astonishment of an inhabitant of that world on visiting the land world to what a land dweller would feel if he found himself in heaven. And there are other minor examples of the multiplying of worlds,38 Noticeably in the examples I have given, the worlds are arranged in a hierarchy of ideality. The more ideal the copy the better. The most ideal copy is heaven, except that by a platonic reversal, the heavenly ideal version is held to be the true version and the earthly one an insubstantial copy. At the center of this ideal world in ''Teares on the Death of Moeliades" is the mirror whose reflections are no longer images of things but their actual essences, "Where seene is all that shall be, is, or was/while shall be, is, or was doe passe away" ( ). This mirror is God and since God contemplates his own perfections, Drummond calls him in a surprising conceit, "Narcissus of himselfe himselfe the WellJLouer, and Beautie, that doth all excell" ( ). He copies the idea in "An Hymne of the Fairest Farre" where God looks into a mirror held up by Truth: "Here thou beholdst thy self, and (strange) dost prouejat once the Beautie, Louer and the Loue" ( ). And here, absorbed in this mirror of the deity, the mind that has withdrawn into itself can rest in completeness. There are at least six other references to Narcissus in Drummond's slender oeuvre.39 Apart from the epigram, "Narcissus," none of these is as striking as the ones I have just quoted, but cumulatively and in the context of Drummond's self-absorption I think it is fair to say that the Narcissus figure is central in his poetry. Strikingly the most resounding reference, altri monti, altri pianni altri boschetti e rivi vedi nel cielo e piu novelli fiori; altri Fauni e Sylvani per luoghi dolci estivi sequir Ie Ninfe in piu felice amori. Opere Volgari, ed. Alfredo Mauro (Bari, 1961), p Song ii. Poems, Pt.2, Kastner, I, Eg. the commendatory sonnet "Of my Lord Galloway his Learned Commentary on the Reuelation," 1l.9-12, Kastner, II, p. 64. See also "Forth Feasting," fj. for a prophecy of another Scotland on the other side of the Atlantic. 39Song i, 1.56, Poems, Pt.l, Kastner I, 10; sonnet xx, Poems. Pt.l, Kastner, I, 23; "Madrigals and Epigrammes," ix, MacDonald, p. 76; Madrigalls and Epigrammes," xiii, Kastner, II, 154; "Posthumous Poems," I, xxv, Kastner IL 195.

134 Royalty in Drummond's Poetry 127 the conceit about God as "Narcissus of himselfe," crops up in a poem on a royal figure, Prince Henry. Nothing could bring out more emphatically how thoroughly the royal idea entered into the recesses of Drummond's self-absorption. Prince Henry indeed plays the part of psychopomp or initiator of Drummond into those mysteries of the universe that most concern himself. In "A Cypresse Grove," a prose meditation on death. Drummond has a vision of the universe in which the spirit of Prince Henry appears and discourses to him on the vanity of earthly life and on the life of the soul released by death.40 In his elegy on Prince Henry written about the same time, Drummond follows Prince Henry's spirit up through the universe to heaven and takes his heavenly view of earthly things. It seems that Drummond felt that the son of James, whose majesty he speaks of as sacred, was especially suitable to mediate between himself and the supematural realm and lead him to the mirror of mirrors, the Narcissus of himself. And yet Drummond, copying himself again, has Auristella's spirit also initiate him in the mysteries of the soul and repeat some of the arguments of "A Cypresse Grove" about the vanity of earthly life.41 This self-copying, however, points us in the same direction as the printing of the images of king, prince and Auristella on their native streams. The same form of idealizing served for royalty and mistress. Drummond made the same sort of religion of both. And just as Elizabethan poets could celebrate Gloriana and their mistresses in the same terms without feeling they were being disloyal to either. so Drummond could express his devotion to the Stuarts and to Auristella in the same language and imagery without any feeling of incongruity, or even perhaps of having spread himself rather thin. He might indeed have felt that the one attachment was a metaphor for the other and that together they stood in his oeuvre as one of those mirrorings he was so fond of. The typical figure for royalty in Drummond, however, leads outwards from the inturned preoccupation with darkness and death and the light that can paradoxically be fetched from them. This is the figure of Phoebus, the sun-god, patron of prophecy and of poetry, of both the oracle at Delphi and the Castalian well nearby. Sir William Alexander has a sonnet which celebrates James as prophet and poet: 40Kastner, I, 97 fl., and his note to line 942 on p See also Robert EIIrodt, ed., A Midnight's Trance (Oxford, 1951), pp. xiii-xiv. In this context Drummond's curious stress on the beauty of the image of God in "the Prince, that vital Spirit of the Commonwealth, which giveth Life to so many Millions of Lives, the Fairest Image of God upon Earth" ("Irene," Works, p. 164) seems appropriate to his idealizing. 41Song ii, Poems, Pt2, 1I.35fl., Kastner, 1,22.

135 128 David Reid He (eminent in Knowledge as in State) What might occur oraculously told; And when far rais'd from this Terrestrial Round, He numbrous Notes with measur'd Fury frames, Each Accent weigh'd, no Jarr in Sense, or Sound, He Phoebus seems, his Lines Castalian Streams.42 I have not discovered a general cult of Apollonian majesty among the Castalians. But certainly the sun king figures largely in Drummond's poems. In "Forth Feasting" James appears as another sun, his absence being compared to winter or an arctic night ( , 75-9), his return bringing forth a new spring (1l.33-4), and the reflection of his royal gleams in the tributaries of the Forth lending them the glory of more famous streams ( ). Similarly in "Teares for the Death of Moeliades," Prince Henry is the bright day star of the west (1.3); his death is like the eclipse of the sun (/.25-6); and much of the other figuration of the poems turns on an implied sun metaphor. By now it will come as no surprise that what does for royalty will do also for religion and love. And so in "An Hymne of the Resurrection" Drummond uses much the same sun imagery for Christ's death and resurrection as he did for the absence and return of that other man divine, James: Christ rises like a second sun (1l.13ff.); at his coming nature renews herself and the landscape rejoices (1l.95Jf). And finally Drummond uses the sun as a figure for Auristella. Like the sun king, like Christ as the risen sun, the sun woman is a highly conventional image. Shakespeare's mistress's eyes were nothing like the sun only because everyone else's mistress's eyes were like it. Auristella's eyes, though green, are all that they should be in point of radiance.43 They are "Sunnes which shine as c1eare/as thou [that is, Phoebus] when two thou did to Rome appeare.44 The affinity with the sun goes further than eyes. In the same poem, Phoebus with golden hair and blushing beams looks something like Auristella's twin ( , 25). In Sonnet xiii Drummond apostrophizes the "Sacred Blush impurpling Cheekes pure Skies/With crimson Wings which spred thee like the Morne" and in Song i he describes "Her haire more bright than are the Mornings Beames" (/.109).45 And everywhere connections are made between Auristella and the sun. Appropriately his last vision of her "vanish' d up in Titans Light/Who guilding with his Rayes each Hill and PlaineiSeem'd to have brought the 42Alexander, Poetical Works, II, Sonnet xviii, Madrigal ii, Poems, Pt.l, Kastner, I, Song ii, , Poems, Pt.l, Kastner, I, Poems,Pt.l, Kastner, 1,19,12.

136 Royalty in Drummond's Poetry 129 Gold-smiths World againe."46 I note in passing that the golden age on earth in these lines is only an effect of art, of gilding, of the work of goldsmiths. The true golden world is now to be found in the supernatural platonic world of light that Auristella beckons Drummond towards. Against all these images of the sun we may set images of shade. On the one hand Drummond opens himself outwards to the sovereign touch of the sun; on the other, he longs to retire into himself among trees. Like the other images we have looked at, shade turns up as a motif whether he is writing about love, religion, or the court. In Sonnet xvi after having addressed the brook in which he frequently gazes at himself weeping, he turns to the "high woods," "Shades which Phoebus neuer cleares."47 The shade that shuts him out from the sun is a figure for love desolation. Auristella will not let the light of her countenance shine on him. But shady woods are clearly congenial to him, a place to enjoy his sorrows and have dream visions of Auristella.48 They are also a good place for religious melancholy. In his poetry John the Baptist and the saving remnant of Revelation live as hermits in the woods.4 9 So does Peter when he repents of having betrayed Christ.50 Drummond's religious happy man also lives there. The happiness is somewhat morose: Thrice happie hee who by some shadie Groue Parre from the clamorous World, doth Hue his owne Though solitarie, who is not alone But doth converse with that Eternall Loue.51 46Song ti,ll , Poems, Pt.2, Kasmer, I, Poems, PL 1, Kastner, 1,21. 48E.g. from Poems, Pt.l: Song i, 1l.5O}f., Kasmer, I, 10; sextain i, Kastner, 1, 18; sonnet xvi, Kasmer, 1, 21; sonnet xxviii, Kasmer, I, 28; sonnet xliii, Kasmer, I, 38; from Poems, Pt.2: sonnet viii, Kasmer, I, Sonnet xi, Flowers of Sion, Kasmer, II, 12; "The Shadow of the Ivdgement," 1l , F lowers of Sion, Kasmer, II, "Saint Peter at the Denying of his Master," xvii, "Posthumous Poems," 2, Kasmer, 11, ''Praise of a SoJitane Life," sonnet xxii, Flowers of Sion, Kasmer, II, 30.

137 130 David Reid Finally and most memorably sylvan shades offer a retreat from the court.52 It was a characteristic use of pastoral or Arcadian verse to picture an innocent country life in order to cast satirical or critical reflections upon corrupt court life. But not with Drummond. He never makes social criticism through his pastoral forms. There was indeed no court for him to long to escape from, let alone criticize. His turning away from the court then is a fiction, a pretext for burying himself in the woods so that he can be "his owne," which is more or less what he was doing at Hawthomden anyway. The difficulty with a poetry such as Drummond's, so literary in its inspiration, is to know how significant details are. Everything must be taken with a pinch of salt. The recessive desire for a life among the trees, however, comes up too often in too many contexts not to say something about Drummond's poetic temper. And it goes with the reflective, selfabsorbed nature of the poetry and its themes that I described earlier. The solitariness that figures so largely in Drummond's poetry involves more than literary traditions of love melancholy or pastoral withdrawal. Drummond uses these to express a rather solipsistic way of looking at things. That, however, seems to contradict the spirit of the pieces that celebrate royalty and the royalism of Drummond's imagination. Perhaps the way to explain the contradiction is this. The moping quality typical of Drummond's verse, his attraction to solitude, shade and death, is a sort of response to the absence of the king. The kind of Castalian poetry he was writing was king-centered and the whole color of his verse is what we might expect of a Castalian who had been left behind, whether it rejoices in the king's return or turns inward in his absence. Whether that sounds convincing or not, the king-centeredness of Drummond's poetry is striking. The image of solar majesty runs through his work. A royal figure enters his meditations on death and the absorption of the self into the divine Narcissus. If Drummond is a self-absorbed poet, his subjectivity, the language and imagery of his self-absorption, are royalist. A good deal of poetry of self-absorption and rural retreat was written in the seventeenth century. Vaughan uses metaphysical forms to express his self-communings and sense of exile. Poets of the Civil War, such as Lovelace, Cowley and Cotton praise rural life, though of a Horatian, not an eremitical, sort. Those poets had new forms for those themes. Drummond, as Jonson told him, wrote in old-fashioned forms. 52Sonnet xliii, Poems. Pt.l, Kastner, I, 38,lik:e the "Praise of a Solitarie Life" prefers woods to courts: "Ah! if I were mine owne, your deare Resorts! I would not change with Princes stately courts." The wish to be "mine owne" is clearly heartfelt and Auristella at once obstructs and furthers it. How he can prefer woods to courts when there was no court is puzzling. See also Song i, Poems, Pt.2. Kastner, I. 58.

138 Royalty in Drummond's Poetry 131 But his poetry shows how Castalian folms and even a Castalian, kingcentered mental set could stir with a rather new fashioned sensibility. University of Stirling The Friends of the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue was launched in 1984 under the Presidency of the Countess of Strathmore. As many readers of this journal are aware, DOST is a large-scale, quotation-illustrated dictionary modelled on the Oxford English Dictionary and covers the history of Lowland Scots from the 1100s down to The first five volumes, encompassing A to Pn, have received lavish praise from reviewers and users, and a sixth volume (Po-Quh) has just been published. If DOST's recent excellent progress towards completion is to be maintained in this era of enforced reductions in expenditure on major projects of research in the humanities, substantial additional funding must be secured. It is to this end that the Friends has been launched. Donations or requests for further details should be sent to Dr. A. Fenton, c/o The Royal Museum of Scotland, Queen Street, Edinburgh, EH2 lid. Since 1983, the publisher of DOST has been Aberdeen University Press, Fanners Hall, Aberdeen, Scotland, AB9 2XT.

139 Elaine Ware Charitable Actions Reevaluated in the Novels of Henry Mackenzie Many critics, notably David Spencer, suggest that Henry Mackenzie supported the ideals of his age in order to suit audience taste rather than out of fervor of belief. Spencer points to the practicality of the Scottish lawyer as well as to his seeming lack of sentiment for his contemporaries as evidence of the true Mackenzie hidden behind the facade of benevolence.! Should we condemn Mackenzie then as a mere literary opportunist? I think not. Mackenzie was under no financial duress to please the reading public; therefore, his motives lay elsewhere. It is true that Mackenzie may have joined the benevolence bandwagon, in part, because of the popularity of sentimentalism, but I believe that he wrote out of a sincere concern for man's moral duty towards man. Mackenzie's treatment of benevolence is not superficial. The development and exposition of the philanthropist and the misanthrope, which most of his contemporaries made the mainstay of their writings, are only introductory to Mackenzie's main concern. Mackenzie centers on a much deeper moral consideration: the effects of charity on the recipient. Mackenzie delves into the physical as well as the psychological effects of charity on the poor, and he emphasizes the negative results in his treatment. This theme is implied in embryonic form in The Man of Feeling (1771), but it develops further in The IDavid Spencer, "Henry Mackenzie, a Practical Sentimentalist," Papers on Language and Literature. 3 (1967), 314.

140 The Novels of Henry Mackenzie 133 Man of the World (1773), and finally explicitly matures in Julia De Roubigne (1777). In an age rebuking actions based solely on rational motivations, many writers including Mackenzie examined emotion and feeling as directives for action. Rather than the seventeenth century's belief in man's depravity, the eighteenth century's moral philosophy was based on the innate benevolence of man. One of the most important tenets of the ethics of the period was the notion of charity, or benevolence. Modern readers immediately think of almsgiving, but Mackenzie's contemporaries thought of charity primarily as a deep concern for the welfare of another. That inner conviction, of course, must not remain a mere abstraction but must be transformed into charitable action. Many writers of the period tried to define charity and to give directions for its proper administration. Late in the seventeenth century the clergy fervently preached charity in sermons. According to R.S. Crane, the clergy's religious guidance established the early foundations for the eighteenth century's "man of feeling:'2 One important theologian, Issac Barrow, preached frequent charitable themes. In one sermon he offers a twenty-page definition of charity. To Barrow, "Loving our neighbor doth imply that we should value and esteem him... " Charity is "a sincere and earnest desire for his welfare... Hence readily should we pour forth our prayers, which are the truest expressions of good desires for the welfare of our neighbor:'3 Barrow continues to explain the offices of charity, and only towards the end of his exposition does he briefly mention benevolent acts and notes that action does not stop with prayer. Charity also implies "readiness upon all occasions to do him good,"and the willingness to give "to his neighbor all kinds of assistance and relief, according to his neighbor's needs and his own ability" (354, 355). Harold William Thompson claims that in addition to religious leaders, the philosophers Shaftesbury, David Hume, and Francis Hutcheson also showed concern for the "moral sense, which determines its possessor to approve Benevolence:'4 Similar concern, or "sympathy," for others was expressed by Adam Smith, a friend of Mackenzie, as "fellow-feeling." Smith states that "To man is allotted the care of his own happiness, of that of his 2R.S. Crane, "Suggestions Toward a Genealogy of the 'Man of Feeling,'" Journal oj English Literary History, 3 (1934),205. 3Issac Barrow, The Theological Works oj Issac Barrow, DD., Vol. II, ed. Alexander Napier (Cambridge, 1859), pp. 338, 342, Harold William Thompson, A Scottish Man oj Feeling: Some Account oj Henry Mackenzie Esq. oj Edinburgh and oj the Golden Age oj Burnes and Scott (London, 1931), p.15.

141 134 Elaine Ware family, his friends, his country."5 Still another contemporary of Mackenzie, Henry Fielding, expounds charity as "Good Nature... that benevolence and amiable Temper of Mind which disposes us to feel the Misfortunes and enjoy the Happiness of others; and consequently pushes us on to promote the latter... 6 Although the advocates of benevolence often expressed charitable feelings in different terminology, they agreed in spirit about man's beneficent impulse and his responsibility to aid others. An eighteenth century Scotsman needn't read religious or philosophical tracts to be aware of charitable ethics; he need merely to glance at a newspaper or periodical. The Scottish presses not only presented the local writers' ethical views, but they also drew heavily from the English presses, often reprinting ethical essays from sources such as The Rambler and The Spectator. Mary Elizabeth Craig's survey of Scottish periodicals reveals the ethical concerns of the era. The Scots Magazine presented a general review of religious, political, and literary subjects.? The theme of charity no doubt was also included in the Exhortation, a periodical solely consisting of sermons (4). The Scots Spy or Critical Observer exhibited concern for the poor as evidenced by a poem entitled "The City Beggar" (26). This publication later became known as The New Scots Spy or Critical Observer and proclaimed as its aim: "to give every encouragement to such gentlemen as incline to devote their performances to... virtue and morality" (27). Mackenzie, himself, was involved as editor and chief contributor of The Mirror ( ), later to be renamed The Lounger ( ). This journal presented a series of essays on morality, literature, propriety, and refinement. The theme of charity frequently recurs in tales of benevolent philanthropists offering aid to the needy. The novels of the day also abound in charitable themes. Even as early as Richardson's Pamela (1739) charitable actions towards family and servants were recommended. Fielding, too, shows that benevolent characters like Parson Adams and Joseph from Joseph Andrews (1742) prosper. Goldsmith praises benevolence in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) when the Vicar is rescued from poverty and jail. Sterne in Tristram Shandy (1759) also shows the goodness which occurs as a result of Toby's charitable acts towards Le Fever. Even Smollett in Humphrey Clinker (1771) touches on the charitable and hospitable people whom Bramble encounters in his travels. All of these novelists showed some interest in the positive aspects 5Adam Smith, Adam Smith's Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. Herbert W. Schneider (New York, 1948), pp. 74, Henry Fielding, Miscellanies by Henry Fielding, Esq., ed. Henry Knight Miller (Oxford, 1972), I, Mary Elizabeth Craig, The Scottish Periodical Press (Edinburgh, 1931), p.33.

142 The Novels of Henry Mackenzie 135 of charity. In short, the spirit of charity and benevolence was at its peak in all types of literature throughout Scotland and England during the eighteenth century. Mackenzie's thematic treatment of charity does not wholeheartedly endorse benevolence; he shows that charitable actions can have dubious results. To investigate the effects of charitable actions, Mackenzie develops two types of characters; philanthropists and misanthropes. The philanthropists fall into two distinct subtypes in Mackenzie's writings: 1) the benevolent man, for example Harley in The Man of Feeling, who generously helps the needy and seeks only personal satisfaction in return, and 2) the philanthropist who gives to the poor in exchange for public recognition as a benevolent man. Of course, the anonymous giver is the pure type. Counterpoised with benevolent characters are Mackenzie's misanthropes. There are types here too. The first type is a benevolent person at heart whose benevolence is constantly thwarted by an indifferent world. Like the nameless misanthrope in The Man of Feeling, this type withdraws from the world and from charitable action, yet his nature and impulses, if cynical, remain benevolent. The second type is the false philanthropist who outwardly professes benevolence but is inwardly evil. Mackenzie splits the development of this second type in two directions: 1) some misanthropes, for example the nameless gentleman in Chapter XXV of The Man of Feeling, remain evil, and 2) others, like Sindall in The Man of the World, change their evil ways in the closing pages of the work. In spite of the contrasting motives of the misanthrope with those of the philanthropist, Mackenzie's poor characters suffer at the hands of both. The physical and financial sufferings at the hands of the misanthrope are easily discerned, but suffering due to truly charitable works is more difficult to trace. In the case of true benevolence, Mackenzie illustrates the negative psychological effects of charity on the pride of the recipient. Not only is the recipient humbled by the reception of good works and money, but that humility is emphasized by the poor man's inability to repay the kindness he receives. This consideration of the recipient's position is important and continues to mature in each of Mackenzie's writings. Mackenzie's friend, Adam Smith, and his acquaintance, Samuel Johnson, were also concerned with this problem; perhaps they contributed to or at least exchanged ideas with Mackenzie concerning the recipient's dilemma. Smith claims that "the poor man...is ashamed of his poverty." He feels that "Nothing is so mortifying as to be obliged to expose our distress to the view of the public." The poor man's shame seems emphasized because "gratitude... approaches nearest to what is called a perfect and complete obligation" (91, 116). Johnson, too, expressed that "To be obliged, is to be in some respect inferior to another." He understands from personal experience that the poor want to repay kindness: Kindness is generally reciprocal; we are desirous of pleasing others, because we receive pleasure from them; but by what means can the man please, whose atten-

143 136 Elaine Ware tion is engrossed by his distress, and who has no leisure to be officious; whose will is restrained by his necessities, and who has no power to confer benefits... 8 That Mackenzie also was distressed about the recipient's embarrassment becomes evident in his novels. In The Man of Feeling Mackenzie shows the negative aspects of both false and true charity in rudimentary plot elements. First, he illustrates false charity when the seduced Emily falls victim to a seemingly benevolent woman. The false philanthropist early offers shelter and kindness to the forlorn Emily, but once Emily's "dependence" is secured, the evil nature of the procuress comes to the surface.9 Emily becomes financially dependent and must submit to prostitution until rescued by Harley. Mackenzie not only depicts suffering at the hands of a false philanthropist but secondly shows the psychological suffering of recipients due to true benevolence. The first example is Mountford, the penniless gentleman to whom the rich Sedley offers the tutorship of Sedley's son. Mountford, in Mackenzie's words, is "a proud fool" who is reluctant about being dependent on Sedley. The elder Sedley responds that there is "no such word" as "dependence" between friends (89-90). Mountford's negative reaction to charitable acts is Mackenzie's first indication of the poor man's disinclination to accept charity. An even more poignant example of the negative psychological effects of charity on the poor is seen in "The Pupil" in the story of the sick, imprisoned man. Having received charity from Mountford, the wife of the imprisoned wretch "crawled" on the floor clasping Mountford's knees in expression of gratitude. Her husband responds to her actions with, "Compose yourself, my love." This phrase along with his request of the philanthropist to excuse his wife's behavior seems to be an indication of the man's embarrassment. Mackenzie's choice of words shows the degradation of the recipient. After the younger Sedley has also given money to the man, the recipient asks a question: '''I do not mean attempting to thank you' (he took a pocket-book from under his pillow) 'let me but know what name I shall place here next to M. Mountford?''' (91-92). This seemingly trivial incident becomes significant upon examination. The poor man writes down the names of his benefactors because he intends to repay the generosity shown him. Mackenzie illustrates in The Man of Feeling that the recipient, often averse to accepting charity, will when in dire circumstances accept money with full intention of reciprocating at a later date. 8Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, ed. W.J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss (New Haven, 1969), p Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling, Miscellaneous Works of Henry Mackenzie. Esq. (New York, 1837), p. 56.

144 The Novels of Henry Mackenzie 137 Not all of Mackenzie's recipients of charity in The Man of Feeling experience problems. Old Edwards gracefully receives the small homestead and good will of Harley, but even Edwards makes "some attempts towards an acknowledgment for these favours" (78). At this period in his writing Mackenzie was still able to show the good that could result from true benevolence. But as his work develops over the years, he places less emphasis on the good effects of charity, and gives more attention to the negative effects of charitable acts. Most charitable works in The Man of the World are disguised evils performed by Sir Thomas Sindall, a would-be benefactor. Young Billy Annesly falls victim to the villainous Sindall because of false philanthropy. Sindall's offers of charity to Billy are cloaked methods to gain access to Billy's sister, Harriet. Sindall shelters and offers his companionship to Billy, who is at ftrst happy to receive seemingly benevolent attentions. After receiving many kindnesses from Sindall and his friends, Billy becomes "indebted" to them and feels a certain responsibility to comply with their wishes in much the same way as did Emily in The Man of Feeling. Eventually, after much prodding Annesly falls from "innocence" and participates in their "vice".10 Sensual pleasures plunge Billy into debt only to be retrieved by Sindall, thus to be under more obligation. Sindall takes advantage of his recent benevolence towards Billy to propose that Harriet become Sindall's mistress. Upon Billy's rejection of the proposition, Sindall calculates further seductions to gain control over Billy and, consequently, over Harriet. Sindall's schemes are eventually successful, and Billy falls again into poverty. "Though his pride for a while kept him quiet, it was at last overcome," and Billy borrows money, thus diving into deeper debt (219). Forced to the depths of gambling and armed robbery in order to survive, Billy is arrested and sentenced to fourteen years exile. But before Billy's deportation "He called in an exact account of his debts, those to Sindall not excepted, and discharging them in full, much against the inclination of Sir Thomas, who insisted, as much as in decency he could, on canceling every obligation of that sort to himself. But Annesly was positive in his resolution" (241). As in The Man of Feeling, the poverty-stricken man abhors charity but is forced by circumstances to accept. As a last resort to free himself of many debtors and to regain integrity, Annesly calls upon his father's credit to repay the loans, thus owing money only to family. Bllly has suffered physically as well as psychologically because of false philanthropy. Her brother Billy's life is disrupted by false philanthropy, but Harriet's life is destroyed by Sindall's "benevolence." Believing that Sindall has been a true benefactor to her brother, "at the sight of him, her cheek was flushed with the mingled glow of shame for her brother, and gratitude towards his benefactor" (230). This juxtaposition of shame and gratitude lomackenzie, The Man o/the World, Miscellaneous Works, p. 204.

145 138 Elaine Ware recurs throughout Mackenzie's work, thus pomtmg to the degrading aspects of receiving charity. Harriet, too, is caught in the deceptive web of Sindall's charity. He secretly plans the kidnapping of Harriet in which he feigns to be her rescuer. After the "rescue" she is drugged and raped by the hypocrite. Her resulting pregnancy, madness, and death occur because of Sindall's tortures. Harriet not only suffers at the hands of a villain, but she also psychologically suffers because of the kind acts of Mr. Rawlinson, a true benefactor. When Rawlinson gives her a large sum of money, she responds: "Though I feel sir... with the utmost gratitude, those sentiments of kindness and generosity you have expressed towards me, you will excuse me, I hope from receiving this mark: of them." The proud Harriet, although she needs the money, fears that some show of affection would be owing to Rawlinson in return. Rawlinson responds to her rejection with: "I see, and her pride will no more than her affections submit itself to my happiness." Mackenzie's choice of the word "submit" indicates that the recipient has lower status than the benefactor. Harriet's father, too, is a proud person and is at first unwilling for his daughter to accept the money. Mackenzie through the mouthpiece of the elder Annesly explains the dilemma of the poor: "There is a delicacy my best friend, in our situation; the poor must be ever cautious, and there is a certain degree of pride which is their safest virtue" (255). Mackenzie seems to be issuing a warning to the poor to avoid receiving charity and becoming obligated to others. As in The Man of Feeling, the poor characters in The Man of the World suffer negative psychological effects from charity whether it be motivated by false or by true benevolence. While Mackenzie emphasizes the misanthropic character in Sindall, he still creates a few admirable philanthropists who help to offset a totally dark vision of charity. Lucy, Miss Walton, Bolton, and Rawlinson all are examples of true benefactors. The poor respond to the charitable acts of these philanthropists with "benediction on... knees," and "lips... pressed" to hands (287, 289). Both responses raise the status of the giver while relegating the recipient to a lower footing. That some good is also done by the philanthropists cannot be denied, but Mackenzie, for the most part, accentuates the negative effects of charity. In Julia De Roubigne, Mackenzie only mentions in passing the good done through charitable works; instead, he stresses the negative results of true benevolence. Montauban early shows admiration for Julia because of her charitable works: "she dispensed mirth and gayety to some poor families in our neighborhood."u Mackenzie tells that the recipients express gratitude towards Julia but gives no further detail; this is the only instance of charity in the novel in which Mackenzie does not show the negative asllmackenzie. Julia De Roubigne, Miscellaneous Works, p. 366.

146 The Novels of Henry Mackenzie 139 pects of charity. The rest of Julia De Roubigne illustrates the charitable transaction and resulting disaster for Montauban, M. Roubigne, and Julia and also depicts Savillon's dependency on his uncle. In all of these incidents charity does not fmally comfort the recipients. Mackenzie presents Montauban as an example of the worthy benefactor who searches for a humane way to approach the poor. The rich Montauban makes an acquaintance with M. Roubigne "not by offering favors, but by asking one." This psychology is very effective in putting the poor man at ease because it gives Roubigne "back the power of conferring an obligation" (361). To be able to repay Montauban's kindness is a must for M. Roubigne's pride. When Roubigne was rich he charitably saved Savillon's father from debt. Here too "arose a sort of dependence on the one side." Julia interprets her father's former psychological attitude toward charity: "he thinks of a man as his inferior, only that he may do him a kindness more freely" (374). That Roubigne saw the low nature of the recipient when he, himself, was a benefactor is quite evident. That he would have difficulty in accepting charity when he is in need seems only natural. Montauban, learning that Roubigne is in debt, anonymously forwards the money to the debtor. Roubigne "would die before he would ask such a favor of anyone, so high minded he is, notwithstanding all his misfortunes" (391). After his bills are paid "some remains of that pride, which formerly rankled under the receipt of favors it was unable to return" appear in M. Roubigne (393). He truly suffers because he is unable to repay Montauban. And Julia "is now the partner of his humiliation" (394). The extreme desire of the poor to reciprocate, Mackenzie clearly reveals in Julia's sacrifice to repay Montauban's generosity. Julia announces Tell the Count de Montauban, that Julia De Roubigne offers that hand to his generosity, which she refused to his solicitation;-tell him also, she is above deceit: she will not conceal the small value of the gift. 'Tis but the offerings of a wretch, who would somehow requite the sufferings of her father, and the services of his friend (394). This is the ultimate example of desperation by the poor to retain a sense of honor or status. Roubigne likens Julia's hand to a monetary commodity and tells Montauban: "That hand...is the last treasure of Roubigne. Fallen as his fortunes are, not the wealth of worlds had purchased it; to your friendship, to your virtue, he is blessed in bequeathing it" (395). Roubigne derives great satisfaction from this transaction, and he establishes himself on a plane more equal to Montauban than that of the recipient. Unfortunately, the result of this exchange is disastrous because Montauban poisons Julia when he suspects that his "possession" is unfaithful to him. Montauban admits, "I purchased her consent, I bribed her, I bought her... " by giving money to M. Roubigne (441). Montauban knew the proud nature of the family, and he had suspected that Julia

147 140 Elaine Ware would try to make some recompense for his benevolence. Montauban finally rushes to suicide after he realizes Julia's innocence. Both characters suffer, in part, because of excess emotion and uncontrolled impulse, but they also experience misery because of the tense nature of the charitable situation. Charity to Mackenzie implies one who is able and willing to give and another who is in need and forced to accept. It implies a great difference in status between the two parties, and it leaves the recipient obliged. Marriage as repayment of a debt carries the idea of obligation to an extreme. The marriage is doomed from the start because obligation does not make for binding relationships of the heart; only love or concern can do that. Perhaps Mackenzie is pointing out the folly in attempting to repay kindness, as well as the inadvisability of accepting charity in the first place. Mackenzie quickly reiterates the disinclination of the poor to receive charity in Savillon's story. Briefly, Savillon is dependent upon a benevolent uncle for his livelihood. In spite of the uncle's kindness, Savillon "wish[es] for an opportunity to be assiduous in his service; till [he] can do something on [his] part, his uncle's favors are debts upon [him]" (413). The theme of debt and obligation has become of chief importance to Mackenzie in Julia De Roubigne. To Mackenzie, the act of charity is riddled with problems and paradoxes. The truly benevolent man faces a dilemma. If he gives to the poor, he may hurt their pride; but if he does not, and disasters such as imprisonment, starvation, and death occur, then he may feel that he has failed to perform his moml duty. The poor man, too, faces embarrassment, dependency and obligation on the one hand, and comfort and physical wellbeing on the other. Since Mackenzie stresses the negative effects of charity, does it follow that he advocates the discontinuation of benevolent actions? This interpretation seems extreme. Mackenzie perceives potential problems in charitable actions, so his writing may be read as a warning or caution to both the philanthropist and the recipient. To the philanthropist he suggests a benevolent way to offer assistance and also discretion upon whom he bestows charity. Mackenzie warns the misfortunate against accepting charity except in times of dire need and then cautions that the poor man should be careful from whom he receives help. Mackenzie moves from an emphasis on benevolence in The Man of Feeling to stress misanthropy in The Man of the World. His vision is noticeably darker in the second novel. With the development of the benevolently motivated Montauban in Julia De Roubigne one expects a return to a brighter vision, but Mackenzie shows that on the contrary even benevolent actions create problems for the recipient of charity. In all of Mackenzie's novels the poor feel greatly indebted to and dependent upon philanthropists. They feel the distinction in status, and in order to raise their level to that of the benefactor they try to repay in some fashion. Mackenzie acknowledges the social class struggle of his day by

148 The Novels of Henry Mackenzie 141 pointing out the rising class consciousness among the lower classes. The poor are no longer satisfied to receive charity, thus being relegated to a low rank. Perhaps Mademoiselle Roubigne's words best exemplify the new current of thought: "misfortune is not always misery" (403). Mackenzie may feel that the plight of the poor man is bearable as long as he can maintain his integrity and pride. Perhaps the physical comfort gained from charity is not worth the mental degradation that accompanies it. Middle Tennessee State University

149 Charles A. Beirnard Rebelling From the Right Side: Thomas Carlyle's Struggle Against the Dominant Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric Thomas Carlyle's break from the dominant rhetorical paradigm of his age is of interest to contemporary students of rhetoric and literature for several reasons. It is noteworthy because it represents in the domain of persuasive prose a rejection of the previous century's theoretical canons akin to the one undertaken by English romantic poets three decades earlier, and like the rebellions of the poets it represents an effort to widen the province of his art. It is also relevant to our current interest in a "paradigm shift" in rhetorical theory and practice, for many of the shortcomings Carlyle found in the dominant paradigm of his day are paralleled in the inadequacies found by recent assessments of today's rhetorical paradigm, assessments which encourage a shift from a rhetoric of management,! la recent discussion of the tradition of rhetorics of management is James A Berlin. "Richard Whately and Current-Tmditional Rhetoric." College English 42 (1980)

150 Carlyle's Struggle Against Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric 143 from a tyranny of fonn in the critical essay,2 from male rhetoric,3 and from a traditional grammar of style, or Grammar A.4 The Bastille assault in Carlyle's revolution was his Sartor Resartus of Carlyle revealed the tenets of the theory behind Sartor'S rhetoric in writings which defend the completed work against criticisms and in writings of his literary apprenticeship which anticipate Sartor. A pair of letters responding to critiques of Sartor by John Sterling5 and R.W. Emerson6 contains Carlyle's identification of his opponents in the dominant paradigm and suggest several key elements in his own rhetorical theory. Complementing these letters to disclose fully the theory underlying the choices of rhetorical strategies in Sartor are several earlier review-essays and letters which show Carlyle developing from Gennan sources the literary persona which emboldened him to write the revolutionary Sartor. The thrust of the critique of Sartor by John Sterling is that the manner of the book is a barrier to the effect of its matter. After acknowledging that Sartor contains truths about the oneness of life, the omnipresence of beauty, the differences between the actual and the ideal, and the necessity of duty, Sterling turns to questioning whether its method effectively fosters acceptance of these ideas by readers. Evaluating Sartor by criteria derived from his classical education and from contemporary stylistic cannons, he finds the book to be wanting in objectivity, clarity, correctness, and taste. Rather than adhering to the ancient precept of having all of its parts objectively related to "one external principle, Sartor subjectively dwells on the imagination and invention of an individual playing upon infinity to produce a "multitude of peculiar associations and relations" connected only by "the bond of personality." Carried to excess, this 2Keith Fort, "Fonn, Authority, and the Critical Essay." Reprinted in W. Ross Winterowd. Contemporary Rhetoric: A Conceptual Background with Readings (New York,1975),pp Thomas I. Farrell, "The Female and Male Modes of Rhetoric," College English 40 (1979), Farrell does not encourage a shift; he acknowledges those who do, and he analyzes the characteristics of both rhetorical modes. 4Winston Weathers, "Grammars of Style: New Options in Composition," Freshman English News 4 (1976), A subsequent quote from this article will be cited parenthetically. 5Carlyle's exchange of letters with Sterling is reprinted in Sartor Resartus, ed. Charles Frederick Harrold (New York, 1937), pp References to these letters and to Sartor Resartus use Harrold's edition and will be cited parenthetically. 6Ioseph Slater, ed., The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle (New York, 1964), pp ; A subsequent quote will be cited parenthetically.

151 144 Charles A. Beirnard subjectivity violates the canon of clarity, for the capriciousness of the book's "rhapsodico-reflective form," sentence structures, and "strange heterogeneous combination and allusion" will render its ideas opaque to readers. Standards of correctness and taste held by readers will also frustrate the reception of ideas, for these canons are violated by the barbarisms, the constant iteration, the German compoundings, the sentence inversions, and the over-use of figures which mar the book's style. Although Emerson's evaluation of Sartor is rooted in a different tradition than Sterling's-by calling his comments a "homiletic criticism" Emerson suggests that he holds a Puritan conception of art as moral teaching-it follows a similar pattern. Emerson, too, praises Sartor's truths, which he calls "prophetic." But as did Sterling, Emerson finds Sartor's form and style to be inappropriate for conveying its "treasure." Rather than submitting to the moral duty of his artistic calling by attuning his genius to men's ears, Carlyle has willfully given it license to express itself in oddity, drollery, and grotesquerie. To Emerson, the serious consequences of this inappropriate choice of vehicles is that it prevents Sartor's wisdom from reaching readers, the mass of whom are "uncritical truthseekers." From their respective traditions, Sterling and Emerson bring to bear upon Sartor a shared belief in a pragmatic conception of art. They view Sartor as "something made in order to effect requisite responses in readers" and they criticize its author for having failed to adjust the character of his work to "the nature, the needs, and the springs of pleasure in the audience."7 Carlyle's response to Sterling concentrates on defending the language and style of Sartor; in so doing, Carlyle reveals that he is consciously innovating in thought as well as language and suggests that the theory behind his innovations has mimetic-expressive coordinates8 rather than pragmatic ones. The novelty of his ideas in Sartor (the Clothes Philosophy derived from German thought), Carlyle argues, necessitated his creation of new words: "If one has thoughts not hitherto uttered in English books, I see nothing for it but that you must use words not found there, must make words-with moderation and discretion, of course." Whether Carlyle is construing the location of "thoughts" to be "in here" (the mind of TeufelsdrOckh) or "out there" (the dynamic material-spiritual world envisioned by the Clothes Philosophy), language must be chosen so as to accurately represent them, an expressive tenet in the first case, a mimetic one 7M.H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1958), pp See Abrams pp for mimetic theories in which what is imitated is transcendental and pp for definitions of expressive theories.

152 Carlyle's Struggle Against Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric 145 in the second. Neither orientation looks to an audience's "springs of pleasure," such as the canons of correctness, clarity, and taste in the reader John Sterling. In his second justification of Sartor's language, Carlyle goes over from defending his own practice to attacking the standard spoken for by Sterling: But finally, do you reckon this really a time for Purism of Style: or that Style (mere dictionary style) has much to do with the worth or unworth of a Book? I do not: with whole ragged battalions of Scott's-Novel Scotch, with Irish, Gennan, French, and even Newspaper Cockney (when "Literature" is little other than a Newspaper) storming in on us, and the whole structure of our 10hnsonian English breaking up from its foundations,-revolution there as visible as anywhere else! (317) Interpreting "Johnson ian English" narrowly, as W.K. Wimsatt does,9 Carlyle here rejects Johnson's idea of a stabilized and pure English lexicon.lo But his phrasing suggests a broader scope for Carlyle's revolution: "whole structure" also seems to refer to characteristic Johnsonian sentence patterns and habits of thought reflected therein. Carlyle thus sets himself in opposition to a structure which Wimsatt describes as typically declarative and reflective of logical thinking. Often combining abstract philosophical diction with antitheses to posit tight logical distinctions, frequently employing parallelism and periodicity to reflect carefully-aligned. settled reasoning and to relate premises to conclusions. In the sentences of Teufelsdr6ckh and the Editor, Carlyle revolts against these structures and their habits of mind, as shall be seen, in accordance not just with the mimetic and expressive purposes suggested in this letter but with a pragmatic one as well. In his reply to Emerson, Carlyle is more explicit about one of the coordinates suggested in the letter to Sterling (for Emerson's letter had asked him for the theory of his rhetoric in Sartor), and he again reveals a major representative of the rhetorical paradigm he is revolting against: With regard to style and so forth... You way well that I take up that attitude because I have no known public, am alone under the heavens, speaking into speaking into friendly or unfriendly space; and only, that I will not defend such attitude, that I call it questionable, tentative, and only the best that I, in these mad times, could conveniently hit upon. For you are to know, my view is that now at last we have lived to see all manner of Poetics and Rhetorics and Sermonics, and one may say generally all manner of Pulpits for addressing mankind from, as good as bro- 9W.K. Wimsatt, The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson (New Haven, 1937), p. 143n. lolohnson announces this ideal in the "Preface" to his Dictionary, wishing "that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote," and contending that "every language has...its improprieties and absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe."

153 146 Charles A. Beirnard ken and abolished: alas, yes! if you have any earnest meaning which demands to be not only listened to, but believed and done. you cannot (at least I cannot) utter it there, but the sound sticks in my throat, as when a solemnity were/elt to have become a mummery; and so one leaves the pasteboard coulisses, and three unities, and Blair's Lectures, quite behind; and feels only that there is nothing sacred, then, but the Speech of Man to believing Men! This, come what will, was. is, and forever must be sacred; and will one day, doubtless, anew environ itself with fit modes, with solemnities that are not mummeries (103-4). Carlyle reveals to Emerson that Sartor was written in accordance with a personal theory of rhetoric arising from his conviction that certain conditions faced the modern speaker. If times are "mad," a speaker can no longer rely on sharing a common set of assumptions with an audience; accordingly, the traditional arts of speaking are outmoded and ineffectual guides to right artistic practice. Bereft of knowable audience as a coordinate, Carlyle's rhetoric turns toward a different one: the criterion for right performance is not external but internal, residing in the artist's own feeling of propriety. The success of speech is to be judged by how sincerely it reflects the inner state of the speaker. And by foregrounding (with capitals, underlining, and exclamation point) his corollary belief that "there is nothing sacred... but the Speech of Man to believing Men!," Carlyle suggests another aspect of his standard of right performance: to satisfy the speaker's inner sense of sacredness, speech must be not just sincere but inspired, an emotionally heightened spontaneous outpouring of the speaker's deepest beliefs. Taken together, these statements suggest that one fundamental tenet in Carlyle's theory of the speaker's art is an expressive one, "in which the artist himself becomes the major element generating both the artistic product and the criteria by which it is to be judged." But though the theory suggested here shifts coordinates away from the pragmatic one used by Emerson and Sterling to judge Sartor, it does not exclude audience from the artistic transaction: the "Speech of Man" is to "believing Men," and Carlyle adumbrates his belief here that the expressive "Speech" of Sartor might have a pragmatic power of working on readers (the "demand") which pragmatically effects changes (from listening to believing and doing). In declaring to Emerson that his own expressive-pragmatic rhetoric "leaves... Blair's Lectures quite behind," Carlyle again in the rejoinders identifies a figure in the then-dominant paradigm against which his own rhetoric struggled. Indeed, Blairs' Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres 11 was the paradigm: the most influential rhetoric of the latter half lljames L. Golden and Edward PJ. Corbett, eds, The Rhetoric 0/ Blair. Campbell. and Whately (New York, 1968). Subsequent Blair references from this edition will be cited parenthetically.

154 Carly/e's Struggle Against Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric 147 of the 18th century, it dominated the first third of the 19th century as well by virtue of its having passed through fifty editions by The fundamental difference between Carlyle's rhetoric and Blair's is the latter's pervasive assumption about the nature of man, so tacit in the Lectures that Blair frames the assumption as an apposite synonym for "man": "Whenever a man speaks or writes, he is supposed, as a rational being, to have some end in view."13 With this premise, Blair's advice to speakers about rhetorical invention, choosing modes of appeal, arrangement, and style is everywhere informed by his view of human reason, its powers and limitations. To Blair, human reason operates in the domain of an external order of ideas upon which the uniform understandings of speaker and listener can concur: "Truth, which is the object of reason, is one" (43). Blair's faiths that the power of reason is facile and the access to truth is ready are evident in several of his recommendations about rhetorical invention and arrangement. Convinced of the superiority of modem minds over those of the ancients, Blair calls "superfluous" the use of the topical system of invention which classical rhetoricians felt necessary to aid the mind in the discovery of arguments; instead, he urges speakers to "lay aside their common places" and apply reason's power of "profound meditation" directly to their subjects (118-19). His confidence that what the orator discovers through "profound meditation" will be congruent with what audiences find convincing is suggested by his heuristic for selecting arguments: "Every speaker should place himself in the situation of a hearer, and think how he would be affected by those reasons which he purposes to employ for persuading others" (119). This confidence extends to Blair's advice on arrangement. After pointing out that there are two methods of arranging arguments, he unhesitatingly recommends the method which presumes that well-meditated ideas will readily win conviction: rather than using inductive arrangement (by which conclusions are "stolen upon" hearers), speakers should use deductive order, wherein "the point to be proved is fairly laid down, and one argument upon another is made to bear upon it, till the hearers be fully convinced" (119). Blair's faith in the primacy of reason carries with it the corollary that to be effective discourse must match the nature and needs of the rational mind. While his rhetoric does find limited place for such non-rational transactions as the power of sublime obscurity to affect the imagination and the ability of figurative language to activate emotion and fancy so as 12Edward Pl. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric/or the Modern Student (New York, 1971), p Quoted in Wilbur S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, (Princelon, 1956), p. 654.

155 148 Charles A. Beirnard to enliven ideas, Blair's advice on choosing modes of appeal, managing the parts of a discourse, and fashioning a style is governed by his corollary. Blair acknowledges the three Aristotelian modes of appeal, but his recommendations drastically subordinate ethical and pathetic appeals to logical ones. Showing little interest in appeals based on the speaker's ethos, Blair argues at length that appeals to reason must far outweigh emotional appeals in a modern speaker's discourse. Conceding that "the impassioned manner of ancient orators" and Aristotle's recommendation that orators study men's passions attest to the recognition the ancients gave to this mode of appeal, Blair nonetheless strongly cautions against following the precedent of the ancients. First, he warns, modern taste has grown cool and so would find any imitation of the impassioned manner of ancient orators by a modern speaker to be "injudicious" (103-04). Then, emotional expression fails to meet a fundamental need of hearers' minds, for heated expression is always prone to run into confusion and disorder (104), whereas "to the hearers, order in discourse is absolutely necessary for making any proper impression" (102). Finally, Blair asserts, pathetic appeals have less intrinsic and lasting effects than logical argument. On these bases, Blair advises arranging the discourse so that pathetic appeals are both posterior and subordinate to logical ones: "if we expect any emotion which we raise to have a lasting effect, we must be careful to bring over to our side, in the first place, the understanding and judgment" (123). So emphatically does Blair believe that reason has elevated modern speakers above their ancient counterparts that at one point he reduces the number of appeals recognized by the ancients as legitimate to one and defines his rhetoric exclusively in its terms: "True rhetoric and sound logic are very nearly allied" (33). Blair's conception of the nature and needs of the rational mind also informs his recommendations to speakers about the management of their arguments. He conceives of reason as an instrument which is rigorous and precise in analysis and classification but weaker in powers of synthesis. Hence he endorses the practice of announcing the partitions of a discourse beforehand, for these signals aid the mind in its natural bent for dividing and grouping: "Laying down heads," Blair says, "meets the nature and needs of the hearer's minds, for the mind best apprehends what is clear and best attends to that which is introduced beforehand" (113). His five rules for division likewise are governed by his concept of the mind as an analytic instrument. Rule 1 directs that "the several parts into which the subject is divided be really distinct from one another; that is, that no one include another" (104). Failure to divide in conformity with the mind's demand for distinct genus/species differentiation "involves the subject in indistinctness and disorder," with the consequence that hearers will "find themselves little affected by what is spoken" (114). Similarly, when laying down rules for the management of the argument section of a speech, Blair begins with a rule addressed to the mind's need for distinct categorization.

156 Carlyle's Struggle Against Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric 149 The speaker must "avoid blending arguments confusingly together, that are of a separate nature... those classes or arguments which are addressed to different principles in human nature [should be kept] separate and distinct" (120). This concept of mind appears again in Blair's prescriptions about style. Examining style under the heads of perspicuity and ornament, Blair emphasizes that the former is of fundamental importance, "a quality so essential in every kind of writing, that for want of it, nothing can atone" (67). Perspicuity fulfills the writer's first object: "to make our meaning clearly and fully understood, and understood without the least difficulty" (67). It is in his discussion of precision, "the highest part of the quality denoted by perspicuity," which in tum is the most important feature of good style, that Blair explicitly states that a style is good insofar as it accords with his view of "the nature of the human mind" (69). The mind, Blair says, "never can view, clearly and distinctly, above one object at a time. If it must look at two or three together, especially objects among which there is resemblance or connection, it finds itself confused and embarrassed" (69), Precision, from praecidere, "to cut off," means to prune superfluities "so as to exhibit neither more nor less than an exact copy of his idea who uses it." Should writers have either an indistinct idea which they attempt to hone to clarity by multiplying words or a distinct idea which they attempt to ornament through circumlocution or diversifying synonyms, the result will be a loose style which frustrates the rational mind's demand to view one object at a time (69), In these letters to Sterling and Emerson, Carlyle names figures who suggest features of the dominant rhetorical paradigm which he opposed, but the letters only adumbrate his own theory of rhetoric. Yet his writings before Sartor and in the book itself show that his revolutionary rhetoric was not just "hit upon," as he tells Emerson, but prompted by well-developed ideas. In his literary apprenticeship as reviewer of German thought and literature for the British reader, Carlyle in his 1827 essay "The State of German Literature" approves of certain German ideas in ways that imply that he has himself embraced them as foundations for his artistic theory. Among the Germans, he says, Poet and Philosopher alike claim as their province an invisible world beyond sense and matter; knowledge of this world cannot be gained by empirical faculties or understanding, nor can it be communicated by logic and argument. 14 The Literary Man perceives that this "'Divine Idea'" pervades the visible world, which is its manifestation and symbol, and he makes it his duty to act as faithful interpreter of this Idea, showing it forth in the forms which will enable it to be discerned by the mass of men from whom it is ordinarily hidden (Works, XIII, 56). 14Complete Workso!Thomas Carlyle (New York, 1901), XIII, 80.

157 150 Charles A. Beirnard When in this essay he turns from this transcendental conception of the Literary Man as seer and faithful interpreter to discuss the problems facing the vatic artist, Carlyle demonstrates that his artistic theory has another coordinate than the mimetic-expressive one. The writer whose subject belongs to "the invisible and immaterial class" faces enormous difficulties in being understood by readers so He must devise new means of explanation, describe conditions of mind in which this invisible idea arises, the false persuasions that eclipse it, the false shows that may be mistaken for it, the glimpses of it that appear elsewhere; in short, strive, by a thousand well-devised methods, to guide his reader up to the perception of it; in all which, moreover, the reader must faithfully and toilsomely co-operate with him, if any fruit is to come of their mutual endeavor (Works, XIII, 70). The theory Carlyle outlines here has both mimetic-expressive and pragmatic coordinates. The fundamental requirement is that the artistic form be oriented toward and faithfully show forth the Divine Idea. But the artist must also be attuned to audience, using such forms as will make the Idea accessible and such methods as will lead readers to share in the perception of the invisible. Even then, the artist's success ultimately depends on the reader's sympathetic and cooperative willingness to replicate the artist's struggle for insight into the Divine Idea. By 1828, Carlyle has shifted the responsibility for eliciting cooperative struggle from reader to artist, making it a criterion of excellent artistic performance, and he has deepened the value he sees in an artist's ability to prompt mutual perception in readers. Evaluating Goethe's Faust by his mimetic-expressive transcendental coordinate, Carlyle finds this work to be truly the product of a Literary Man: arising out of "earnest meditation" by the "gifted eyes" of a "deep and noble soul," Faust embodies a "true point of vision" into the "stupendous All" (Works, XIll, 146-8). But his special praise goes to the "proper form" with which Goethe has "managed" the poem, a mode which Carlyle judges "proper" by his evolving pragmatic criterion. Faust's parabolic form, he says, is excellent in its power to enlist readers' deep and active cooperation, out of which activity comes clearer and clearer participation in the vatic artist's insights. By its ability to activate such participation, an elicitive form is seen by Carlyle as having two further values. It engages readers in an activity which is inherently moral, for, as Carlyle says, "Everywhere in life, the true question is, not what we gain, but what we do..,it is not what we receive, but what we are made to give, that chiefly contents and profits us." And such a mode elicits so close a sharing of the author's vision by the audience that the noumenous insight almost becomes the readers' own: "We love it the more for the labour it has given us: we almost feel as if we ourselves had assisted in its creation" (Works, XIII, 146). Sartor Resartus is the product of Carlyle's turning from criticism to original authorship using the transcendental and pragmatic tenets he had developed during his apprenticeship. His belief that his vatic powers have

158 Carlyle's Struggle Against Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric 151 developed sufficiently to enable him to succeed as a literary artist guided by transcendental coordinates is found in a letter of late 1829 in which he declares his plan to strike the "style" of "prophecy" in the upcoming year. 15 Eight months later he writes to Goethe that he intends to turn from the derivative work of criticism to original composition and that the product will very likely be "strange" because his mind ferments with "natural supernaturalism" (Letters, Y, 152-4). In statements both surrounding and within Sartor, Carlyle shows that concerns for audience also guided the making of his book. In the letter to Goethe, Carlyle indicates that his original creation has a pragmatic intention: it will be "Writing from the heart and if possible to the heart" (Letters, Y, 153). A notebook entry written after the completion of his book also shows that Sartor was written with a pragmatic aim and a method suited to that aim. Suggesting that his purpose had been to "spread abroad reverence over the hearts of men," Carlyle identifies the "oratory" of "Teufelsdreck" as the means he had used to that end. Sartor itself not only confirms Carlyle's purpose of "spreading reverence" through prophetic oratory but also specifies the kinds of appeal through which he sought this effect: "0 British Reader," says the Editor, "if... Teufelsd.rOckh, and we by means of him, have led thee into the true Land of Dreams; and through the Clothes-Screen [and] thou lookest, even for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles,-then art thou profited beyond money's Worth" (SR, ). These are statements of Carlyle's revolutionary concept of propheticpragmatic rhetoric which informs Sartor Resartus and sets it against the paradigm of its day. By naming as his pragmatic goal the bringing of the reader to a state of Wonder-a state of belief arising out of a shared perception of the worldview embodied in the Clothes Philosophy-Carlyle rejects the aim of rational conviction emphasized in Blair. Where Blair stressed logical argument and perspicuous style as means to his primary rhetorical end, Carlyle indicates that his appeals are aimed at feeling and seeing, the former suggesting the traditional ethical and pathetic kinds, the latter denoting a kind of appeal which Blair no more than mentions but which is paramount in Carlyle's rhetoric. Orientation toward the faculty of seeing, the imaginative intuition, the inner spiritual eye, is the primary basis for Carlyle's revolution against the dominant paradigm's ideas of style and arrangement. As the main vehicle for Carlyle's persuasive appeals, Teufelsdr5ckh's speech is given a style by which Carlyle sought to attest to the authority of 15The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (Durham, N.C., 1976), V, 43.

159 152 Charles A. Beirnard this figure's ethos as an inspired seer, to body forth the nature of the invisible world which the prophet sees, and to engage the readers' emotive and imaginative-intuitive powers. These aims are the bases for Carlyle's rebellion against established style, for they are fulfilled neither by Johnson's orotund, abstract declarations of pre-fonnulated logical constructs nor by Blair's perspicuous, plain style. Where Johnson's sentences declare, Teufelsdr5ckh's run a complete range of moods in short compass. In his first reported speech (SR, 21), he asserts that he has seen a noumenous one beneath the phenomenal many ("I see it all... that living flood"), then asks a rhetorical question to engage the reader ("whither is it going?"), then exclaims prophetically that the answer lies in the invisible world ("From Eternity, onwards to Eternity!"), and concludes with an exclamatory question which applies the insight to the material world ("These are Apparitions: what else?"). With this range of moods within one sentence, Teufelsdr5ckh's speech aims at attesting to his inspired, visionary state; at revealing the dynamic nature of the unity hidden beneath multeity; and at engaging the emotions and imagination of readers. Where Johnson's rotund periods and predilection for clausal balance and antithesis reflect a rational concern for relating premises to conclusions and making logical discriminations, Teufelsdr5ckh's sentences war against settled logical fonnulation, instead aiming at widening and deepening readers' vision while dramatizing the seer's own. Teufelsdr5ckh's sentences tend to string out curt units of sense by apposition and coordination, hurrying readers over heterogeneous phenomena to surprise them with the discovery of a hidden affinity or identity. Where Blair's rule of perspicuity commands that objects be kept discrete lest the rational mind be confused, Teufe1sdr5ckh's additive sentences demand that the differentiating intellect lose its hold to allow the imaginative intuition to use its esemplastic power. Blair was inclined to distrust figurative language, apparently fearing that its appeal to the wayward emotions and imagination might distract the reason's attention to argument. 16 Teufelsdr5ckh's speech is a constellation of metaphor through which readers are led to reach the climactic cosmic symbols of "Natural Supernaturalism" in Book ill. Metaphor and symbol are at the heart of Teufelsdr5ckh's style, for these figures powerfully accomplish all of the purposes of his style overall. They testify powerfully to his ethos as a seer, for only with profound spiritual insight into the underlying noumenous One do all material things become at once metaphoric and symbolic (metaphoric in relation to each other, symbolic in relation to the One). Figures also attest to the nature of the world by bodying forth 16Blair (p. 79) saw figurative language as the natural means of expression in primitive states of language and culture, when men are governed more by passion and imagination than by reason. The language of his day, he felt, had reached the stage of refmement wherein "perspicuity and precision are more studied".

160 Carlyle's Struggle Against Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric 153 the omnipresence of the one each time a similarity-beneath-difference is invoked by a figure. And by apposing and coordinating diverse figures and images, TeufelsdrOckh's speech elicits from readers both their participation in acts of perceiving the fundamental interconnectedness of things and their exercise of the only faculty capable of enabling them to share the seer's insights, their imaginative intuitions.l7 Carlyle's rebellion against the rhetorical paradigm's ideas of arrangement also follows the promptings of his prophetic-pragmatic theory. While Blair's advice on arrangement was oriented toward what the rational mind found "natural" and easy to grasp, Carlyle's arrangements at both micro and macro levels in Sartor are simultaneously addressed to engaging readers' imaginative intuitions and to frustrating the efforts of their logical faculties to find coherence. The arrangements in Sartor are based both on Carlyle's pragmatic tenet of leading his audience to a perception of the invisible through elicitive forms which demand use of those faculties by which the invisible can be perceived and on his prophetic objective of fostering belief by bodying forth the unseen in a forcefully expressed, noumenous prophetic vision. By Carlyle's use of the ordering fiction 18 of the British editor and his internal donnee, the editing task of progressively bring order and light out of the chaos and darkness of Die Kleider and Teufelsdrockh's autobiographical fragments, TeufelsdrOckh's ideas are unfolded so as to doubly frustrate readers yearning for narrative or logical coherence. The unsystematic order in which TeufelsdrOckh's thoughts are presented in the whole book is determined by Carlyle's strategic choice of fictions: the Editor is presented as an "English intellect" (SR, 8) confronted with "a very sea of [German] thought" who is thereby constrained to present TeufelsdrOckh's ideas as they become "lucid and lucent" to him (SR, 11). And the order of ideas in any given extract selected by the Editor is itself 17por TeufelsdrOckh's claim that a metaphorical style effects reader engagement, see Sartor Resartus p. 73 and Harrold's note 3. 18Por the rhetorical advantages Carlyle gained by using fictions in Sartor, see Gerry H. Brookes, The Rhetorical Form of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus," (Berkeley, 1972). especially pp This study is in accord with Brookes' thesis that "Sartor Resartus is a form of persuasive essay" (p. 8) in which an implied orator (p. 63) uses the fictions of the Editor and TeufelsdrOckh in varied and effective ways to persuade readers to belief in the ideas of the Clothes Philosophy (p. 171). However, in arguing that Sartor is an essay, not a novel, Brookes questions the coherence and significance of a pattern which this study and others fmd to be integral to Carlyle's persuasive strategy: a pattern of growth through experience with TeufelsdrOckh's ideas and autobiography by the Editor. Critics who fmd significant patterns of development in the Editor include G.B. Tennyson. Sarlor Called Resartus (Princeton. 1%5), pp ; and Albert J. LaValley, Carlyle and the Idea of the Modern (New Haven, 1968).

161 154 Charles A. Beirnard inaccessible to readers' intellects, for Carlyle creates for Teufelsdrackh the persona of an inspired prophet who expresses his insights in fragments which exfoliate in emotional and imaginative patterns rather than in logical ones. The fragmentary orders arising out of the fiction of the editing situation serve as an elicitive form, prompting readers to seek insight through active imaginative and intuitive effort. To encourage and school readers in this active participation, Carlyle poses the Editor as mediating bridge between them and Teufelsdrackh's visionary opinions and life. By endowing the Editor with a morally attractive ethos ("Truth is our divinity" [SR, 14]), and by having him initially react to Teufelsdrackh in ways which readers would find natural (the task of understanding will be beset with "difficulties" [SR, 9-14]), Carlyle invites readers progressively to extend their sympathy to the Editor and to cooperate with him in his struggle to perceive TeufelsdrOckh's meanings. As fragments of Teufelsdrockh's strange compendia are disclosed in the order in which they become accessible to the Editor's purview and comprehension, his reactions shift from judgment to sympathy,19 and his exhortations to readers encourage a similar change and ever-profounder attentiveness. As the Editor's perceptions deepen, he increasingly elects to arrange his materials in climactic patterns which move from the phenomenal surface to noumenous insights.20 These arrangements not only testify to the Editor's growing pow:-rs of seeing and feeling but also condition readers to follow and engage in the making of the meanings of the Clothes Philosophy. Though opaque to Blair's notion of the faculty of reason, these arrangements serve both Carlyle's pragmatic and prophetic objectives. By eliciting from readers progressive exercise in using their power of imaginative intuition, this power is strengthened-intuition is quickened by experience (SR, 51). As intuition increasingly quickens in the Editor and, by Carlyle's design, in readers, new and more profoundly and abstrusely prophetic materials can be confronted and struggled with until their meanings are perceived. This elicitive arrangement is used in each of Sartor's three books to bring readers to the state of readiness which will enable Teufelsdrackh's deepest insights to achieve their effects. Each book is structured so as to lead Editor and readers to the climax of a pro- 19Tennyson. pp A paradigm of this recurrent patter is "Characteristics" (I.iv). The Editor here is free to order his recollections about TeufelsdrOckh in any way he wants. He chooses to arrange his impressions in a climactic insight paltern which evidently emerged from his working with imaginative intuition on his body of recollections: his description of TeufelsdrlSckh begins with the surface Old Clothes of the Professor's relations with "good society" and progressively penetrates to the concluding insight that the "cipherkey" to TeufelsdrOckh's spiritual essence lay in his laugh.

162 Carlyle's Struggle Against Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric 155 foundly noumenous prophetic insight which bodies forth the invisible in the visible. "Pure Reason" in Book I, "The Everlasting Yea" in Book II, and "Natural Supernaturalism" in Book III are climactic prophetic visions which will, in Carlyle's strategies of disposition, be accessible to readers whose intuitions have been quickened by the experiences provided by the pragmatic rhetorician's arrangements. Access to prophetic vision encountered in this manner cannot but have a profound impact on earnest readers who have faithfully attended, for, in Carlyle's view, "We love [insight] the more for the labour it has given us." Carlyle's rhetorical rebellion in 1831 has interesting parallels with challenges to the dominant rhetorical paradigm of our day. As do those who currently objecto to practitioners of Blair's managerial rhetoric, Carlyle denied that rhetoric's province was constrained to reason and a logical arrangement of arguments addressed to it and to taste and a perspicuous style addressed to it; instead, he extended the appeals of his rhetoric to address the emotions surrounding his readers' deepest interests21 and the faculty of imaginative intuition which the dominant paradigm ignored. Just as Keith Fort recently challenged the rationalist assumptions and resultant form of the critical essay by suggesting that they might arise from an epistemological self-deception, Carlyle directed his rhetorical appeals toward other capabilities in readers on the assumption that reason was a deceptive, self-reflecting faculty. Similarly to the way current proponents of a "female" rhetorical mode favor persuading indirectly, implicitly, unanalytically, additively, Carlyle rejected Blair's and Johnson's rhetorics of formulation and, instead, persuaded through a generative rhetoric of experience. Finally, just as Winston Weathers today recommends that writers apprise themselves of the resources of an alternate grammar style, a Grammar B, Carlyle, for his persuasive ends, put the conventional stylistic grammar of his day to the use of undercutting its own assumptions (as when he has the Editor deride Science with a fractured Johnsonian period at the beginning of Sartor) and created an alternate style as a bridge between readers and his revivifying world view. In fact, Weathers' justification of Grammar B almost precisely reflects the bases of Carlyle's rhetorical revolution: Many writers believe that there are "things to say"... that simply cannot be effectively communicated via a traditional grammar; that there are "things to say" in a... socially complex, politically and spiritually confused era that simply cannot be reflected in language if language is limited to the traditional grammar; that the "conventions" of language in the traditional grammar are so much a product of certain thought processes, certain world views, certain notions about the nature of man and society that the conventions force upon much of our content a compromise, a qualification, an unwanted prevarication (4). 21See Brooke's analyses of Carlyle's strategies for evoking feelings, pp

163 156 Charles A. Beirnard Carlyle would only have changed "unwanted" to "intolerable." University of Alaska, Anchorage Keep up with the Worlds of Burns, Hume Smollett and Raeburn The Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society (ECSSS) invites everyone with an interest in the culture of eighteenthcentury Scotland to become a member. Founded in 1986, ECSSS is an interdisciplinary and international organization, with more than 125 members around the world. It is an Affiliated Society of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and maintains ties with other scholarly organizations devoted to the study of eighteenthcentury culture, British history, Scottish studies, and related topics. All ECSSS members receive the society's annual newsletter, Eighteenth-Century Scotland, which includes short articles, news items, announcements, book reviews, and bibliographies. In addition, ECSSS sponsors seminars at meetings of regional, national, and international societies and organizes conferences of its own, such as the April 1988 conference on "The Social World of the Scottish Enlightenment" at Norfolk, Virginia (cosponsored by the Institute for Scottish Studies at Old Dominion University). Plans are also under way for a series of essay collections on eighteenth-century Scottish topics. For further information contact: Richard B. Sher, Executive Secretary-ECSSS, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA

164 Alistair McCleery The Genesis of The Green Isle of the Great Deep Once Old Hector had talked at a ceilidh about 'The Green Isle of the Great Deep'. and though that paradisaical isle had haunted Art for a time. it was readily drowned in the flow of the River'! It is difficult to believe that The Green Isle of the Great Deep (1944) was not already a half-fonned intention in Gunn's mind while he was writing Young Art and Old Hector (1942). So much is prepared in the one for the extended allegory of the other. In the earlier collection of linked short stories, originally published monthly in Chambers Journal and the Scots Magazine, Hector places the judgment of God above the rules of the Revenue bureaucracy; Art demonstrates his skill as a runner and his pugnacity as a fighter; there are teasing allusions to the Green Isle; and Art's constant desire to reach the River, unsatisfied in these short stories, is fulfilled in The Green Isle of the Great Deep and through it he lands the salmon of wisdom. In other words, the novel seems the natural artistic and thematic development of the earlier stories. INeil Gunn, Young Art and Old Hector (London, 1942). p All future references to this work will appear in parentheses in the text as Y A followed by a page number.

165 158 Alistair McCleery The genesis of The Green Isle of the Great Deep is widely attested to: evidence comes from Gunn himself.2 In Young Art and Old Hector, he had written not a provincial novel, distant from the preoccupation of war and politics, but a book in which the otherwise hypothetical concept of the brotherhood of man was realized through description of the old Gaelic communal culture. Rather, however, than write further adventures of the two characters in the same way, he wished to test their values against the type of totalitarian ideology then prevalent in Europe and against which the Allies were fighting. It was, in many ways, the greatest contribution Gunn could have made to the war effort (greater, certainly, than rejoining the Customs and Excise3). Gunn wrote in his 1946 article: At the end of the first book dealing with the old man and the little boy I left them heading for the river which the boy had always longed to see. At the beginning of the second book they reach the river, start poaching a salmon, fall through the bottom of the deep pool, and wake up in their Gaelic paradise... This paradise is run on totalitarian lines, and so my problem is set. (p. 5) When Gunn recollects the origin of the novel, it is in the attempt to demonstrate the strength of the spiritual values inherent in what appears to be a "socially dying" community. These values have a significance over and beyond the culture they stem from and Gunn sets out to show their universality, that "the place back home can be turned into paradise and include in its talk the basic problem of a planet" (p. 5). The importance of these values and their application to the world at large remained a constant theme of Gunn' s, one which, for example, dominates his final book, his spiritual autobiography, The Atom of Delight (1956). However, if the novel grew out of a persistent preoccupation with a "true form of communal living" (p. 3) and the immediate impact of war, particularly knowledge of "the techniques whereby the adult mind could be broken down or conditioned and the young mind moulded" (p. 4), pen was actually put to paper as a result of a challenge issued by Naomi Mitchison. She later stated that "Neil wrote The Green Isle of the Great 2In ''The Novel at Home," Scots Magazine. 45 (April, 1946). pp Gunn considered this course of action at the outbreak of the Second World War. In his diary for September 5, 1939, he writes: "Should I offer my services to myoid Dept? Went down to Dingwall and Smith, Officer of C and E, suggested I should. I'll think about it Have no particular desire to do it and believe we could live well enough on what we have got and what money as I could earn. After all, I have already worked for thirty years, and feel that in the ordinary way I have made my social contribution. Any extra contribution I had hoped to make in writing at my own economic risk" (National Library of Scotland, Deposit 209, Box 1). My thanks are due to the executors of the Gunn estate for permission to consult these papers and to the staff of the NLS for their kindness and assistance.

166 Neil Gunn's Green Isle 159 Deep, one of his best books, specially for me. He told me so afterwards and I felt it as soon as I actually began to read the book."4 The challenge was an accusation of escapism and self-indulgence leveled at Young Art and Old Hector that in turn typified an ideological gulf between Gunn and Mitchison. The dialogue in correspondence between the two in the 1940s is a philosophical debate between the Anarchist and the Collectivist. Where the one advocated the freedom of the individual to work cooperatively (and voluntarily), the other urged the necessity of central planning and regulation to ensure the effective management of society. This may imply that the discussion took place solely at the level of theory, but it was, as Hart and Pick note,5 of vital importance to political decisions then being made that would shape the post-war world, At the national level, the exigencies of war placed much authority in the hands of the civil servants of the Scottish Office, who could use it, under the direction of Tom Johnston, to improve conditions in Scotland. At the international level, while the totalitarianism of Fascism was now discredited, and indeed lives were being lost to combat it, there was still the totalitarianism of Communism-and there was a strong lobby to urge that the brave, new post-war world could be constructed with foundations of brotherhood and plenty only if Europe adopted the blueprints of Marxism as practiced in the USSR. In 1944, Gunn wrote to Mitchison opposing Johnston's plans to introduce a strengthened Herring Board to oversee and control Scottish fishing: And when you accuse me of anarchism, do you mean the anarchism of Kropotlcin or just individual chaos? There's a mighty difference. That the herring fishermen should be in a co-operative is anarchism. That they should be run by a State Herring Industry Board is-what? I have always been a socialist all my life and still am, but I have always been aware of the servile state.6 This specific concern was voiced by Gunn in 1935 when, in a Scots Magazine article, he condemned the bureaucracy of the Herring Industry Board which was insensitive to local conditions and needs. The voyage which led to Off in a Boat (1938) also gave Gunn the opportunity to investigate at first-hand the nature and consequence of the decline in the fishing industry: "the facts, encountered everywhere, of depopulation, of disappearing crofts, of half-ruinous fishing villages, of young men refusing to go to sea--except as deck hands on summer yachts or trading 4Naomi Mitchison, "A Self Interview," Studies in Scottish Literature, XIV (1979), pp See P.R. Hart and J.B. Pick, Neil M Gunn: A Highland Life (London, 1981), p Gunn to Mitchison, June 9, 1944, in National Library of Scotland Accession 5813.

167 160 Alistair McCleery vessels. 7 But even by 1937 Gunn is also aware of the positive elements in Gaelic culture which can be drawn on to ensure its survival. He is indignant that there should be a campaign, inspired by officialdom, to replace the Scottish system of family-owned boats by the English system of company-owned boats. The advantages of the Scottish system are stressed in terms anticipating the later argument with Mitchison. For though the Scottish system was built on the national love of individualism (stigmatised by some of our country's critics as her fatal bane in these days of capitalism or totalitarianism) yet this individualism always worked towards the family and communal good. This is a fact that cannot be too clearly emphasised. Within it, indeed, lies the suggestion of any contribution Scotland might make to world affairs today, for all her ancient institutions do show this concern for the rights and initiative of the individual coincident with the larger concern for the community.s As is apparent from even that extract, Gunn's "anarchism" had a strongly nationalist aspect. For Gunn, the essence of nationalism was "to love your own land, from which you draw your deepest inspiration:'9 More often than not, however, nationalism implies an attitude to those who do not belong to that nation. Indeed, the nature of nationalism is frequently framed by response to those external to the nation. It can be chauvinist, although attachment to one's own nation does not in itself lead to a desire to deprive others of similar rights. The motif recurs throughout Neil Gunn's writing that nationalism, in this sense of a love for one's own land, does not create conflict. Moreover, and more importantly, nationalism is for Gunn a potent counter to uniformity. He wrote in 1931: The small nation has always been humanity's last bulwark for the individual against that machine [of standardisation through centralised government]. for personal expression against impersonal tyranny, for the quick freedom of the spirit against the flattening steamroller of mass. It is concerned for the intangible things called its heritage, its beliefs and arts, its distinctive institutions. for everything, in fact, that expresses it And expression finally implies spirit in an act of creation. which is to say, culture.lo Gunn, in fact devoted his 1939 article, "Nationalism in Writing: Is Scottish Individualism to be Deplored?", to this thesis that nationalism ensures individuality against the forces of conformity and uniformity. In this anticipation of the theme of The Green Isle of the Great Deep, Gunn 7"One fisher Went Sailing... " Scots Magazine, 27 (Sept ), p "The Family Boat: Its Future in Scottish fishing," Scots Magazine, 27 (June, 1937), p.l72. 9''The Essence of Nationalism," Scots Magazine. 37 (June, 1942), p lo"nationalism and Internationalism," Scots Magazine, 15 (June, 1931), p. 188.

168 Neil Gunn's Green Isle 161 insists that maintenance of a separate Scottish identity is part and parcel of the retention of individual identity)1 Unpopular though this stance may have been during the war years, Gunn did not cease from stressing the need for a separate Scottish identity-while acknowledging also the need in the war effort for the unity of all Britain. This double allegiance masks a dilemma for the nationalist like Gunn, or more broadly, for anyone who, again like Gunn, underlines the importance of individual freedom so heavily. In a crisis such as a war, or in circumstances with which the resources of the individual cannot cope, some sort of collectivism seems inevitable. The problem is that collectivism makes the destruction of the individual's independence seem just as inevitable. Gunn solved this difficulty by highlighting the spirit of cooperation typical of the community of his childhood in which "the social structure was so simple that it didn't consciously exist."12 Hardships beyond the capability of the individual to mitigate became the responsibility of the community at large. The community was selfsufficient; it owed much of this to its isolation but that isolation did not in tum lead to insularity. Through its emigrants, its sailors, and its soldiers, the community was aware of the "outside world" (AD p. 117) and, accordingly, the strength of its own values. Gunn postulates that these values may have grown out of the clan system, "with its devotion, mutual trust and social warmth" (AD p. 119). This was the real betrayal of the Clearances: that the man, regarded until then as chief but merely primus inter pares, should exert his legal but not moral right to evict his own clansmen, his family, from the clan lands. However, the existence of the clan system was not necessary for the survival of the spirit of cooperation among the people themselves. "You cannot rub out the whole way of life of a people by manipulating the powers in a charter, not unless you rub out the people themselves" (AD p. 119). That way of life, according to Gunn, was based on the interaction of individual independence and mutual cooperation; "independence which brings dependence on oneself was not directed against any other but, on the contrary, respected a similar independence in all others" (AD p. 119); the spontaneity of cooperation that "came from an absence of compulsion by one neighbour over another" (AD p. 120). The Atom of Delight contains several instances of this. When a man is laid out with the rheumatics, the younger men of the community take over his work for him and are rewarded by the communal 11 "Nationalism in Writing: Is Scottish Individualism to be Deplored?" Scots Magazine, 31 (July, 1939), pp An expanded version of these arguments is found in the present author's Introduction to Landscape and Light: Essays by Neil H. Gunn (Aberdeen, 1987). 12The Atom of Delight (London, 1956), p Future references to this work will appear in parentheses in the text as AD followed by a page number.

169 162 Alistair McCleery entertainment of a ceilidh. Peat-cutting is carried out by a band of neighoors, all working on one another's peat-bank. This is not a primitive form of communism; each man owns his own peat-bank and is independent of his neighoor, but all share the duties in a task that takes two or three men to work a bank efficiently. It is a tragedy when an old woman of the community has to be taken away to the Poor House; it is a "dark shadow implicating everyone, as if in some mysterious way they were all to blame" (AD p. 121). This could all too easily be summed up as the wistful idealization by the older man of his childhood environment. That it was not, and that Gunn believed in this combination of individual freedom and mutual cooperation with some conviction, can be shown in two ways. Firstly the theme of cooperation recurs, as already indicated, throughout Gunn's writing, ooth factual and fictional, and is not, therefore, the product of a nostalgic old age. Secondly, there is evidence from other than Gunn's writing that individual independence and community cooperation do lie at the heart of Gaelic social organization. R.J. Storey, discussing, in 1982, the socio-economic factors which led to the Highlands and Islands Development Board sponsoring a pragrame of community cooperatives, singles out as a striking characteristic "the relative egalitarianism of Hebridean society."13 This comment echoes both the crofters' spokesman who in 1884 told the Scotsman "we have no leaders; we are all leaders"14 and the sociologist who in 1973 was surprised to find in Highlands and Islands communities an absence of the normal pyramidal social structure. Egalitarianism and cooperation are facets of the same structure: "the relatively egalitarian social system of the Highlands makes action possible only when it is generally desired and agreed."15 It is a question incapable of resolution whether economic necessity makes cooperation such a noteworthy feature of these communities or whether economic necessity simply reinforces an impulse to cooperation inherent in the people; either way it is clear that it has ensured the survival of crafting system despite all the vicissitudes which assail it.16 A former chairman of the Crofters' Commission can conclude that values and practice in Highland l3rj. Storey, "Community Co-operatives-A Highlands and Islands Experiment" in J. Sewel and D. O'Carroll, eds., Co-operation and Community Development (Galway, 1982), p. 72; see also Alison McCleery, "The Persistence of Co-operation as a Theme in Marginal Development," in the same volume, pp Scotsman, November 19, Adrian Varwell, "Highlands and Islands Communities" in M. Broady, ed., Marginal Regions (London, 1973), p See Adam Collier, The Cro/ting Problem (Cambridge, 1953).

170 Neil Gunn's Green Isle 163 communities serve to strengthen one another. James Shaw Grant writes: "It seems clear that the sense of belonging, of identity satisfies a fundamental human need. The communal element in common grazings is a cold, legal fact, the sociability of the fank has its rewards, greater than the economic return from the sheep handled. "17 Neil Gunn himself served from on a Commission of Enquiry into Crofting Conditions under the Chairmanship of Principal T.M. Taylor of Aberdeen University. The Repon of the Commission begins with a statement of the premise upon which it is based, that is, that crofting as a way of life should be maintained: "we have thought it right... to record our unanimous conviction, founded on personal knowledge and on the evidence we have received, that in the national interest the maintenance of these communities is desirable, because they embody a free and independent way of life which in a civilisation predominantly urban and industrial in character is wonh preserving for its own intrinsic quality:'18 Throughout the Repon, the preservation of the culture and tradition of tht crofters is emphasized, and this emphasis is usually accompanied by a corresponding stress upon cooperation and self-help. The Repon describes the organization of crofts: "Most crofter holdings are congregated in townships. The typical croft is not a self-contained unit" (p. 16). Much of the township land is held in common by the crofters and its care depends upon the cooperation of the crofters. Often the attention of the Commission was drawn to the fact that drainage and fencing problems could not be solved by the individual crofter acting on his own but demanded communal action. The third and final conclusion of the whole repon is to the point: "The crofters themselves, or at least a majority of them, must be prepared to cooperate" (p. 88). The note of egalitarianism is also sounded strongly throughout the findings of the Commission: "The crofter calls no man his master" (p. 33). Yet the problem of depopulation of the crofting communities is faced up to and its roots examined. Those communities which are dominated by the old stagnate and sink into a dullness which the young cannot tolerate. This is not an attempt to sweep the elderly away, perhaps to institutionalize them-the "vinue of respect for old age" (p. 42) still retains its power in crofting communities, even if it has declined elsewhere-but it is an acknowledgement that there is a need for a "cenain reservoir of vitality in the community" (p. 34). Young people do not leave because the lure of better conditions elsewhere at less effon is necessarily overwhelming or, indeed, because they necessarily wish to: "Highlanders as a rule are not anxious to leave their home 17J.S. Grant, "The Importance of the Part-Time Holding" in P.G. Sadler and G.A. Mackay, eds., The Changing FortUlles of Marginal Regions (Aberdeen, 1977), p Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Crofting Conditions, 1954 (Cmd 9091) p. 9. Future references to this Report will appear in parentheses in the text

171 164 Alistair McCleery communities. They leave home because they have to, and they would be glad to stay if that were possible" (p. 34). The solution is more equitable distribution and tenure of the land (though not public ownership19) with an administrative body created to safeguard the crofters' interests and encourage their cooperation. How far this would have been endorsed or qualified by Gunn is difficult to assess absolutely, but the degree of his suppon can be gauged somewhat by his assent to the Repon. Principal Taylor could later write to Gunn thanking him for his "sensitive and understanding approach to the whole problem" which "has been reflected in the Repon itself and is the main reason for its favourable reception. "20 While it might be objected in any discussion of The Green Isle of the Great Deep that Gunn's work on the Commission of Enquiry was at a late stage in his career and that the conclusions of its Repon represent a much diluted version of the picture contained in The Atom of Delight, there is evidence, from the earlier period, of Gunn' s belief in the values of "The Community" and of his enthusiasm when he found these values being translated into practical achievements. In 1937 Gunn published an anicle in which he related the conclusions of a tour of Scotland by the Danish writer. Arne Strom.21 Strom had himself been commissioned by a Copenhagen newspaper to write a series of anicles on the economic condition of Scotland. Gunn passes on to his readers. by way of contrast, a picture of the economic condition of Denmark. It is a contrast favorable to the Danes. The lesson, Gunn continues by outlining, is that nationalists in Denmark, despite dominance by the Prussians. pioneered a system of cooperation that led to independence and to viability as a small country. "A Denmark defeated and in despair" (p.97) turned to a nationalism based on an ideal, rather than simple desire for political autonomy: "the ideal was strong, for it was not only based on faith but on knowledge; it was prepared not only with words but with deeds" (p. 97). Where Denmark represents hope. the Highlands reveal "tragedy succeeded by apathy" (p. 99). The basis of the son of nationalism Gunn was striving for becomes clearer in this anicle. It was a nationalism which "satisfied the aspirations towards the common good; and when personal needs were thus ordered, it continued organizing these adult schools through which the mind may attempt to realize its spiritual potentialities" (p.98). Nationalism is the first step towards achievement of individual freedom within the context of a cooperative community; such a social organization 19There was one note of dissent to the report. One of the Commission's members (but not Gunn) proposed a minority recommendation in favour of the nationalization of the land farmed by crofters. 20Sir Thomas Taylor to Neil Gunn (nd), quoted in Hart and Pick, p "A Visitor from Denmark," Scots Magazine, 27 (May, 1937), pp

172 Neil Gunn's Green Isle 165 would lead to the second step, the opportunity for the individual to rediscover a sense of wholeness within himself. In the achievement of Denmark, Gunn saw the practical vindication of what others might dismiss in his own writings as impractical idealism. Indeed, rather than undermining his views, the War itself also seemed to substantiate them. For Gunn, as it seems for the Danes, nationalism, egalitarianism, and cooperation became real in the life of the community rather than remaining hollow watchwords for theorists. Gunn began with the example of the childhood community and from it gained the values which could hold true for the country as a whole. If Gunn's support and elaboration of communal cooperation drew on his knowledge of Gaelic culture then it was the antagonism of Naomi Mitchison to these ideas which led him to articulate them in the most expressive way he knew, that is, in the form of a novel. That she had somehow acted as the catalyst to the book's creation was apparent on the first reading to Naomi Mitchison herself: But you've laid down a challenge which I feel bound to take up. I think first, all the same, I ought to say what you no doubt know already, that it's a damn good piece of writing... but it is in effect the anarchist case. Now insofar as it is saying that power corrupts, that's fme. I think it also says purely intellectual power corrupts, the worst thing is the power of the bureaucrat, the planner at headquarters.22 The implied criticism, that Gunn is anti-intellectual and the novel akin therefore to the blood-and-soil writing of such as Knut Hamsun, is invalid. Gunn is concerned to demonstrate the cruelty of the intellect when divorced from human qualities such as love and compassion. Purely intellectual power is destructive and negative. But where Gunn called for the rekindling of the spirit of the community within each individual, Hamsun's alternative to the moral degradation of the new world is denial of reason and civilization, both their good and their bad aspects. The therapy is flrst highlighted in Growth of the Soil (1918); its closing paragraphs emphasize the absorption of the peasant in an instinctual relationship to his land; Isak is "an elemental flgure, the symbol of Man at his best";23 he is also a vegetable. Frustrated in his attempts to retain individuality in a living community, the Hamsun character submits his individuality and his freedom to the forces of nature. This unthinking acquiescence to superior force found easy translation to a reverence for the political power of Nazism. The rejection of the intellect became rejection of individual responsibility and submission to the mass-ideas of blood and race. Escape from social involvement led to loss of whatever is distinctly human and spiritual. Neil Gunn never became the novelist of 22Mitchison to Gunn (nd, but early 1944?), NLS Dep. 209, Box W.W. Worster, "Knut Hamsun," The Fortnightly Review CVIIl (1920), p. 103.

173 166 Alistair McCleery authoritarianism as Knut Hamsun did. Gunn's constant concern for the freedom of the individual and his self-realization in society contrasts with Hamsun's portrayal of the submergence of self in instinct and nature. Where Gunn reminded the reader of man's place in nature, Hamsun glorified submission to the elemental forces of nature, detested all that was not suffused with his mystique of blood and soil, and denied individual responsibility as he preached blind obedience to authority. Hamsun despaired of personal fulfillment within a community of men and offered as an alternative to this community loss of self in nature. Gunn's nationalism had as its object regeneration of individual and community. To sum up, if Gunn worked actively, in this interwar period, for nationalism, then it was because he saw it fostering a spirit of individual freedom and ultimate fulfillment. This was no protofascism or crypto Nazism, nor should it suggest that he took rather a lofty view of politics; his record of his involvement in the 1931 election, as well as the testimony of such as John MacCormick, should undermine that assumption.24 Nor did Gunn feel that cultural nationalism should hold itself aloof from the struggles of politics: political nationalism and cultural nationalism could not be divorced. Scotland needed cultural bodies, such as a national theater, through which writers could express the nation's essential self.25 Writers needed the context of independence to provide them with the freedom for individual creation. There could be no vital culture, in Gunn' s view, without a correspondingly strong sense of political identity. It was to Ireland, rather than to the continent of Europe, that Gunn turned to find an example of what might happen in Scotland. Political independence would stimulate cultural flowering. In 1938 he published an article (using the pseudonym of Dane McNeil) on Douglas Hyde's nomination as President of the new state of Eire.26 The nationalism that produced the new state had also created the situation in which a Gaelic scholar, rather than a party hack, had been appointed as the country's leader. Here was proof that nationalism had resulted neither "in war nor material aggrandizement" but in "social and spiritual achievement" (p. 177). Comparison is made with a Scotland that hitherto "denying her own tradition, has looked to London for all things" (p. 178). The comparison is obviously to Scotland's discredit. Upon the foundation of Hyde's nomination, Gunn again proposes the thesis that "our inheritance of 24Soo the present author's "Writers Come to the Aid of the Party," Scotsman, October 31, Soo "Nationalism in Writing: The Theatre Society of Scotland," Scots Magazine. 30 (Dec, 1938), p "Presidentof Eire: The True Value of Tradition," Scots Magazine, 29 (June. 1983), pp.i77-80.

174 Neil Gunn's Green Isle 167 culture and high ideals of freedom" owe much "to the small community or nation" (p. 178). It is to Ireland also that Gunn turns when he explains the genesis of The Green Isle of the Great Deep in the letter to Naomi Mitchison quoted above. In fact I wrote The Green Isle right off, just because an old friend of mine in Ireland, who has mostly for company now his little grandson, was so affected by what he considered the inner truth of Young Art that he said I mustn't leave them at the River. So I didn't27 This may just be Gunn's reluctance to let an adversary, albeit a friendly one, score a point off him, but it also seems to me to be a sign of the book's more complex origins. Its basic thought appears elsewhere in Gunn's writing; it is implicit in Young Art and Old Hector which demands a sequel; Mauric Walsh suggested the necessity of such a sequel; the dialogue with Naomi Mitchison and the context of the times set the agenda. The attribution of the novel's inspiration to Naomi Mitchison twenty years later is a rationalization after the event.28 The Green Isle of the Great Deep grew out of Gunn's deepest concerns and his perception of the wisdom in Gaelic culture. The novel itself begins in the realistic world of Young Art and Old Hector and the scene of neighbours gathering to hear the news of Hector's cow is skillfully used to introduce the topic of concentration camps and the mind-destruction which goes on within them. The sequence of events in the rest of the book is anticipated in the reference to Art's ability to escape such torture through his speed, and in Hector's recollections of his own age and mortality29 as in the previous book-nn the occasion of the Gauger's search when he brought a chill into the conversation by expressing the wish not to die in prison (YAp. 192) and also at the close when he remarks to Art that the next visit to the river will be his last (Y A p. 249). The two novels are bound together both through these references and common characters, and also through a common theme of the free spirit of man: ''The mind is all we have finally. If they take that from us-if they change that-then we will not be ourselves, and all meaning goes from us, here-and hereafter" (GI p. 13), The new techniques of brainwashing rob a man not only of his personal identity-the numbers in 27Gunn to Mitchison, June 9,1944, NLS Ace The chief source, perhaps, in later criticism, for Gunn's attribution of the inspiration of the novel to Naomi Mitchison is a letter from Gunn to Tokusaburo Nakamura (nd, but 19651), in NLS Dep 209, Box The Green Isle of the Great Deep (London, 1944), p. 13. Future references to this work will appear in parentheses in the text as GI followed by a page number.

175 168 Alistair McCleery Zamyatin's We, the Alphas, Betas and so on of Huxley's Brave New World-but also of his spiritual self, the totality of his being, something that according to Jung "to the perpetual vexation of the intellect remains unknown and not to be fitted into a formula."30 The introductory chapters integrate the two novels, set out the major theme of The Green Isle of the Great Deep itself, and also prepare some of the mechanics of the plot. The relationship between Tom and Morag is highlighted as is the fact that Tom receives newspapers. In the second chapter, Art and Hector find a scrap of newspaper on the way to the river; Hector suspects that there is someone else about but they move on. At the end of the novel, it is in fact Morag and Tom who have been on a clandestine picnic nearby who rescue both Art and Hector from drowning. I think: that it is important to stress this for it would be all too easy to disregard the great craft with which Gunn has constructed the novel, and indeed to view it as a loosely flowing, symbolpacked fantasy. We are to take the significance of the Green Isle seriously and it must therefore be placed in a context from which its symbolism derives naturally. Art picks real hazel-nuts and Hector poaches a real salmon. Art represents the untamed and, because pure, untamable wholeness of man; we need look no further for antecedents than the boy of Wordsworth. The figure of the child, while often a Jungian symbol of self, is also part of a common romantic articulation of "unknown modes of being." But, in their speculations about his origins, as his exploits begin to take on a legendary quality, the administrators of the Green Isle must seek an explanation of his nature that will account for his elusiveness. One school of thought believes that he is Art itself, a throwback to the period before Art had become Propaganda. Another proposes that he is some reflection of the Arthurian cycle of tales (GI pp ). Gunn not only outlines playfully the pitfalls of thesis-elaboration and makes a serious point about the corruption of artistic integrity when it lends itself to some creed or doctrine external to the act of creation, but also draws our attention to two sources of images of that wholeness: works of art and traditional culture. Wholeness is represented in Gunn's own novels by reference to the traditional culture of the Highlands about which he wrote. Art has wonder, magic-both these terms are used-a spiritual innocence. Hector possesses knowledge and wisdom. Yet these attributes are tested to the limits in him and he must eventually draw on their true spring-knowledge of God that is Love (GI pp ). Hector is the wise, old man; Mary, the great mother. She supplies the resistance to the mindenslavement of the Green Isle; she originates in Gaeldom itself and is as learned and as wise as Dark Mairi of Butcher's Broom; but more importantly she is a projection of the anima. As, at the end of the novel, 3OC.G. Jung (with C. Kerenyi), Introduction to a Science of Mytlwlogy (London, 1950), pp

176 Neil Gunn's Green Isle 169 Gunn writes of Morag: "she was the only woman among them and life was her concern" (GI p.254). Robert, Mary's husband, is an echo of Robert Burns; he had been a satiric poet, satire being an ingredient of independence and liveliness, but under the circumstances of the Green Isle he no longer writes; he has acquiesced in the system-his "head" has won-salvaging freedom only for a few around him. Love is identified with suffering for others: Hector suffers to protect those whom he loves; Mary has suffered for the child she loved and lost on earth, and transfers that love to Art and suffers for him; Robert's suffering is limited because he retains much of the essential selfishness of the modern artist. The bureaucrats of the Green Isle do not suffer; they inflict suffering in a clinical, uncaring fashion; in them the desire for knowledge has obliterated wisdom, and love. They are the "shadow" of God; there is, as Jung points out, "no shadow without the sun";31 they lack all that He is. The administrators began their rule by dividing the community so that the strength given to the individual from communal belonging was denied. Hector asks Robert whether the inhabitants had been happy: "Perfectly. A bit crowded here and there, because folk will be clannish. That started it. We had to be spaced out" (GI p. 93). When Hector questions the lack of resistance to these moves, Robert's riposte is damning: "Did you rise against the lairds and the factors and the clergy when they told you that you had to be cleared off your own ancient lands and your homes burnt down?" (GI p. 98). The Highland community had allowed itself to be physically disrupted and moved. Yet what it retained is the spirit of Art and the wisdom of Hector. Hector's wisdom is the lesser of the two as knowledge is less than wisdom itself. When they first arrive in the Green Isle, Art and Hector are told by the Coastwatcher to travel only by day and to stay at one of the Inns overnight. The persona of Hector, the part, in Jungian terms, that society expects him to play, prompts him to the same passive obedience of authority that created the demureness of the Clearances. As they had listened to the Chief, so too there is no reason to doubt the word of those in charge of Paradise. But it is Art's intuition which leads to their travelling independent of road and Inns, eating the forbidden fruit, "the fruit of life" (GI p. 98). When they are both captured, it is Art who escapes and Hector who must face the Questioner. The latter tries to destroy Hector's self, "a primitive integration, a certain living wisdom" (GI p. 154), but finds that Hector's "weakness," a hatred for suffering inflicted on others, is balanced by an equal capacity to accept suffering himself. He hounds and baits Hector until he provokes the resolution of the novel: "Old Hector spoke deep out of his throat: 'I want to see God'" (GI p. 155). The attempt to analyze and rationalize the source of Hector's strength has failed in one respect but succeeded in that Hector 31Frieda Fordham, An Introduction to Jung's Psychology (Hannondsworth, 1953), p. SO.

177 170 Alistair McCleery summons that source himself. Yet Art, too, by his actions, his speed and resourcefulness, has roused the other inhabitants of the Green Isle to question the regime. And when God does appear, he comes first to Art in the form of the Starter from Clachdrum and learns from Art, through Art's purity and innocence, what has been happening while He has neglected the Green Isle. Art has suffered loneliness and persecution but retained the magic "which is the scent of the flower, the young feet of the runner, and the deep smile in the face" (GI p. 245). The climax of the novel is Hector's audience with God: the infinite Being of whom all individuals are part. God is a reflection of Hector himself; "the bearded face of the man who awaited him seemed, in that strange moment, to be the face of someone he had seen long ago in a tall mirror at the end of a landing in a forgotten house" (GI p. 238). God speaks to Hector in Gaelic and the first question is an inquiry about the people left at home. This is a God who mirrors Hector's own concerns and background. Hector himself is willing to take the burden of responsibility for the actions of his friends. He still feels that God is subjecting him to an inquisition, an investigation of his past sins, and the guilt of his lie to the Questioner troubles his deep honesty and truth. It is the same argument that he had rehearsed to Red Dougal when defending his illegal distillation of whisky in Young Art and Old Hector (pp ): to break a bad law is not wrong if the motive is an unselfish love for other people. Hector would have told the truth to the Questioner, if that had not placed in great danger Art and Mary. God explains how such bad laws may arise from a desire to do good; "the knowledge of power gives to a good intention the edge of a sword" (GI p. 241). "The problem then is how to bring wisdom to knowledge, so that knowledge, instead of getting the sword's edge, which is cruel and sterile, will be given wisdom which is kind and fruitful" (GI p. 241). The divorce of wisdom and knowledge produces not only cruelty and sterility but the need to destroy. They have to destroy, because wisdom is always beyond logic at any moment They have to destroy because though. as you say, their plan for running affairs is smooth, and their concept of the corporate mind pennits of a logical exposition, yet as you also say, beneath their plan lies that belief in its logic which always grows merciless. So it has always been. And no matter with what force and cunning the plan is imposed there will be those who will rise against it. And bitter and terrible then is that rising (GI p. 242). The spirit of freedom within the individual can be suppressed, but it cannot be quenched; the opportunity for wholeness, for integration of wisdom and knowledge, unconscious and conscious, is available to each individual. Kenn in Highland River found it at the lochan at the end of his quest to the source of the River, God teus Hector: ''The pool was everyman's pool in the river of life" (GI p.243). Although Gunn uses symbols (the salmon, the hazel nuts) taken from Gaelic culture, he is not limiting the discovery of self to those who belong to that culture. The

178 Neil Gunn's Green Isle 171 emphasis upon a materialistic philosophy that divides wisdom from knowledge and excludes the former curses modem man to totalitarianism. The solution is to reunite the two in the individual. Jung told Laurens Van der Post that "the Russian problem in the external world could never be resolved without more disaster unless we first dealt with the "Russia" in ourselves."32 Such a self retains its individuality while not becoming individualistic. A community of such whole people would evolve a form of social organization which nurtured individuality yet produced cooperation, naturally and spontaneously, for such a self consists "in the awareness on the one hand of our unique natures, and on the other of our intimate relationship with all life)3" Such a community did exist, according to Gunn, in traditional Gaelic culture, practicing freedom and communal brotherhood, sympathetic not only to fellow-beings but to all of nature, finding in its relationship with nature an illustration of "oneness." This community may be in decline, in retreat, but its values are available, through Gunn's work, to all of us. Having achieved the oneness, the wholeness, however, its members find an intimate relationship with God; they find God in man and nature; they realize brotherhood "with all living things and... the cosmos itself."34 Hector and Art reach the Green Isle by drowning (or nearly so). Gunn himself almost drowned in the summer of 1934, towards the beginning of his middle and most vital period. The incident is transmuted, with little modification, into a narrative in The Well at the World's End. On the morning after his near-death, Peter Munro awakes to a sense of what is almost euphoria: "It was now that the odd feeling came over me that the stillness itself was holding something, much as the walls held the garden; and in a moment I realized what it was holding was time.35" He has the experience of existing outside time, outside the personal self. Munro continues: "Quite simply, then, I knew with an absolute conviction as I stood at that window gazing out on the old Spanish garden that there exists an order of things outside our conception of time" (p. 148). Like the boy in the stream, by forgetting self in the personal sense, he discovers his true self. The general theme of this quest-novel is that the Green Isle, Tir-nan Og, whatever it may be called, is attainable in the present, not only in the hereafter. Human reason unaided, the hazel-nuts of knowledge alone, cannot apprehend this state. Munro concludes: "There was nothing at all 32Laurens Van der Post, lung and the Story of Our Time (London, 1976), p Fordham (1953), p Fordham (1953), p The Well at the World's End (London, 1951), p. 148.

179 172 Alistair McCleery in the ordinary sense "religious" about this experience; but what is astonishing, I think, is that there was nothing personal" (p. 148). This, then, is the final element in the genesis of The Green Isle of the Great Deep. Gunn's own experience prompted him to express the need for modern man to rediscover God in himself. When Jung treated patients suffering from the malaise and neuroses of the zeitgeist, he, too, "found that he seldom succeeded in what for want of a better word is called a 'cure: without enabling the patient to recover his lost capacity for religious experience. "36 The experience itself is clear and forceful, but the act of expressing that experience involves the unending wrestle with the stuff of language. Gunn wrote in The Atom of Delight: "finding the words is the old game of approximation" (p. 301). The Green Isle of the Great Deep draws on "objective correlatives" from the history and tradition of Gaelic culture. It provides not only an affmnation of the values of that culture, particularly egalitarianism and communal cooperation, not only a vision of the individuated self, of "wholeness" of head and heart, but also an awareness of God, the "transcendent experience of communion with God"-"extracting or creating God out of our delight" (AD pp. 274, 278). The novel represents, with The Silver Darlings (1941), the peak of Gunn's achievement. Napier College, Edinburgh 36Yan der Post (1976), p. 152.

180 David V. Harrington The "Wofull Prisonnere" in Dunbar's Goldyn Targe William Dunbar's The Goldyn Targe, from critical consensus, seems to earn only a qualified praise because of what is judged as extravagant artifice, on the one hand, and insufficient psychological insights, on the other. Still somehow it persists as one of Dunbar's most popular and memorable poems. It thrusts itself upon us in spite of learned judgments against it. To try to explain this, I suggest that some critical interpreters must fail to see the complicated emotional experience dramatized therein; but perhaps just as great a number are reluctant to admit the importance of such experience, however they define it. All readers concede readily the beauty of Dunbar's expression, especially in the early stanzas describing the narrator's reaction to the lovely May morning. Very shortly after this reference to time, the poem becomes a dream vision mirroring a personal conflict. The spokesman records through personification allegory his efforts to defend himself with Reason, the "goldyn targe," against the attractions of erotic love. In a spirited battle, he fights off wave after wave of feminine appeals, but eventually his defense breaks down. He yields himself "as a wofull prisonnere," ending up with the longing for love he tried earlier to withstand, but with no satisfaction. The poem records a troubling defeat. In the concluding four stanzas, the narrator awakens again to nature's beauty with bird songs, sweet wholesome vapors, and flowers. The poet praises Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, anyone of whom,

181 174 David V. Harrington we might infer: "This matter could illuminit have full bright" (I. 258).1 But he must apologize for the rude, bare language in his own "lytill quaff." In this paper, I offer a defense of the poem as a careful representation of a difficult emotional experience. The natural description, the narrator's humble apologies for himself, the dream vision, and the personification allegory all work together in accordance with well established traditions for late medieval poetry. In fact, the poet's allegory here offers an interesting lesson on the broad range of expression available to medieval poets using personification. In critical theory, distinguished scholars encourage belief that allegory can communicate even the most subtle concerns. C.S. Lewis identifies personification allegory as the best instrument for Middle English writers to communicate what they feared to say more directly: It is as if the insensible could not yet knock at the doors of the poetic consciousness without transforming itself into the likeness of the sensible: as if men could not easily grasp the reality of moods and emotions without turning them into shadowy persons. Allegory, besides being many other things, is the subjectivism of an objective age.2 More recently, Hans Robert Jauss extends this same principle: Allegory for the medieval public could represent not only the virtues and vices, but also the newly discovered world of the passions} Dunbar comes three centuries later than the twelfth century writers Jauss speaks of; but in The Goldyn T arge the poet represents an intimate dilemma which does not appear very often in love poetry. The problem is not the usual one of falling in love with a particular woman; rather it is being aroused unwillingly to a longing for love and then finding no one who will reciprocate or satisfy such desire. Though affording family resemblances to other love allegories, Dunbar's treatment seems unique in special focus, is subtle in representation, and may even expose an intimate experience of his own, though virtually anyone could experience the problem narrated in the poem. But uniqueness, subtlety, and intimacy are not the qualities emphasized in earlier studies of this poem. Too often, commentators deplore the poet's inability to rise above stereotypical fifteenth-century love alle- IAIl quotations of Dunbar's verses are from James Kinsley, ed., The Poems of William Dunbar (Oxford, 1979), with line numbers in parenthesis in the text 2C.s. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936), p Hans Robert Jauss, ''The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature," New Literary History, 10 (1979). 194.

182 William Dunbar's Goldyn Targe 175 gories. Both John Speirs and Patrick Cruttwell dismiss the poem outright.4 C.S. Lewis, in spite of his valuable general principles, does not deal justly with The Goldyn Targe. first he praises the dazzling language in the early stanzas, but then he rejects the allegory as "a mere catalogue of personifications." He says that the poem functions only for "purposes of pure decoration."5 The imagery, in places at least, is distractingly musical, even intoxicating. Any reader could single out favorite phrases as especially vivid: "The perly droppis schake in silvir schouris," "The skyes rang for schoutyng of the larkis," "A saill als quhite as blossum brak." The poem invites easy selection of passages like the following stanza, much in the "aureate" tradition, with its Latinate diction and classical allusion, but full of color and freshness just the same: The cristall air, the sapher fmnament, The ruby skyes of the orient, Kest beriall bemes on emerant bewis grene; The rosy garth depaynt and redolent With purpur, azure, gold, and goulis gent Arayed was by dame flora the quene So nobily that joy was for to sene; The roch agayn the rivir resplendent As low enlumynit all the leves schene. ( ) Such profuse imagery tempts one to escape from responsible critical analysis, to cast aside the question of thematic relevance and call it pure or decorative poetry. What we need to see, however, is that the intoxicating, natural images function importantly in relation to the subsequent dream vision and allegory. We need to see that the introductory mood of the splendid May morning causes much of the narrator's difficulty and ultimate defeat. These first five stanzas with all their sensory appeals quite plausibly lull the narrator into a mood of easy surrender, though the thought of surrendering to a person rather than to the flowers and music of nature has not yet occurred to him. Thus he gives himself up on "florais mantill" to sleep and to dream. 4John Speirs, The Scots Literary Experience, 2nd ed. (London, 1962), pp.56-7; Patrick Cruttwell, "Two Scots Poets: Dunbar and Henryson," in The Age of Chaucer. ed. Boris Ford (London. 1954). pp Lewis. pp

183 176 David V. Harrington The narrator's dream vision seems to be shaped in accordance with authoritative notions for one with love-longing. If we use Macrobius' Commentary as the authority, we must classify the dream in The Goldyn Targe as a nightmare or an example of insomnium, a type which he says has no prophetic significance. In nightmares, which are common for lovers according to Macrobius, the dreamer experiences "vexations similar to those that disturb him during the day." But such dreams "flee when he awakes and vanish into thin air."6 When Dunbar's dreamer awakes again to the songs of birds and beauties of nature, he offers, of course, no further observations on his dream. Thus such a dream must represent the lover's own mental or emotional distress. There is nothing enigmatic or prophetic about it. Its importance lies, rather, in its representation of a difficult state of feeling. Poetically this lesser dream, by Macrobius' standards, purports to show Dunbar's narrator's current condition, in this case, that he suffers much like the person within the dream who tried unsuccessfully to ward off the desire for love. As to its reality for Dunbar the poet, no one can go further than Baxter in saying: "It is unknown whether the poem is based upon personal experience."7 What we can say, however, is that The Goldyn Targe records an emotional experience a great many people must have experienced at some time and probably with similar confusion and discomfort. In medieval poetry, the adverse consequences of falling in love are warned against as commonly as the pleasures are celebrated. Chaucer's dreamer in The Parliament of Fowls, before passing through the gate into the garden of love, reads two sets of verses describing what he will find: perhaps a "blysful place," but just as likely he will encounter "the mortal strokes of the spere IOf which Disdain and Daunger is the gyde" (II ).8 In The Temple of Glas, John Lydgate records the complaints of many who suffered from pangs of love: women grieve when men love them only for the "seisoun, whole that beaute floureth"; but men also must blame God and Nature: 6Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of ScipiO, tr. William Harris Stahl (New York, 1952), pp. 88, 89. 7J.W. Baxter, William Dunbar: A Biographical Study (Edinburgh, 1952), p The quotation from Chaucer is from EN. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1957), with line numbers in the text.

184 William Dunbar's Goldyn Targe 177 That ever thei would on any creature So mych beaute, passing bi mesure, Set on a woman, to yeue occasioun A man to loue to his confusioun, And nameli there where he shal haue no grace. (II )9 In Robert Henryson's "Robene and Makyne," Robene found himself desiring Makyne's love too late. He had turned away when she once had offered herself. Now it is his tum to suffer. Robene's plight anticipates the narrator's in Dunbar's poem as Robene, too, was rejected almost as soon as he fell in love: "he sichit sair,...in dolour and in cair" (ll. 124, 126).10 These warnings against the pains of love come frequently in Middle English and Middle Scots poetry. For Dunbar, personification allegory serves as an especially useful instrument to communicate such feeling. Commentators on the poem dismiss its message too hastily, most commonly conceding that it has something to do with Reason being overcome by Beauty;l1 or, in desperation, reading the poem as a parody with its excesses of that which it so clearly represents: "the poetry of abstraction and of romantic love. "12 The allegory of feeling, at any rate, is harder to communicate-it certainly seems less defmable-than allegory alluding to such a topical event as a royal wedding or an orthodox religious doctrine. The poem needs interpretation in accordance with the way in which sensory appeals harmonize with the personified abstractions. Difficulty for many readers of personification allegory comes with their expectation that a personification to be effective as a character needs rather full development, richness, complexity. In studying Piers Plowman, they forget that realistic figures like Lady Meed, Envy. and Gluttony are exceptional. More common are the scores of lesser, vaguer, and more transient figures in virtually every passus. The many personifications in The Goldyn Targe come to us not as distinct personalities in themselves either, but as qualities one notices perhaps among those who pass us by. with whom we have only fleeting contact. 9The quotation from Lydgate is from 1. Schick, ed., Lydgate's Temple of Glas, E.E.T.S., E.S. 60 (London, 1891), with line numbers in the text. 101be quotation from Henryson is from Denton Fox, ed., The Poems of Robert Henryson (Oxford, 1981), with line numbers in the text llsee Edmund Reiss, William Dunbar (Boston, 1979), p. 108; and Ian Simpson Ross, William Dunbar (Leiden, 1981), p Tom Scott, Dunbar: A Critical Exposition of the Poems (New York, 1966), p. 44.

185 178 David V. Harrington Dunbar's personifications resemble those in parts of the anonymous Death and Liffe13 or Lydgate's The Complaint of the Black Knight14 in being simply identified abstractions whose major human attribute is participation in a group activity. In the first poem alluded to, Dame Death and Lady Liffe are elaborately detailed personifications, of course; but the two catalogues of knights in retinue-with such abstractions as Pride, Envy, Anger, and Mischief (II ) in one group; Sir Comfort, Sir Hope, Sir Love, and Sir Courtesy (II., ) in the other-communicate a dramatic effect only by virtue of being gathered together in support of Death or of Liffe. Similarly, Lydgate's Black Knight in his complaint refers to difficulties suffered by his lord Trouthe, who is oppressed by Malebouche, False Report, Misbelieve, and False Suspicioun (ll ); all of these are personifications whose vitality also only grows out of group identity. Dunbar's abstractions do not invite attention to themselves as distinctive characters either; they are vague enough to be associated with the narrator's uneasily defmed, shifting states of response or feeling. His poem is not so much about falling in love, as unwillingly falling into a desire for love. Thus the variety of personifications--in a sense the one hundred ladies--records the various stages of appeal, resistance, and final capitulation. The setting and mood, however, are integral in contributing to the narrator's fmal surrender. The space devoted to the setting and the catalogue of classical gods and goddesses are therefore justified. Even the rather traditional device of the narrator spying secretly upon the assembly of people gathered in this lovely garden could be read as having more intimate personal significance; but we cannot learn enough about Dunbar's life to press for an autobiographical interpretation. The narrator, whose curiosity is aroused, wishes to observe while remaining uninvolved. The struggle of conflicting feelings described in terms of a military battle starts with the discovery by Venus of him hiding among the leaves. The fair ladies begin their assault by letting their green mantles fall to the ground and approaching the narrator. The leaders in the first wave of attack-dame Beauty, Fair Manner ("Fair Having"), fine Portraiture, Pleasance, and Lusty Cheer-are held off by the narrator's noble defender, Reason, holding the shield of gold (II ). In the next attack, Tender Youth, Green Innocence, Shameful Abasing, Quaking Dread, and Humble Obedience similarly fail: "The Goldyn Targe harmyt thay no thing" (II ). In these first two waves, the man, in effect, withstands outward attractiveness and then the appeal of feminine 13References to Death and Liffe: A Medieval Alliterative Debate Poem are from the edition by Israel Gollancz (London, 1930), with line numbers in the text 14References to The Complaint of the Black Knighl are from Henry Noble MacCracken, ed., The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, vol, II, E.E.T.S. 192 (London, 1934), with line numbers in the text.

186 William Dunbar's Goldyn Targe 179 passivity. The battle continues with the next wave led by Sweet Womanhood bringing with her the more mature domestic virtues of Nurture, Lowliness, Continence, Patience, Good Fame, Steadfastness, Discretion, Noble Birth ("Gentrise"), Consideration, Becoming Company ("Levefull Company"), Honest Business, Benign Look, Mild Cheer, and Soberness. But Reason while holding the Goldyn Targe continues to defend the narrator from "all thair aufull ordynance" (II ). The fourth attack brings with it promise of various worldly gains including High Degree, Estate, Dignity, Comparison, Honor, Noble Array, Will, Extravagance ("Wontonness"), Renown, Liberty, Riches, Freedom, and Nobility. Once again the narrator stands firm (/I ), and Venus must draw upon other resources to pierce through the Goldyn Targe. Thus Dissimulation is chosen to lead the final attack, and the more effective lady warriors that break through the defense include Presence, Fair Calling, Cherishing, Familiarity ("Dame Hameliness"), and Dame Beauty who is brought back to the field again. For a time Reason holds off this awesome host (II ) but is finally overthrown as a result of unfair tactics: Thik was the schote of grundyn dartis kene, Bot Resoun with the ScheId of Gold so schene Warly defendit quho so evir assayit; The aufull stoure he manly did sustene Quhill Presence kest a pulder in his ene, And than as drunkyn man he all forvayit; Quhen he was blynd, the fule with hym thay playit And banyst hym amang the bewis grene; That sory sicht me sudaynly affrayit. (II ) The narrator, now with his defenses down, is sorely wounded and taken prisoner by Lady Beauty. Dissimulation, Fair Calling, and Cherishing, also have their effect upon him; but the narrator's love experience is given still another twist with the activity of additional personifications: with New Acquaintance, who embraces him awhile and then takes her leave never to be seen again; and with Haughtiness ("Dangere"), who looks at him "wyth ane fremyt fare" before delivering him to Heaviness, in whose control he remains (II ). The narrator is left in this unhappy dejected state, as all of the lovely ladies return to their ship and sail away. They cut loose with a barrage of gunpowder making a racket that echoes throughout the firmament.

187 180 David V. Harrington This closer analysis of the allegoryls is to underline the more complicated stages of a lover's ultimate surrender to and then abandonment by passionate appeals. The narrator is not just any lover, he is one equipped to withstand most varieties of feminine attraction which can be considered or identified in the abstract and thus withstood. In the first wave are qualities to be associated with outward beauty and grace; in the second those suggestive of tender innocence; in the third are qualities Kinsley identifies as "Womanliness"; and in the fourth are practical gains such as High Degree, Renown, and Riches. The fifth and last attack suffices to overwhelm even the most "reasonable" of men. Kinsley's classification of these personifications--in which he identifies Dissimulation, Physical Presence, Fair Greeting, Affection and Familiarity, Beauty and Acquaintance as "qualities of sexual appeal"-is not bad for a start on the problem. What needs emphasizing is the greater immediacy of Presence, "plicht ankers of the barge," and more intimate Familiarity ("Dame Hamelyness") in this last attack, qualities which insinuate themselves in spite of exercises in "reasonable" restraint. They are sexual appeals, yes; but so are most of the personifications in the earlier waves of attack. It is the appeals which overwhelm the senses, obliterating any chance for rational assessment, that fmally defeat the narrator. When we look at the narrator's final defeat by these more immediate sensual appeals, and then at his abandonment by such as "New Acquyntance," Haughtiness ("Dangere"), and "Hevynesse," we more easily grasp the relationship between the message in the allegory and the elaborate diction or seemingly exaggerated profusion of sensory images. The Goldyn Targe could properly be compared with such nineteenth century poems as Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merd" for its portrait of a lover swept up by an irresistible attraction and then left to bemoan the fact of his having been abandoned while still desiring continuation of the love affair; or Swinburne's opening chorus from Atalanta in Calydon ("When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces") for its piling on of sensual impressions, communicating the effect of "spring fever."16 In various ways, Dunbar's The Goldyn Targe anticipates both of these later poems. But for the most interesting comparison with another allegorical poem, we should look at one of Dunbar's own, one in which he duplicates even the image of the "wofull prisonnere." This second poem, Bewty and the Presoneir, though sometimes associated with The Goldyn Targe as having 15Both Denton Fox, in "Dunbar's The Goldyn Targe," ELH, 26 (1959), 327-8, and James Kinsley, in the notes for his edition, p.252, review the various groups of personified feminine qualities in somewhat similar terms, but not with the same conclusions. 16Susanne K. Langer offers such an interpretation of Swinburne's lyric in Problems in Art (New York, 1957). pp

188 William Dunbar's Goldyn Targe 181 similar allegorical purpose,17 deserves attention for its contrasting representation of the narrator's feelings about his status as prisoner. Unlike his counterpart in The Goldyn Targe, this speaker communicates in the early stanzas a willingness to submit himself as a "presoneir till hir that farest is and best" (I. 2). Unfortunately the terms of his submission at first entail his delivery into a dungeon by "Strangenes," who deems the lover "to pure a presoneir" for his lady. He is also fettered by "Comparesone," who similarly denigrates the "wofull presoneir." Moreover, the speaker is opposed by "Langour," the watchman, and "Scome," the jester. All these enemies of the prisoner are eventually driven off by more favorable personifications intent on ransoming the prisoner, such as Good Hope, Lowliness, Pity, Thought, and Business. In what proves to be a splendidly comic battle, we hear of losses on both sides: And Langour lap and brake his nek... Gud Fame was drownit in a sek. (II. 84, 87) But there is a happy conclusion for this poem, as "Matremony" resolves the dispute inducing friendship "betuix Bewty and the presoneir" (II ), I give this much space to Bewty and the Presoneir because with personification allegory as its form, unrequited love as its theme in part, and some duplication in phrasing, it invites direct comparison with The Goldyn T arge, In both poems, the narrator surrenders to feminine appeals and is treated disdainfully. In Bewty and the Presoneir, however, the narrator wants to fall in love and is willing to remain a prisoner. The struggle to gain more favorable regard from his lady is represented comically with the result that he ends up still a prisoner but happily married. The implications of being prisoner certainly contrast in these separate situations. Both of the spokesmen in Dunbar's two poems experience suffering as lovers; thus they invite easy comparison with stereotypical courtly lovers, who are commonly expected to suffer. Medieval scholars are well prepared for such an equation, But suffering, as Georgia Ronan Crampton has pointed out, appears in multifarious forms as a sympathetic feature in literary heroic life as early as Homer's Odyssey and throughout the medieval period.18 Walter Scheps in a study of The Goldyn Targe properly warns us: "To dismiss anything in Dunbar's poetry as merely conventional is 17See Deanna D. Evans, "Dunbar's 'Goldyn Targe': A Neoplatonic Vision of Natme and Poetry," in Actes du 2e colloque de langue et litterature ecossaises. ed Blanchot and C. Graf (Strasbourg, 1979), p. 366; and Scott, pp Georgia Ronan Crampton, The Condition of Creatures: Suffering and Action in Chaucer and Spenser (New Haven, 1974), pp et passim.

189 182 David V. Harrington extremely dangerous."19 In spite of the traditional artifice in The Goldyn Targe and comic battle in Bewry and the Presoneir, the two narrators deserve sympathy for their suffering, though they do not fit most readers' expectations for lovers, courtly or othetwise. More specifically in The Goldyn Targe, Dunbar expands the thematic range of love poetry with allegorical representation of psychological stages in a narrator's struggle to ward off sexual desire. He eventually gives in but with no prospective partner in sight. Dunbar's use of personification in a dream vision connects him with a rich medieval tradition; but these abstract nouns serve, in this case, not to clarify a philosophical, moral, or theological question, as is commonly acknowledged in the poetry of the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, but to contribute to the understanding of a lover's vulnerability and confusion. The poem illustrates no significant break with the tradition of courtly allegories; rather, it shows another extension of the infinite possibilities within the tradition. Gustavus Adolphus College 19Walter Scheps, "The Goldyn Targe: Dunbar's Comic Psychomachia," PLL, 11 (1975).346.

190 Book Reviews William McGonagall. McGonagall: A Library Omnibus. London: Gerald Duckworth. 2nd impression of this edn vols in 1, each with separate pagination. William McGonagall, the "Poet and Tragedian," Who in his day was treated as a comedian By those about him, was the butt of many jokes As he went from pub to pub to entertain the folks. That he should go to such places just to make money, Though he hated the use of spirits, I find to be quite funny; He tells us in an essay, to be found in this very book, That at a public house recitation gingerbeer was all he took, Whereas, "Some of the company had whisky to drink, And others had porter or ale,"-which was bad for them he did think. McGonagall was born in Dundee in 1825 And until September 29th 1902 he remained alive; By trade a handloom weaver, much of his life was a preparation To be Poet Laureate, and write poems for all the nation.

191 184 Book Reviews In 1892 when Tennyson died he could no longer delay, So he sent a letter to his Queen in a stamped envelope right away, And offered himself as her Laureate, but I am sorry to say He was passed over in the choice, which he regretted to his dying day. A poem, McGonagall thought should always be precise, So to include names and dates he felt was very nice. In a poem about the collapse of the Bridge of Tay He tells the world "fearlessly and without dismay" All the facts, with nothing left out; this is what he did say: Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember'd for a very long time. There is even stronger stuff to be found, I do declare, That could cause the reader for to have his hair Stand on his head. William the first, of Germany the Emperor, Had died, so the poet wished to enshrine his memory for evermore. He also wanted to pay a compliment to his Queen Because she was related to William, as may be plainly seen By consulting the genealogical charts, I do declare. I think that in all of English poetry no verses can compare to the "Funeral of the German Emperor"-this stanza you'll find there: The authorities of Berlin in honour of the Emperor considered it no sin, To decorate with crape the beautiful city of Berlin; Therefore Berlin I declare was a city of crape, Because few buildings crape decoration did escape. In spite of his bad verse, and because of it I may say, The TLS called him a genius, and went on in this way: "He is the only truly memorable bad poet in our language" it said, So William McGonagall, "Poet and Tragedian," is famous-now that he's dead!

192 Book Reviews 185 The Duckworth Library Omnibus consists of seven volumes under one cover Which will amply supply the needs of any McGonagalllover. He raised the trivial to the level of art as a master of bad rime, But he wrote many poems which "will be remember'd for a very long time." GUIELMUS McGONAGALLUS, SECUNDUS Duncan Glen. The Autobiography of a Poet. Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press pp. The contribution of Duncan Glen to the revival of Scottish letters in this century is generally considered, in Scotland at least, to be his Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance, a book more important than any other in this area for it showed the substantiality of the achievement; and the long; and the long-running poetry magazine, Akros. His contribution as poet has not been adequately acknowledged partly because only a few of Glen's best poems will fit into an anthology easily, though there are far more than have been anthologized. This paucity, I suspect, is caused by a failure to seek them in the long sequences where they belong. In these sequences Glen looks carefully at his life, environments--physical and mental-giving everything that comes before his mind's eye a consideration that has gravitas, though the tone modulates to wit and humor readily. Far removed from the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid, for which Glen's admiration is second to none, as Glen's is, the fairness of the considered judgments and the deep, generally serene affection for his people and places, is a Scottish attribute. These remarks are germane to a consideration of The Autobiography of a Poet, for the story of the life is carried principally be passages from Glen's long poems, which are linked by a prose commentary, though reflections on the cultural scene, a valuable aspect of the book, are in prose. However particular and domestic-and many sequences are domestic in subject-the poems rarely rest in that location, for Glen's metaphysical concern is implicit in his descriptions, sometimes explicit in comments. In this book the story is shown in the wider context. The perspectives in which the poems are written are clarified, and the story of the man, thinker and poet, tells itself in an engaging and seemingly natural way, though the form of moving from prose into poetry to tell an autobiography has never been used so extensively before. The method suits Glen's poetry peculiarly, for it is a short step from the prose rhythms to the conversational idiom of the poetry. The beat of the rhythm of the poetry is stronger but not emphatic, but the resonance of the Scots, a Scots

193 186 Book Reviews made out of speech and for speaking aloud, is the basis of the poetic quality. Still in Scotland, though not in the upper reaches of society, Scots is the resort for intimate conversation. It is for many still the most honest means of communication. It does not put on airs, nor strike attitudes. The comment does not apply to the whole new corpus of verse in Scots, but it relates to the poetry of Duncan Glen, which frequently gives the impression that the poet is musing to himself though the interest is beyond the personal. As Glen conjures up a picture for himself, so it seems, he evokes a social scene, as when he writes: I can mind my faither on the nicht shift and the special treat 0 a lit fire on gettin up. But he was on the staff and wore a collar and tie for a his buits and the holes brunt in his suit that showed (to me) the dangers 0 the place. No that boys believe in dangers or kent the wrcht 0 men on your back unemployed John Grierson, frequently referred to as the father of documentary fllm, described that art as "the creative treatment of actuality," which is what Glen does here, the language as well as the subject matter belonging to him and his people, the balance of Scots and English being very much as it was probably spoken by a man in Glen's father's position. Given the formality and flexibility of verse, and Glan's acute awareness of visual impact-he is Professor and Head of the Department of Visual Communication in Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham-the placing of the word "unemployed" carries the significance of that condition as his father felt it for his men, as prose could not. This natural idiom, despite Glen's localizing the Scots in his own place (the south west of Scotland) is such that it unites all speakers of lowland Scots. When he begins his poem C/ydeside with the line, "We are harin doun to the Clyde for a dook," this is exactly as I, from the port of Fraserburgh in the North-East of Scotland, would have described the experience, frequent throughout boyhood, with the substitution of "sands" for Clyde. The poem ends: Glasgow stares us in the face and we gie it a smile kennin nae better.

194 Book Reviews 187 In using the language of the community Glen "shawys the thing rycht as it wes" as John Barbour put it at the beginning of The Bruce, though the last line indicates the perspective of maturity with which he looks at both the scenes of his childhood and youth. Included in "Belonging," the first chapter of the book, is "Stranger in Toun" from Realities Poems, the stranger being Glen's girl, Margaret, whom he was to marry, and without whose unwearying cooperation Akros could not have run to its fifty numbers. The poem begins: You being frae Fife and born in Mallaig I took you to see my Glasgow. The warm humanity 0 Argyle Street and the distinctive smell 0 the Subway. With the sublime self-confidence of the local youth he shows all Glasgow's famous places to the "stranger" expecting unqualified praise for everything, but all he gets is, 'I liked the Rembrandt.' Glen's affection for Glasgow does not deceive him as to the facts of the case. The poetry having created the sensation of the place for the native, the evaluation is carried in the prose. "Glasgow is now the most socially deprived city in Britain," he writes, and I have begun this book with fond memories of the Glasgow area and by implication praising it or at least its social communities. But in the last chapter I have suggested Glasgow is uniquely bad. with regard to social conditions. in Britain... By depriving people of even basically good social conditions we are, with regard to the mass of these people. depriving them of the opportunity to climb up even the first rung of the ladder of truly civilised thought- The advantage of the poetic statement over prose is its realization in a few lines of a complex social situation as in Innocence Glen sets in apposition the boy's enjoyment of food and the father's unemployment: In the days atween the wars The teas were the thing At our house There follows a list of comestibles of especial succulence to the boy including images, as it were, straight from the boy's lips such as: Or jeelie pieces; thick Door-step anes wi the jam Rinnin aff the margo

195 188 Book Reviews The stanza ends: -And faither out 0 a job Glen observes the survival of community. He writes: "... a sense of community can survive even the most trying social conditions, as can loyalty to a family for long beyond the concepts, it seems, of social or town planners who have been responsible for huge desolate housing estates and demoralizing high-rise flats." An accurate statement, no doubt, but when the dwellers in the buildings, who have made homes of them, speak out of their indignation at the conditions and still feel they must accept the established mores of the family, the acuteness of the dilemma is brought home with intensity: The room's sodden, seepin, thick wi slime and grime. There's the rats at nicht but after the list of grievances are poured out, and the opportunity to move is given, the dilemma is aired: but what about granny. She's been here a her merrit days. It wis her house afore ours and she has a say. "she has a say"-how much understanding of the agreed social order, and of "granny" as a person has been gathered by the community into the phrase. Its use in the poem is by the accomplished artist, the poet-critic who, by the time of writing the poem has understood and commented on the Scottish literary renaissance. It should be a salutary reminder to professional academics that the discovery of the first publication of The Watergaw and of the circumstances of that publication was by a typographic designer. Duncan Glen's job was quite close to the British Museum and from the Spring of 1958 to the early part of 1959 I spent my lunch-breaks and many Saturdays in the Reading Room... One of the fruits of my research into the work of MacDiarmid was the discovery that his ftrst Scots poems had appeared in an article he wrote for a small weekly paper The Dunfermline Press as poems written by a 'friend'. Glen gives the details of the discovery in his Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance (1964) in the course of describing MacDiarmid's conversion to a faith in Scots, in which connection Glen quotes Grieve (MacDiarmid) writing of Scottish literature: "Most of it is, of course, and

196 Book Reviews 189 must continue to be, written in English" (Scottish Books & Bookmen, Dunfennline Press, 5th August 1922). Properly he does not describe his own reaction to his discovering The Watergaw, but in the Autobiography he writes: "I can now, many years later, very clearly remember the excitement I felt when-in the Colindale newspaper library of the British Museum--I turned the pages of that paper to fmd these two Scots poems." (The other was "The Blaward and the Skelly"). Glen continues, "I consider finding this article one of the most important results of my researches. " The comment is justified and in the book written when Glen was but twenty-five years old, the unfolding of MacDiarmid's growing belief in Scots as a medium for poetry is conveyed with the skill and scholarship of a more experienced critic. One aspect of the matter to which adequate attention has not been given is the implication of MacDiarmid's lack of conviction in the medium by which he was to re-direct the course of Scottish poetry. It may well explain his outburst against Edwin Muir's statement that the only way forward for a Scottish poet was to write in English. MacDiarmid had made a similar statement himself some thirteen years previously. Glen's chapter, A Small Press and Hugh MacDiarmid, in which he recollects the discovery, however, focusses on his publication of MacDiarmid's poems and of other poets of the Scottish Renaissance. It is an impressive achievement. Glen's Autobiography swings from particular descriptions, or more accurately, economical re-enactments, in verse of day-to-day living to discussions of theory, as the theory applies to his own writing especially. In the chapter. The New Nominalism, he describes the way to the theory: The road founded in the seventeenth century Jed past Galileo to Descartes and to Hobbes-to mechanistic and scientific rationalism. The road we seem now to be taking appears superficially to go beyond Descartes in materialism. MacDiarmid commands: Do not argue with me. Argue with these stones. Truth has no trouble in knowing itself. This is it. The hard fact. The inoppugnable reality. And Wallace Stevens wishes the poem to be:... the cry of its occasion Part of the res itself and not about it. Glen identifies himself with the vision of Wallace Stevens. from whom he quotes:

197 190 Book Reviews We seek Nothing beyond reality. Within it Everything, the spirit's alchemicana Included. the spirit that goes roundabout And through included. not merely the visible, Glen comments:... this new road or new sensibility of the post-romantic, modem western nominalist mind is not yet easily expressible in prose and indeed one of its qualities is its very unexpressiveness-tbe difficulty of seeing it in a fixed stance since one of its qualities is that of continual flux and change. The chapter. There and Now, following The New Nominalism. begins: The poetic theories I have written about are, as I have stressed, prose or intellectual supports for my own poetry, but the poetic expression on which these theories are based is to be found throughout my work. Glen quotes as an example the final poem of the sequence "Ane to Anither" from Realities, which begins with characteristic economy, A tall girl. I see her daurk agin the sky heich on the banks 0 the hillside loch. The progress of the poem is factual and pedestrian-i intend no more than at an even walking pace-but it ends, Aa is kent for itsel in the movement 0 this leid definin and creatin... the burn. the single tree. the stane dyke you and me, that words. An essence in aa things The question may be asked: is not the simple naming of the "thing" enough? Is it not enough that the poet by the precision of his images and rhythm creating the sense of two people without speech communicating the presence of an ultimate, for the poem reaches to The logos? And become flesh through a luve ayount unnerstaunin? I tum to you clear agin the sky.

198 Book Reviews 191 My question is rhetorical, for the peculiar interest and achievement of The Autobiography is in the conjunction of the particular and the abstract. The book has been published almost at the same time as George Davie's The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect. The cast of mind which George Davie describes as a characteristic outcome of Scottish education from the mideighteenth century into the 20th century, a mind which found expression not only in philosophers but also in Scottish institutions which referred their findings to first principles, is the most persistent feature of Glen's Autobiography. Professor Norman Stone, in his review of The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect (The Sunday Times 28/12/1986), writes: The tradition of classics, mathematics and philosophy in education went right back to the Renaissance, and one of the ironies of all this was that it experienced a creative flowering around 1900, at the very moment when it was under this mortal bureaucratic attack....if this period has a moral, it is that science needs mathematics, and the arts need philosophy... By 1900 the speculative mind had been withdrawn from poetry generally, for there were exceptions including John Davidson who attempted to reintroduce intellect. The most deleterious effects of the substitution of feeling for intellect were to be demonstrated in the slavish imitations of Burns which abounded at that period and in the fiction of the Kailyard School. In Scotland the rescue of poetry began substantially with the publication of MacDiarmid's The Scottish Chapbook in The results were the Scottish Renaissance and its effects. In the 1920's MacDiarmid railed against the merely domestic inward look of contemporaries-his flight from such material being his early lyrics with their cosmic imagery. Glen, sixty odd years leter, by bringing together in the Autobiography a major part of his poetic output, draws attention to his material being domestic-indeed acceptable to the Kailyarders, yet on account of the context in which the poems are set, how completely different the outcome. In Realities Poems he writes: Aa that is in being stauns real and clear 0 the newst daurk. Aa rax out to be with the realness 0 things for themsels that can mak a glow as warm as luve 0 anither taen without a thocht 0 sel The difference between the "domestic" school and Glen's writing is of consciousness--of Glen's awareness of the possibility of an apprehension of the final unity of life, as was MacDiarmid, as was Rilke, as, perhaps, are all writers with true imagination who note the increasing fragmentation. The last word, and the first, that which must contain the

199 192 Book Reviews whole imagination is suggested in "a glow as warm as luve 0 anither." Here he struggles to say what can hardly be said, the struggle being noticeable in the unsatisfactory word, "realness." "But poems," Glen writes, "come essentially from areas beyond all obvious geographical or personal or intellectual sources. They come from areas of our psyche of which we have little or no direct knowledge or understanding." The prose in the book ends with a comment on his poem "Experience. " It is, I suppose, concerned with the mystical experience but its mysticism also takes strength, as I hope do all my writings, from a deep knowledge of human love. I end this book, as I ended the final issue of Akros, by printing Experience which I hope expresses the joy and love I find in life. I have used the word "pedestrian" with reference to Glen's verse, and to some this is enough to deny it belongs to the category of poetry. It is, as I have indicated, singularly successful in this book as a means of communicating its author's sense of life. He, his friends and relatives establish a presence in the mind, as one might expect a novelist to do but within a shorter space, and remarkably without our being struck that this comes about by the marrying of two forms, prose and poetry. This success is explained, though it is not the intention of the passage, in a comment Glen makes: In my head Scots and Scottish English with a Scottish pronunciation and twist are inseparably intertwined, and in being true to myself I am true to that leid, even if I draw in some literary Scots as well as the Scots I spoke as a boy, so creating my own distinctive literary language... Someone said in a review that I was more interested in ideas than in words. This is not true. I am fascinated by ideas but I am equally fascinated by sound patterns that emerge as I write my poetry. As with vocabulary, many critics are not good at noting subtle sound patterns in a language which, due to the skill of the poet reads easily and naturally. Anyway the sound patterns of my poetry are dependent on even my English-looking words being given the proper Scots pronunciation. This is vital to me and to my poetry. Tum my poetry into English sounds and the sound patterns. the music goes. An attentive ear and mind will be drawn into the sound patterns of this book and to a consideration of ideas generated through its author's intimate acquaintance with the developments in literature throughout the Scottish literary revival, and by his wide reading of contemporary literature. It is, however, the integrity of the man and his belief in "the love I find in life" as Duncan Glen put it, which is the final persuasion, that there is much virtue to be found here. GEORGE BRUCE Edinburgh

200 Book Reviews 193 John Galt. The Member, an autobiography. Ed. Ian A. Gordon. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press pp. John Galt. Reappraisals. Ed. Elizabeth Waterston. University of Guelph pp. One gratefully remembers Professor Elizabeth Waterston's re-edition of the third volume of Galt's long forgotten novel, Bogle Corbet, a volume based on his Canadian experience. As a welcome result, in 1984, a foregathering of "the Galt Circle" took place in Guelph, the very town founded by the author of The Provost. The papers under consideration here were read at the conference. Reappraisals may balance Christopher A. Whatley's John Galt (Edinburgh: Ramsay Head, 1979); yet one cannot help feeling that crossing the Atlantic had a bracing influence on Galt studies and somehow enlarged their scope. Out of the nine papers presented only three deal with standard topics, and with renewed relevance. The remaining six explore for the first time the new-world writings (including the Autobiography), which had been so far given short shrift when at all, and the result is surprisingly seminal. Not only is attention brought back on Galt's outstanding achievement as a colonizer and town-planner, but a younger generation of scholars is beginning to venture out of the safe core of his Scottish tales to reconnoitre the vast noman's-land of his neglected writings, a field where valuable information is to be gleaned regarding his not-so-simple personality, his technical ventures and chequered inspiration. Even when he strays outside his range, when he is compelled to write against the grain or succumb to slovenly competence, Galt cannot help being clever. Three essays attempt, each in its own way, to establish some kinship between Galt's Canadian writings and his tales of the West. Professor Frykman, no friend to resurrectionists, is anxious to find out whether Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet, neither book deserving to be ranked among Galt's worst duds, offer some similitude with the earlier stories. With Lawrie Todd, the confrontation, though carried with unrelenting pertinacity, is not altogether rewarding. A few points of moderate interest are made. In Sir Andrew Wylie and Lawrie Todd both heroes achieve success against unprepossessing personal oddity and are matched to unlikely partners, but the Canadian novel is a true story, the Ayrshire one a fairy-tale of sorts. That Galt chose to make Lawrie a Midlothian Scot certainly invites speculation, but owing to his ambiguous attitude to the East and its capital, the answer remains conjectural. In poking uncharitable fun at single blessedness Galt stoops to well-worn "tasteless padding." Nevertheless in previous works he is feelingly aware that the plight of spinsterhood was part of the dark side of the social landscape. He is still good at controlling pathos but his insistence on

201 194 Book Reviews particular Providence (Galt was against it) reminds us that his model was Grant Thorburn, the seed-merchant whose memoirs, soaked in maudlin bigotry, inspired the ftrst half of the novel. Yet obviously the book, written in uninspiring circumstances, presents no palpable departure. Fortunately Erik Frykman is more insightful in his too brief examination of Bogle Corbet. One readily agrees that "Galt is speaking for and about himself." Several biographical elements are to be met in the frrst two volumes as well, some pretty obvious, others, I have to admit, would be unscholarly guess-work. In the third volume an undertone of resignation and disappointment reflects the mood of the author. The themes of failure and destiny are touched upon in a book, which though aesthetically a "shocking affair," remains enigmatic. Concentrating on Bogle Corbet, Elizabeth Waterston views the problem of kinship differently. Noting Galt's partiality for town annals and the urban pressure of his day, she contrasts the slow development of a sparse rural parish into a denser and more complex township, a process taking place without serious hitches nor loss of cultural identity, with the founding of Stockwell and the difftculty of holding together a random assemblage of settlers in a forbidding physical environment. Galt, says Professor Waterston, unwittingly paved the way for subsequent Canadian novelists, the "small scale realists" who were to form a major line of Canadian writing. She observes that the plot in most of the Scottish stories need not be elaborate, the slow process of change lending sufftcient consistency to the tale. No such unifying link exists in Bogle Corbet and this reflects on the narrative method. Chapters succeed each other in a disconnected sequence of sketches. This structure does fit the Canadian situation and occurs repeatedly in "small town Canadian realists." As Elizabeth Waters ton pithily puts it "Galt's rough form fits easily into stories in a rough land." This certainly carries conviction, yet one point calls for qualiftcation. Galt's almost exclusively communal or urban preoccupation may betray a rejection of the fashionable nature cult and a deep-seated recoil in the presence of elemental force. He certainly had no sympathy with the "gelatinous" lakists, and the vast expanses of sylvan wilderness must have at ftrst evoked a chilly response, but in his undistinguished novels most of his long natural descriptions are derivative, and in his "cataclysmic scenes" he conforms to a pictorial as well as to a literary fashion or mood generally ascribed to the lingering trauma caused by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Here it may be important to note that there is a hidden side to Galt's personality. His formative years admit of a second reading. To some extent he is a romantic of a Byronic cast. Though pungently critical of the Byronic pose, he was fascinated by the dark abysmal aspect of the Byronic hero. We must remember also his susceptibility to the Mackenzie temper. This gloomier aspect of his personality, which the bulk of his romantic

202 Book Reviews 195 writings forbids us to ignore, might bring grist to the mill of those who believe in Scottish schizophrenia and in a particular brand of Northern romanticism. Ian Campbell has a rather idiosyncratic and arresting approach. He finds in Bogle Corbet a unifying principle applicable to most of the Scottish stories. His title, "Dependents of Chance," implies a theme which underlies Galt's work-the necessity of leadership to impose order on a chaotic society whose members have to be protected against their own irresponsibility. The leader is always a man of wider experience and superior ability standing out for development (e.g. Bogle, Cayenne, Pawkie), actuated by the prime motive in Galt's social and economic ethics-increase. This brings Campbell to stress one complementary theme, limitation, the need to curb one's ambition, either through selfknowledge or when compelled by circumstances. This idea was to become obsessional in the last phase of Galt's career when the demon of destiny, the offspring of his meditations on failure, come very near to becoming a mystic reality. Ringing the changes on his text with remarkable resourcefulness, Campbell sheds additional light on the complexity and subtlety of Galt's point of view. In spite of a few digressive skids and a little straining of ingenuity when he forces both Balwhidder and Malachi Mailings into his pattern, we are given an original, distanced and overall view of the Scottish stories with refreshing brio. Gilbert R. Stelter in his essay "The Writer as Town Booster and Builder" is outstandingly infonnative about Galt's achievement in Ontario. He closely retraces the progress of an early interest in town and city growth which led the author of the Annals to seek solutions overseas to ease the economic and demographic pressures, a source of worry in Scotland during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Galt advocated the founding of towns and the launching of "directed settlements" by private companies. Professor Stelter recalls the creation of the Canada Company ("a tough process"), the highhanded but efficient way in which the commissioner carried out his assignment, the formal solemnity which attended the foundation of Guelph, but the essay terminates on a climactic disclosure, the discovery of a copy of an original map of the town, drawn after Galt's directions in 1826 and inspired from the French architect L'Enfant's laying out of Washington. Unfortunately, his harmonious fanlike planning was interfered with and sadly messed up after his recall. Indeed Galt must have enjoyed a dubious gratification in turning his Canadian experience into literature. Professor Stelter's paper brings valuable complementary information on Galt's work in Canada; it is no less an important contribution to Canadian history whose impressive apparatus of notes and maps makes it all the more interesting. Nick Whistler in his close re-reading of Galt's Autobiography reminds us that it is "an autobiography before the curtain," mainly written to

203 196 Book Reviews vindicate his work in Ontario. An invaluable sourcebook to a neglected period of Canadian history it certainly is. That it is as well a literary achievement Whistler successfully demonstrates, though he fails to dissipate the prevailing bias that it is the product of a mind deprived of its wonted vitality. Nevertheless even when he is at his most sanguine, he makes points of remarkable acuity and significance. For one he asks the right question: how did the arch manipulator of the autobiographic genre deal with his own life? Galt acted like a skilled professional equipped with all the tricks of the trade, using selection and reduction, "presenting truth in its most winsome aspect," finding sufficient elements in this chequered life to build up a a compelling public image. As he had done in his earlier fiction, he enhanced his narrative by wrapping it in a predestinarian patterning of fate, a web of coincidences and omens. He further improved on his life story by resorting to myth making. Whistler has some interesting remarks when discussing Galt's religion, but his picture would have been more consistent and more complete had he availed himself of all the material at his disposal, the later poems, mainly The Demon of Destiny, the essay on "Fatalism and Particular Providence" in The Literary Life, and Coleman 0' Parson's chapter on Galt in his Witchcraft and Demonology in Scott's Fiction. Omens, premonitions, and dreams may have been used as fictional devices in his earlier and rather crude attempts at novel writing and even in some of the Scottish stories; later, after his return from Canada, they took a deeper meaning; he started pondering over the reasons of his past setbacks and failures and evolved his own peculiar brand of Presbyterianism. Whistler's resorting to Freudian analysis, notably his spotting of several paraphrases, cannot be faulted. I even believe that Freud could provide useful insights in the study of Galt's personality, which has not yet been quite rounded up. On the whole one can only applaud a successful exploration of "a literary self-myth of one of the greatest firstperson myth-makers." Considered as a whole Bogle Corbet is the most puzzling of the potboilers dashed off for Colburn and Bentley. Notwithstanding its blemishes the book deserved more attention than it had been so far granted. In his lucid analysis of Galt's motives and of the book structure, Martin Bowman reaches gratifying and, to some extent, redeeming conclusions. The sentimental convention such as it is used in this novel, Bowman warns us, is not to be dismissed as mere padding. Galt deliberately attempted to integrate romance material "in a particular manner." Initially his aim was both practical and realistic. He intended to write under the guise of a theoretical biography a guide for the average prospective emigrant to Canada. But the type of hero he chose made him wander from his purpose. Bogle, though quite the ordinary man, is prone to fits of melancholy which tum him into a failure. In devising a "metaphysical

204 Book Reviews 197 anatomy" with a strong admixture of romance, Galt courted difficulty. He had to integrate the convention of sensibility into the psychological realism he was familiar with. For Bogle is not meant to be the sentimental hero but a modern anti-hero with a crippling handicap which leaves him helpless in front of a harsh economic situation. Galt took a deep interest in this social misfit and adroitly exploited the convention of sensibility to explore the inner discomfort of a man acutely aware of his limitations. He made Bogle a superstitious man, a prey to mystic imaginings. His belief in a Gothic double helps him to exculpate himself and to project into a malevolent associate all the qualities he feels he is himself lacking. But Galt's most effective device to legitimate the sentimental convention is to have the failed man tell his own story in the very terms and shape of the literature he has imbibed. His commonplace mind can only produce a derivative tale. His flight from a stale flat life to Canada starts him on a cathartic process. He learns that romance has little to do with the severe realities of frontier life. Eventually realism steals the show. The introduction of a parodic subplot ironically counterpoints Bogle's submission to reality. The reformed man of feeling and his prosaic wife usurp the part of the hero and the heroine. As Martin Bowman aptly puts it, Galt has discovered a way of integrating the convention of the sentimental romance into a book which was its antithesis. Perhaps the last stroke comes with the conclusion. Bogle takes to in-door gardening, an unmelodramatic d6noument to a muted tragedy of insignificance. I have called Bogle Corbet a puzzling novel, not because of its overlooked purpose and structural complexity brilliantly expounded by Martin Bowman, but on account of the autobiographical elements, now palpable and treated as anonymous fictional material, now fleetingly present and about which in the absence of fresh documentary evidence speculation would be idle. Yet I shall terminate on an impertinent question: was Galt in Bogle Corbet a forerunner of the objectivecorrelative method? That some light topical sketches serialized for the entertainment of the readers of Blackwood's Magazine should eventually produce "a serious and well-formed novel" stands to the credit of Galt's technical awareness. It also stands to Keith Costain's credit to have taken to pieces Galt's original devices to revitalize a genre pretty much on the wane by the end of the eighteenth century. This, Costain has done better than his numerous predecessors, and it is to be hoped that the answer he has provided may clinch the matter, if not for good, at least for many years to come. Technique indeed needs close watching in The Ayrshire Legatees. It is the epistolary form, freed from its traditional fetters, which enabled Galt to tackle from a different angle the problems he was to deal with so efficiently in his subsequent Scottish tales. Keeping in mind that in 1820 one of Galt's main concerns had been with change, the central theme of

205 198 Book Reviews The Legatees, Costain suggests, is judgment. A provincial family imbued with the values of their agricultural world cannot help considering for the benefit of the people at home the unfamiliar metropolitan environment in which they happen to be temporarily immersed. On being "judicial" not only do they reveal their "metaphysical anatomy" but also the pressures of historical forces that affect their judgment. Parents and children react each in their own way, reflecting the conflict of values between generations. The older Pringles stick to their old communal and altruistic ideals; Rachel and her brother yield to the spirit of self-interest which infects the new mercantile society. Character works as a dynamic factor. Costain sees the book as a kind of Pilgrim's Progress where "irony is the keyword and vanity the snare." Each protagonist is anatomized with fresh illuminating zest. Galt's leading notions are already preceptible here: the need for keeping the balance between permanence and progression; for only within the community can the forces of stability come to terms. An entertainment underlaid by serious thinking, The Ayrshire Legatees is certainly a suitable curtain-raiser for the Scottish stories and Costain's approach through a preliminary survey of the epistolary form has helped him in no small way in his perceptive and, in my opinion, convincing reexamination. Professor H.B. de Grootes undertakes to clarify the technical points at issue regarding the narrative method in The Last of the Lairds. The composition itself was a pretty garbled affair. Galt had long fumbled for a suitable technique, and the unfinished novel was abandoned to the misguided tampering of Blackwood and Moir. Galt had stumbled against a major obstacle, the limitations of a besotted protagonist who could not be entrusted with the telling of his own story. He decided on a narrator who was an observer and a secondary character. It was perhaps natural, Professor de Grootes notices, that a secondary character should act as author. Authors "look at people as copy." In this capacity the narrator comes very near to being Galt himself. Moir, says De Grootes, though guilty of sundry misdeeds, was right to streamline the book into a self-contained novel by suppressing all the topical references and squibs at actual people. But the fundamental question at the heart of the Lairds' problem is what caused Galt to fumble for the adequate form and misled his two editors. Professor de Grootes provides, I think, the right answer. No precedent existed of a novel related by a minor character. So Galt blundered into something he had hardly foreseen, being willy-nilly "an experimenter in narrative prospective." He certainly should not be blamed for a little mishandling in the new narrative device he was experimenting with. The method came to full fruition only in the late nineteenth century. However, after la. Gordon's retrieval and editing of the original manuscript, The Last of the Lairds is seen as a far from despicable contrivance and one which needs to be considered. This is made emphatically clear by Professor de Grootes who has other shrewd

206 Book Reviews 199 remarks, notably on the use of language to which, I am afraid, I could do but poor justice. With Professor Ian Gordon's study on "Galt and Politics" Reppraisals is brought to a masterly conclusion. With his wonted alacrity and exacting regard for clarity, he stresses the fact that Galt was anxious to avoid any interference of his activity as a writer of fiction with the public image he sedulously cultivated, that of a man of affairs walking the corridors of power and familiar with people of rank and influence. Hence probably his ambiguous attitude to the profession of letters, his pretence of detachment and eighteenth-century condescension which ended with the loss of his Canadian post. The perception of such close correspondence between the two worlds could only have come from one shrewdly aware of Galt's fascination for political science and its exercise in public life. Another observation, and a very gratifying one indeed, has been forced upon Gordon, who is anything but a vain man, by incontrovertible evidence: "Galt sells." Recent editions of The Provost and The Last of the Lairds are sold out and The Member has run into a second edition. How this little book can be so popular with the modern reader can be easily accounted for. There is no reason to recall Galt's uncanny dexterity in turning out a piece of prim and sly writing. The book still reads remarkably well. The author adheres to the well-tried pattern of "theoretical" autobiographies: one theme, a protagonist, a succession of seemingly disconnected episodes and incidents but no plot; true, nevertheless an efficient narrative drive, a self-revelating process and an unobtrusive underlying structure. As Gordon shows in his introduction, the career of Archibald Jobbery is skillfully charted: an ascending movement at first, then a middle stage made of ups and downs for politics entail some rough sailing, a more serene, anticlimactic conclusion. The book owes its favor with the reading public to its "startling topicality," the die-hard practices of the political mores of a democratic system of government. Galt had "an unerring eye and ear for what seems permanent in political dealings." The Member because it has lost none of its deadly accuracy is a "disquieting book. Shall I add that la. Gordon, no lesser a devotee of accuracy than Galt has identified with a wealth of deductive particulars, the Northhampshire constituency which provided Galt with his model for Frailtown. The essays in Reappraisals, as I suggested at the beginning of this review, show a decisive advance of Galt studies. Even a detailed account has, I fear, failed to do justice to their demanding scholarship and fruitful scrutiny. Emphasis has been laid now on Galt's technical resourcefulness, now on the profundity and complexity of the underlying thought. Can one

207 200 Book Reviews be content to repeat that Galt is "a serious author" or shall we, with the most authoritative of his commentators, call him great? HENRI GmAULT Universite de Grenoble Allan H. MacLaine. Allan Ramsay. Boston: Twayne Publishers [xii] pp. Twayne's English Authors Series, 400. Johann Assbeck. Why are my Country-Men such Foes 10 Verse? Untersuchungen zur schottischen Dichtung des fruhen 18. lahrhunderts in ihrem Verhiiltnis zum englischen Klassizismus. [Studies in Early Eighteenth-Century Scottish Poetry and its Relationship to English Neoclassicism.] Frankfurt/Main, Berne, New York: Verlag Peter Lang pp. Sprache und Literatur, 25. The preoccupation with Burns and, to a lesser degree, Fergusson that characterized the traditional criticism of eighteenth-century Scottish poetry seems to be gradually being abandoned in favor of a wider perspective, as there is a growing tendency to recognize the earlier poets as literary figures in their own right. Allan H. MacLaine's monograph on Allan Ramsay is the second full-length critical study of this poet after the completion of the STS edition of Ramsay's works in 1974 (for the first, written in German, cf. SSL, 18 [1983], 291-7). In the main, MacLaine presents us with the conventional image of the Edinburgh poet, but there are interesting shifts of emphasis in some places. Ramsay is seen, naturally enough, as the embodiment of the Scots vernacular revival to which he is said to have given "both its original impetus and its final direction" (p. I), Only nine pages are dedicated to "Ramsay in English Dress," although MacLaine finds it "stanling to recall that close to half of Ramsay's total poetic output is not in Scots at all, but in standard literary English" (p. 114), But, according to MacLaine, Ramsay never acquired more than "a moderate competence" in the southern poetic idiom and throughout his life remained unable "to express any idea with complete naturalness and conviction" in English (p. 115), so that all his "significant" poetry was written in Scots. MacLaine's analyses of the individual works are sound, if rather sketchy. Discussing 110 poems in 140 pages of text is, of course, something of a lour de force, and given the profusion of quotations there is relatively little space for critical comment. Whenever possible, MacLaine relates Ramsay's work to the older Scots poetic tradition, and he eagerly points out Ramsay's influence on the later eighteenth-century poets. (One finds, however, comparatively little about Ramsay's

208 Book Reviews 201 indebtedness to Butler, Pope, Prior, or Gay, which so obviously also affected his Scots poems; on the other hand, it seems that Fergusson and Burns knew and frequently quoted from Ramsay's entire work, both Scots and English). But, above all, MacLaine tries to draw attention to what is good in Ramsay and thus to stimulate the reader to return to the poems. Among the works he admires most are Ramsay's satires and pastorals. The additional cantos of Christis Kirk on the Green, often quoted by former critics as an example of Ramsay's "vulgarity" and linguistic confusion, are appreciated by Mac Laine as vigorous social satire showing "Ramsay at his earthy, colloquial best" (p. 19); likewise, he argues that Ramsay's neglected political satire A Tale of Three Bonnets "deserves to be recognized as one of his major works" (p.24). Of Ramsay's comic elegies, that on Patie Birnie is, "in terms of style and craftsmanship, the most accomplished" (p. 30), and The Last Speech of a Wretched Miser is "one of Ramsay's finest poems" altogether (p. 38). Similar praise is lavished on Patie and Roger ("Ramsay's Scots verse at its best," p. 66) and The Gentle Shepherd ("Ramsay's longest and most important original creation," p. 68). Although MacLaine seems less enthusiastic about Ramsay's verse epistles and Horatian odes, he holds a few of them to be also "surprisingly felicitous" (p. 46), showing Ramsay "at his skillful best" (p. 51). As to Ramsay's Scots tales, most of them "are masterly in their genre" (p. 113), The Monk and the Miller's Wife indeed being "the finest extended piece of Scots narrative verse of the eighteenth century before Burns" (p. 112). The quality of Ramsay's Scots songs is uneven, but "The Widow" deserves to be recognized as a first-rate comic song" (p. 87), "The Malt-Man" "is one of Ramsay's most effective comic lyrics" (p. 89), and in "Up in the Air" "Ramsay surpasses himself' (p. 85). MacLaine also pays due respect to Ramsay's achievement as a publisher and editor of Scottish poetry (pp ), but, in contrast to many other critics, he argues that Ramsay's "own creative work in Scots was immeasurably more important and fruitful" than his role as anthologist (p. 134). There is, then, much admiration and commendation in this new study of Ramsay's work, so much, in fact, that the reader is somewhat puzzled by MacLaine's conclusion, in his discussion of the intrinsic value of the poems, that "Ramsay was not a great poet" (p. 139). Still, MacLaine claims, Ramsay's poetry deserves more credit than it has received in the twentieth century, even if, all things considered, the historical importance of Ramsay's work ranks much higher than its aesthetic value. It is in the discussion of the historical context of Ramsay and his work that Mac Laine 's study is most debatable. Above all, the traditional view that Ramsay was "passionately opposed" to the parliamentary Union with England (p. 24) needs to be qualified. To link up with Ramsay's political views only the "Jacobite" poems The Vision and A Tale of Three Bonnets, both published anonymously, and to ignore works such as The Prospect of Plenty (in which Ramsay freely discusses the advantages of the Union and

209 202 Book Reviews speaks of England and Scotland as "The antient Nations join' d like Man and Wife") or the verse epistles addressed to William Somerville (which repeatedly praise the newly gained peace and friendship between "North Britain" and "her Sister South") must needs diston the picture. Nor is it possible any longer to uphold the theory that an insistence on the Scots tradition was the common literary reaction to the loss of Scotland's political independence after 1707 and that "in the eyes of his countrymen in his own generation... Ramsay himself was the Scots revival" (p. 139). In his discussion of Watson's and Ramsay's antiquarianism MacLaine fails to see that France and England had recently statted anthologizing their national poetry (a fact Watson himself points out in the preface to his Choice Collection), so that the cultural example of these countries and not only the political events around the year 1707 should be considered as an incitement to the Scottish editors. The proceedings of the Easy Club, together with such works as The Gentleman's Qualifications or The Scriblers Lash'd (both neglected by MacLaine because of their English diction), make it quite clear that even when they adopted the names of famous older Scottish writers, Ramsay and his friends never seriously thought of rebuilding Scotland's literary reputation on verses written in the Scots vernacular: their conscious cultural standard was that of the south, and Joseph Mitchell was by no means alone when he saw Ramsay's major achievement in the example provided by his "polish'd" lines: Reform the Taste OfCALEOONIA'S Brood: Your Way must take, as easiest understood. By small Degrees, the Language will refme, 'Till Sterling English in our Numbers shine. (''To Mr. Allan Ramsay," Poems on Several Occasions [London, 1729], I, ). Ramsay, it is true, never followed Mitchell's striving for Englishness, but he increasingly disliked being classified as a (provincial) "Caledonian Bard," preferring to be considered a British poet. His aesthetics were largely formed by English neoclassicism, and he looked at his own poetry and that of his contemporaries (both English and Scots) as well as the works of the makars or the classical poets from the vantage point of the Augustan gentleman. Made self-conscious by the English prejudice against Scotland's culture, he often over-reached his goal; but his knowledge of the neoclassical poetic diction was not quite as restricted and his attitude towards "standard" English not quite as unnatural as MacLaine would have it. How deeply rooted in the literary language of the south he had become, but also how culturally confused the new political situation had made him, is revealed not least by the fact that he wrote the first drafts of several of his "medieval" Scots poems in neoclassical English (rather than Scots) and then altered the vocabulary,

210 Book Reviews 203 syntax and spelling according to the antiquarian effect he wished to achieve. Ramsay's professed Britishness did not mean that he turned his back on the Scottish literary tradition; on the contrary, Ramsay was looking for loopholes in the contemporary system of aesthetics through which he might introduce Scottish elements, including the Scots vernacular, without any obvious breaches of decorum, so as to make "North British" literature acceptable to a larger public. An inconsiderate use of vernacular Scots would have defeated his purpose in much the same way as the presentation of the older Scottish poets in a relatively unpolished guise (in The Ever Green) repelled rather than attracted his sophisticated readers. (The Ever Green, as is well known, met with a rather tepid reception from the public, while Ramsay's anthology of fashionably refurbished and modern "Scots" songs, The Tea-Table Miscellany, was expanded to four volumes and attained at least fourteen editions during Ramsay's lifetime). Whether Ramsay's motives in The Ever Green were "more admirable" than in The Tea-Table Miscellany, as MacLaine claims (p. 129), is a matter of historical perspective. As a propagandist of Scottish culture in the first decades after the Union, Ramsay undoubtedly served his country more effectively with the second collection, even if by modern critical standards The Ever Green is the more valuable book. The cultural situation of post-union Scotland was more complex and Ramsay's achievement as a Scottish poet more amazing than Professor MacLaine's study with its confinement to the vernacular tradition suggests. A stronger consideration of the international literary context and of the English half of Ramsay's works would also have deepened our understanding of the Scots revival and of Ramsay's role in it. In his thesis on early eighteenth-century Scottish poetry and its relationship to English neoclassicism, Johann Assbeck looks at Scotland's crisis of cultural identity in the wake of the Union from a stimulatingly new point of view. Scrutinizing the example of two poetry anthologies published at that time in the Scottish capital, The Edinburgh Miscellany (c. 1720) and Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany (1723), Assbeck discusses the various attempts by Scottish writers to solve the conflict arising from the largely uncontested exemplariness of English literature on the one hand and Scottish nationalism on the other. The title of Assbeck's study, Why are my Country-Men such Foes to Verse, is taken from a verse epistle addressed to Alexander Pope by one Mr. Hepburn, who in various contributions to The Edinburgh Miscellany joined forces with other patriotic writers to overcome Scotland's literary barrenness by bidding "the English Muse shine forth in Northern Lines." The Edinburgh Miscellany was positively anglophile in its outlook; sponsored by the fashionable Athenian Society, it contained among its pastorals, elegies, Horation odes, verse epistles, didactic poems, and vers de societe early

211 204 Book Reviews poetical attempts by Thomson, Mitchell, Mallet, Robertson of Struan, Henry Home (Lord Kames), as well as several members of the Fair Intellectual Club. Although one of the principal aims of this publication was to give Scottish poetry a chance of re-asserting its place in the realm of British letters, not one of the poems contained in it is in the Scots vernacular. Assbeck convincingly argues that even during the first two decades of the century the decisive criterion for the nationalistic poet and editor was "Scottishness" rather than Scots; this also holds true for large parts of Watson's Choice Collection, Hamilton of GilbertfIeld's new edition of the Wallace, and other publications of uncontestedly nationalistic intent. To many young poets, imitation of the English models seemed the only possible way out of Scotland's cultural dearth, but naturally there was a preference for those kinds of poetry that, even if vaguely, referred to Scottish history, Scottish scenery, or Scottish tunes. The highly popular "Scotch songs" of that period are a characteristic example of the cultural interchange then developing: they were, in fact, English songs set to Scottish tunes (or tunes "in the Scottish manner") and covered with a thin patina of Scottishness; coming from fashionable London, they were eagerly taken up by polite Edinburgh society, imitated, and sent back south of the border with a defying "Edina yields not to Augusta yet" as examples of the elegant modem Scottish muse. Assbeck demonstrates that with regard to its poetical practice and its underlying cultural norms, The Tea-Table Miscellany differs less from The Edinburgh Miscellany than has commonly been assumed. In choosing his motto from Waller and dedicating his collection to the "British" public, Ramsay left no doubt about his cultural stand. Yet while most of the verses "by different Hands" show only slight, if any, traces of Scots, Ramsay tried in his own contributions (not always unsuccessfully) to achieve a synthesis of the Scottish oral tradition and English neoclassical poetry. With the aesthetic norms of Addison, Philips, and D'Urfey to start from, neither Ramsay nor his collaborators thought of offering genuine folksongs to their readers; this may be regrettable from the modem point of view, but The Tea-Table Miscellany at least helped to save a great number of popular tunes from falling into oblivion. The strength of Assbeck' s study lies in its skillful evocation of the socio-cultural and literary contexts of Scottish post-union poetry and in its highlighting of some of the lesser-known poets of that period. In his analyses of the individual poems and songs, Assbeck is perhaps a little unfair when he compares the poems of young Scottish dtbutants to the masterly verses of Pope, Swift, or the Countess of Winchilsea; surely, the shortcomings of the imitations are not entirely due to the writers' different national, social, and linguistic background, but also to their obvious inexperience or lack of talent. Moreover, Assbeck tends to interpret the neoclassical rules somewhat too narrowly, allowing for no deviation

212 Book Reviews 205 whatsoever from the set standards. Ramsay for one showed several times that "snatching a grace beyond the reach of an" was quite possible for the competent Scottish poet. In the case of nature poetry, Assbeck is quite willing to admit this possibility, so why not in the case of the verse epistle or song? On the whole, Assbeck's thesis is very well documented and free from factual errors. It should perhaps be pointed out that the title of John Speirs's study, twice quoted wrongly (pp. 19 and 314), is The Scots Literary Tradition, and that Ramsay's early works in the Scots vernacular were by no means suppressed in 1728 (p. 305), but appeared in a reedition of the 1721 volume, so that there was no reason to include them in the second volume of Ramsay's Poems as well. Quotations from Ramsay's original works should nowadays be taken from the modem standard edition (STS) rather than an obsolete 19th-century edition. But Assbeck's study also reminds us that critical editions of The Tea-TabLe MisceLLany, The Ever Green, and other 18th-century anthologies of Scottish poetry are still desiderata of modem literary scholarship. In spite of the circumstantiality and repetitiveness of many of Assbeck's arguments, this book has great merits and fills an important gap in Scottish studies of the eighteenth century. A detailed summary in English would certainly be much appreciated. PETER ZENZINGER Technische Universitiit Berlin The Concise Scots Dictionary. Editor-in-Chief Mairi Robinson. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press xli pp. Of the making of dictionaries there is no end, since every dictionary of a living language is out of date before it is published. As the language changes, by adding new words or changing the meaning of existing ones, the dictionary maker must keep track and record the changes. At the same time, no dictionary ever becomes totally obsolete since it remains as evidence of the state of the language or of knowledge about the language when it was compiled. Moreover, makers of dictionaries make use of their predecessors and build on their foundations. The Concise Scots Dictionary (CSD) is a distillation, involving both condensation and refining, of The Scottish NationaL Dictionary (SND) and The Dictionary of the OLder Scottish Tongue (DOSn. Since a dictionary is an odd sort of book in that presumably nobody other than another dictionary maker (or a reviewer) is likely to sit down and read it page by page from beginning to end, the question immediately arises: What is the purpose of this volume? The aim, as stated in the preface, is to provide an accessible account of the Scots language, but what are the grounds for claiming that Scots is an

213 206 Book Reviews independent language rather than a dialect of English? AJ. Aitken, in his introduction, sets out the case for Scots very clearly: The unique characteristics of Scots which we have just surveyed-its linguistic distinctiveness, its occupation of its own "dialect island" bounded by the Border, its individual history, its own dialect variation, its varied use in a remarkable literature, the ancient loyalty of the Scottish people to the notion of the Scots language, as well as the fact that since the sixteenth century Scots has adopted the nation's name-all of these are attributes of a language rather than a dialect Manifestly Scots is to be seen as much more than simply another dialect of English. (p. xiii) The entry in the dictionary itself for Scots is also infonnative: Scots &c 17-; Scottis &c la14-17, Scottish &c, Scotch la17- A) forms: Scots (the descendant of the historical Sc form) survived till 19 only in certain locutions, but has gradually re-established itself as preferable to Scotch in general contexts among Scottish speakers when speaking Eng. Scottish (the full Eng form) was used in general contexts by anglicizing Scots (17-18); then retained in formal contexts stressing national or historical aspects (Ia18-); "Scottish burgh". "Scottish Crown". Scotch (the contracted Eng form and the prevailing form in England (17-) was adopted into Sc and was the prevailing Sc form (lai8-19), is still the regular vernacular form but is now acceptable in Scottish Standard English only in certain compounds: "Scotch broth", "Scotch whisky". [The numbers refer to centuries, e.g., lal7-= from the late 17th century onwards.] After a brief history of Scots, the introduction provides a key to the two trickiest aspects of the whole venture: pronunciation and orthography. Barthes, in one of his characteristically provocative suggestions, argues that there would be great benefits in allowing French people the freedom to spell the language as they thought fit and "the written physiognomy of the word might acquire a properly poetic value" (The Rustle of Language, 1986), He might have been less enthusiastic if he had seen the problems that this presents for the editors of CSD. Without attempting a serious calculation, I guess that from twenty to thirty percent of the entries are for alternative spellings. Even so, probably the most frequent fonn to occur in CSD is &c, as the editors compromise between completeness and conciseness. An example will illustrate the point: pairish &c la17-e20, parise he &c la15-16, parioch &e lai6-e18, paroehe &e lai5-ei8; parise &e 1a14-17, perish &e la15-e20, perroehe &e 16, pareis &e la16-19,parish 17- Poetic it may be but it is also a pain for the compilers and users of dictionaries. The editors have done their best, but it would be misleading to say that this is an easy work to consult. Sometimes it is like Voltaire's view of etymology a matter of paying attention to the consonants and leaving the vowels to take care of themselves. Pronunciation also presents problems. Aitken gives a very clear account of the pronunciation of Scots in his introduction, but even so it will be hard going for the non-specialist. The phonetics and phonology of Scots are complex and still not adequately described, despite the work that

214 Book Reviews 207 has been done in the past fifteen years. In the dictionary itself, the editors have scrupulously marked with an asterisk those pronunciations which are not fully attested. This is particularly important in a work that it likely to become the standard authority for years to come. The main criticism is likely to be that CSD, like its sources, SND and DOST, is heavily dependent upon literature, and that mostly of a venerable and established reputation. Future editions will no doubt take into account contemporary writing, particularly the recent flourishing urban variety. The work of the Linguistic Survey of Scotland and other empirical studies will complement this and add more of the flavor of the spoken language. In the meantime, there is plenty to be grateful for in the present version. For the non-specialist, it is a rich storehouse of information about Scotland. There are all those imposing Latinate words that reveal so much of the Scottish character, particularly the legal terms with their uncompromising world-view and sometimes surprising meanings: casualty "I the aggregate of incidental items of the royal revenue e 16" Commodate, commodatum "a free loan of an article which must be returned exactly as lent la17-" Conservator "2 an official defender of the privileges of an institution or corporate body" declinature "the refusal by a judge to exercise jurisdiction, appropriate in a case in which by reason of relationship to a party or pecuniary or other interest his decision might be thought affected" exauctorate "deposed from office, relieved of authority: /orisfamiliate "of a MINOR living independently of his or her parents because of being married, having a separate estate etc lai6-" gravatour "a letter from the official of an ecclesiastical court censuring a person found guilty of an attempt to defraud or to escape due payment" heronius "of persons misguided in behaviour, disregarding or defying established habits and ideas, unconventional, outrageous" [The etymology is "a variant of English erroneous". which gives a good indication of Scottish notions of conformity.] intercommuning "the fact or practice of being in communication with rebels or denounced persons la 15-18" justify "2 execute justice upon, convict, condemn; execute (a convicted criminal); put (a criminal etc) to death 15-eI7" legitim "that part of a person's MOVEABLE estate which goes under common law to his or (since 1881) her children (now la20- including illegitimate children), one third if the other parent survives, otherwise half la17-"

215 208 Book Reviews lenocinium "the connivance or encouragement by one partner in a marriage of the adultery of the other (constituting a bar to divorce) la16-" luminator "St Andrews Univ-a member of class who, in return for fees paid by the other students, was responsible for providing fire and light in the lecture-room and for keeping the attendance-rollla17-e19" manumission "the conferring of a university degree upon a graduand 17" misfortune "2 a breach of chastity resulting in the birth of an illegitimate child; the child itself la1s-" mortify "2 assign or bequeath in perpetuity (lands, property or money) to an ecclesiastical or other body or institution lais-e19" [Aberdeen Town Council had "a master of mortifications" to administer such property.] novatioun "1 change (chiefly undesirable) in established practice; an innovation praepositure "the right of a wife to incur debts on behalf of her husband for food and household requirements lals-" taciturnity "2 the silence of a creditor in regard to a debt or obligation, which can be pleaded in extinction of it, as implying that the claim has been satisfied or abandoned la16-" Then there are the residual signs of the Auld Alliance with France: ashe! "I an oval serving plate, esp for a joint IS " blanche/erme "a small or nominal quit-rent paid in money or otherwise lai4-17" cordisidron "lemon peei17 e1s" lash "I trouble, annoy, anger, inconvenience 17 " /ushionless "offooe-iacking in nourishment, tasteless, insipid 19-" gigot "a leg (of mutton or lamb) lals-" jalouse "3 suspect, suppose (that.. ) lai7-" liege poustie "the state of being in full possession of one's faculties; soundness in mind and body la14-e20" mawdelit "illness which confines one to bed, as an excuse for not appearing in court IS" menage "a kind of savings club to which each member contributes a fixed sum weekly for a stated period 19-"

216 Book Reviews 209 penalte "a troubled state of mind due to an awareness of the weakness of human nature and sin lal5" There are also a number of expressions that reveal different sides of the Scottish character: barisdall "an instrument of torture invent and used only by McDonald of Barisdale e18" barking and fleeing "spending wastefully and over-extravagantly; on the verge of ruin 19-" black ox "an imaginary black ox said to trample on someone who has suffered a bereavement or other severe calamity 18-eI9" brie "sandstone etc pounded down to use for rubbing on doorsteps etc e20" catlill "punish by pressing the finger into the hollow under a child's ear 19" cleg "2 a missile used by rioters against troops or police, esp during the Radical movement e19" covin tree "a tree in front of a Scottish mansion at which guests were met and from which they were sent off 19-elO" deasil "the custom of walking sun wise round a person or thing to bring good fortune lai8-e20" map 2 "nibble with twitching of the lips, as a rabbit or sheep 19-" mow 1 "of males, copulate, have sexual intercourse (with) 16-e20" [The etymology given is "perhaps from MOWS jest make fun of', which suggests an interesting attitude.] muse "a room to be used for meditation or study lal7" owersiclu "2 (1) failure to take preventive or punitive action; licence, indulgence, toleration, connivance lai6-ei7" Paisley screw "a screw driven home with a hammer instead of a screwdriver, suggesting laziness 20" raible "v 1 vt mob, assault with overwhelming numbers (specif an Episcopalian clergyman by a hostile Presbyterian congregation, after the Revolution settlement of ) la17-" sober "6 in poor or only moderate health, sickly, weak 19-" tilliesoul "a small private inn erected by a landowner for the servants and horses of his guests and any others whom he did not want to entertain himself 18-19"

217 210 Book Reviews Finally, there is the constant reminder of what an expressive language Scots is. In reading through this volume, I was constantly reminded or words that have an evocative resonance from my childhood: bumfle, earfuffle, earnaptious, ciarty, dieht, dottle, fouter, gomerei, guddle, haiver. high held vins. jouk.. keek. laldie, leerie, lowp, nyajj, oos, peeh. pee liewally, peenge, perjink, plunk. roup, sark. seart, seunner, sneek. snell. sumph, traipse,/umjie, wersh. If you don't know what these words mean, then you need to buy a copy of CSD. It's a bargain, and not only because it doesn't cost much. RONALD K.S. MACAULAY Pitzer College Scottish Language and Literature, Medieval and Renaissance. Fourth International Conference Proceedings. Ed. Dietrich Strauss and Horst W. Drescher. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang pp. Contents: Mairi Robinson, "The Concise Scots Dictionary," pp ; Adam J. Aitken, "The Pronunciation Entries for the CSD," pp ; Wilhelm F.H. Nicolaisen, "Names Reduced to Words?: Purpose and Scope of a Dictionary of Scottish Place Names," pp.47-54; Antonia Feitsma, "interlingual Communication Dutch-Frisian, a Model for Scotland?" pp.55-62; Kurt Braunmliller, "Interscandinavian Communication-A Model for Scotland?" pp ; Heinz Kloss, "Interlingual Communication: Danger and Chance for the Smaller Tongues," pp ; Dietrich Strauss, "The Scots-English Round-Table Discussion "Scots: Its Development and Present Conditions-Potential Modes of its Future," Introductory Remarks, pp.79-83; J. Derrick McClure, The Scots-English Round-Table Discussion "Scots: Its Development and Present Conditions-Potential Modes of its Future," Synopsis, pp.85-91; Matthew P. McDiarmid, Thomas Crawford, J. Derrick McClure, The Scots-English Round-Table Discussion "Scots: Its Development and Present Conditions-Potential Modes of its Future," Three Scots Contributions, pp ; Veronika Kniezsa, "What Happened to Old French Jail in Britian?" pp ; Hubert Gburek, "Changes in the Structure of the English Verb System: Evidence from Scots," pp ; C. Pollner and H. Rohlfing, "The Scottish Language from the 16th to the 18th Century: Elphinston's Works as a Mirror of Anglicisation," pp ; Hans Vtz, "Traces of Nationalism in Fordun's Chronicle," pp ; Alasdair M. Stewart, "Some Political Aspects of The Complaynt of Scotland (c. 1549)," pp ; John W. Wall, "A Prose Satire of the Sixteenth Century: George Buchanan's Chamaeleon,"

218 Book Reviews 211 pp ; Frank T. Gatter, "On the Literary Value of Some Scottish Presbyterian Writings in the Context of the Scottish Enlightenment," pp ; R James Goldstein, '''Freedom is a Noble Thing'" The Ideological Project of John Barbour's Bruce," pp ; Joachim Schwend, "Religion and Religiosity in The Bruce," pp ; M.R.G. Spiller, "The Donna Angelicata in The Kingis Quair," pp ; John Cartwright, "Sir Gilbert Hay and the Alexander Tradition," pp ; Sally Mapstone, "The Talis of the Fyve Bestis and the Advice to Princes Tradition," pp ; RL. Kindrick, "Henryson and the Rhetoricians: The Ars Praedicandi," pp ; Alasdair A. MacDonald, "Fervent Weather: A Difficulty in Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid," pp ; Elizabeth Archibald, "The Incestuous Kings in Henryson's Hades," pp ; Marilyn R Mumford, " Jungian Reading of Sir Or/eo and Orpheus and Erudice," pp ; Jean Jacques Blanchot, "Dunbar and his Critics: A Critical Survey," pp ; Klaus Bitterling, "The Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo: Some Comments on Words, Imagery, and Genre," pp ; Edwina Burness, "Female Language in The Tretis of The Tua MarUt Wemen and the Wedo," pp ; Dorothy W. Riach, "Walter Kennedy's Part in The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie," pp ; Priscilla Bawcutt, "Dunbar's Christmas Carol," pp ; Ian S. Ross, "'Proloug' and 'Buke' in the Eneados of Gavin Douglas," pp ; J. Derrick McClure, "A Comparison of the Bannatyne MS and the Quarto Texts of Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis," pp ; Claude Graf, "Audience Involvement in Lindsay's Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis," pp ; Hugh Kirkpatrick, "Stanza Fonns in the York Mystery Plays and the Bannatyne Manuscript," pp ; Matthew P. McDiarmid, "Scottish Love Poetry Before 1600: A Character and Appreciation," pp ; A. Walter Bernhart, "Castalian Poetics and the 'Verie Twichstane Muscique, '" pp ; Wolfgang Weiss, "The Theme and Structure of Drummond of Hawthornden's Sonnet Sequence," pp ; David W. Hawthornden's A Cypress Grove," pp ; Peter Zenzinger, "Rabbie Simson and the Early Elegy Tradition," pp ; Thomas Crawford, "The Medievalism of Allan Ramsay," pp ; G. Ross Roy, "Editing the Makars in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries," pp ; Juliette Wood, "Lakes and Wells: Mediation Between the Worlds in Scottish Folklore," pp ; Derick S. Thomson, "The Earliest Scottish Gaelic Non Classical Verse Texts," pp ; Rowena Murray, "The Influence of Norse Literature on the Twentieth-Century Writer George Mackay Brown," pp This volume presents forty-one of the forty-nine papers read at the "Founh International Conference on Scottish Language and Literature, Medieval and Renaissance," held at the Gennersheim campus of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, July 26-31, Also included is a panel discussion on "Scots: Its Development and Present

219 212 Book Reviews Conditions-Potential Modes of its Future." Two of the nine language essays deal with the Concise Scots Dictionary (Robinson, Aitken) and three discuss the problem of interlingual communication (Feitsma, Braunmliller, Kloss). As in previous conference volumes, the papers on language go well beyond the scope suggested by the title of the conference; however, several of the literature papers here do as well, a fact which raises some basic questions about the nature of future conferences. In examining the literature papers we find that the makars figure less prominently than in previous conference volumes: only one paper on the Kingis Quair (Spiller), for example, and one on Douglas (Ross). Of the four papers on Henryson, two deal with Orpheus and Eurydice (Archibald, Mumford), one with the Testament of Cresseid (MacDonald), and one primarily with the Morall Fabillis (Kindrick). Two of the four Dunbar papers take up the Tretis (Hitterling, Burness) and one The Petition of the Auld Hors, Dunbar (Bawcutt); the fourth is a survey of Dunbar criticism (Blanchot), while a fifth (Riach) discusses Kennedie's role in the Flyting. Both papers on Lyndsay discuss Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (McClure, Graf). More general studies which deal at least in part with the makars are those of Kirkpatrick and McDiarmid. There are also two papers which discuss later, especially eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury, attitudes towards the makars (Crawford, Roy). Among the other literature papers there are two on Barbour (Goldstein, Schwend) and two on Drummond of Hawthornden (Weiss, Atkinson). One is pleased to see essays on relatively unpopular works and authors: for example, Fordun's Chronicle (Utz), the Complaynt of Scotland (Stewart), Gilbert Hay's Alexander Bulk (Cartwright), the Talis of the Fyve Bestis (Mapstone), and George Buchanan's Chamaeleon (Wall). One is pleased also to see an essay on Scots Gaelic poetry (Thomson) and one on Celtic folklore (Wood); certainly each of these topics is inadequately represented in the various conference volumes. Perhaps future conferences will include papers on other neglected works, such as Hary's Wallace, the Howlat, Rauf Coilyear, Colkelbie's Sow, Golagros and Gawane, Peblis to the Play, Christis Kirk on the Grene, The WY.f of Auchtirmuchty, Gray's Scalachronica, Wyntoun's Orgynale Cronykil, and the Scottish popular ballads, to name only a few. Conversely, this volume's inclusion of papers on eighteenth- (Gatter) and twentieth-century (Murray) subjects makes one wonder whether the chronological boundaries of the conference still have any meaning. Will the next volume, for example, present papers on, say Blair, Carlyle, and MacDiarmid? And if we include essays on later writers like Ramsay (Crawford, Roy) because of his interest in the makars, why not welcome, if chronological constraints are to be ignored, non-scottish writers like Percy or Thomas Wright who share those interests? These are hardly earth-shaking concerns, and no great harm will be done regardless of the decisions made, but I do believe that the organizers of subsequent

220 Book Reviews 213 conferences, and the editors of the conference proceedings, will have to address themselves to these issues. WALTER SCHEPS State University of New York, Stony Brook James Hogg. Tales of Love and Mystery. Ed. David Groves. Edinburgh: Cannon gate Publishing Limited pp. James Hogg ( ) is familiar to readers of Studies in Scottish Literature from frequent mention of his principal work, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), but is probably known to a larger audience only from Wordsworth's "Extempore Effusion on the Death of James Hogg," where he appears briefly in the conventional role of "bard" among a parade of Wordsworth's recently dead poetic friends including Crabbe and Coleridge. His work is hard to find in the United States, except through interlibrary loan, but in Scotland some of his titles have been re-issued within the decade by the Scottish Academic Press, and now this volume, selected with thematic care and furnished with an excellent introduction by David Groves, has been published with aid from the Scottish Arts Council. The title, Tales of Love and Mystery, is Groves's, not Hogg's, as the selections have been taken from separate sources, mostly the magazines and annuals where they flrst appeared, including Thomas Campbell's London-published The Metropolitan. (Bibliographical information is given in the introduction.) I suspect that David Groves chose his title-tales of Love Mystery-to echo others of the Romantic period, when the short story had not yet evolved as a distinct genre, and when "tale" was used inclusively for a wide range of short pieces found indeterminately among the personal essay (Lamb and Hazlitt), the ghost story (R. H. Bartram and Poe), and the allegory (from Addison's "Vision of Mirza" to Johnson's "Rasselas" to Hood's "The Last Man"). As the suggested titles indicate, the tale was not always prose, and two of the pieces in our text are in verse ("The Mistakes of a Night" and "The First Sermon"). But the fact that the tale could be either prose or verse interests us less than the fact that, being a short indeterminate genre, the tale was not committed to narrative convention, so that, rather than giving a flnished account, the tale was free to expostulate on an anecdote. Certainly this is true of Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabasque (1840)--a distinction taken from Scott's "On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition"-which contains the anecdotal and speculative rather than narratively resolved "William Wilson," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "Ligeia." (Spiller et al., Literary History of the United States, 1963, pp ) Similarly, a

221 214 Book Reviews "tale" by Hogg does not develop a coherent omniscient denouement, but rather, within the limits of space and taste allowed by popular journalism, affords an unusually ironic perspective on seemingly mundane incidents. In his introduction, David Groves explains this irony, which he has chosen the tales to illustrate, and which characterizes Hogg's best work. The tales have hardly any plots, but allow the characters to expose themselves in ludicrous predicaments, where they show their conceit, or sometimes learn more about themselves through a return to honest feeling, humor, and compassion. In fact, the tales anticipate Browning's monologues for their choice of characters under stress, their development of psychological shifts, their use of characterizing diction, and for their often being written in the first person and in self-justification. Also similar to Browning, Hogg says little about context, forcing the reader to intuit a sense of the scene from the implications in the speaker's words, subordinating conventional realism to the context of the tale itself as it builds from the speaker's need for sympathy, excuse, and acceptance. Further, when the character has been precipitated into a quandary, often humiliating or dangerous rather than comical, Hogg offers no preconceived morality nor piety as a rationale for the character's discomfiture. Life is awkward, or dull, or meaningless, and the character shows his nature either by rejecting reality in favor of a comfortable nostrum or by finding his own better wisdom in realistic self-appraisal. As a matter of fact, the character is always a man, and both his predicament and his resolution of it usually arise from his relations with women, who are usually independent, original, and forthright, unlike the speaker. David Groves writes a fine introduction, a model for using critical methods to arrive at a balanced assessment of a unified selection of typical work by an unfamiliar author. Groves finds that Hogg relies on archetypes embodying a myth arranging the superficial fictive material of the separate tales into a pattern of deeper unity and significance for the works considered together. The nature of the myth has already been suggested: a naively vulnerable protagonist is tumbled into a threat to his complacent ordering of his life and must rescue himself or survive by being shocked into an imaginative perception of a more demanding world than he has known, a perception usually mediated or modeled by women. Archetypes of a fall into a pit, of journeys, of rapid motion, of trials by ordeal assigned by ambiguous women, who range the triad of nymph, mother, and crone: these persist in the tales and lend sinister or comic tone by the contrast between their resonant symbolism and the affected diction of the hero, and by the contrast between their meaningfulness and the varied and incongruous milieux of the individual tales. As with Burns, the Scottish language with its unique vocabulary and structure serves as a sign of honesty and trust in one's intuitions of order. When people speak Scottish, the pace picks up joyously and the irony, though still subtle, is more direct.

222 Book Reviews 215 Groves tells us how Hogg came to his belief in the value of the imagination, his pleasure in and his reliance on active perceptions shaped by intuitive designs. Like Hardy's "fiddler of the reels," Hogg was an accomplished and sought-after fiddler for country dances and weddings. "His love of music led him to try writing songs, then poems, and eventually stories and novels." (Groves, p. 2) Perhaps this progression means more than the typical writer's course from shorter to more ambitious works, particularly as Hogg continued fiddling throughout his life. His continued fascination with fiddle tunes suggests his susceptibility and immediate response to the signatures of imaginative activity: rapidity, rhythm, and a feel for form and interrelatedness. In order to write in the midst of his day-long tasks as a plowman and shepherd, Hogg sewed a pamphlet of writing paper to hold on his knee and hung a small bottle from his buttonhole for a makeshift inkwell: "Thus equipped, whenever a leisure minute or two offered, and I had nothing else to do, I sat down and wrote out my thoughts as I found them. This is still my invariable practice in writing prose. I cannot make out one sentence by study, without the pen in my hand to catch the ideas as they arise, and I never write two copies of the same thing." (Groves's quotation, p. 2) Groves explains that Hogg was often more deliberate than this in his composing habits, but surely such behavior shows a person extraordinarily involved in the creative process itself. Groves's introduction has many other similarly pertinent quotations. The tales themselves-six including the two poems---defy plotsummary or any succinct description, which would necessarily mislead the prospective reader. They vary in length and topic, and the words love and mystery in the title are accurate only in the miscellaneous sense that the tales are about these excitements, but they are not love stories nor mystery stories in the sense that we give these terms now. The title suggests the popular appeal that such titles had a century and a half ago, an appeal to the appetite for sensation. Like Poe's tales, these are intended to excite specific interests in eroticism, dreams, and the macabre. The longest, "Love Adventures of Mr George Cochrane," nearly a hundred pages, is the first-person narrative of an elderly bachelor trying to understand why he has often courted but never married. Although the tale is a fascinating matter-of-fact account of city and country courting customs in Scotland ca , and a characterization of diverse religious and social positions in the persons of the women (described in uxoriously sentimental detail), yet it is really about the self-centered complacence of a man who would rather play at courtship than risk a genuine appeal to a woman. Only love and humility can attain true social unity, is Groves's moral. Hypocritical editors decried Hogg for his candid realism, especially when the subject is actually erotic, as in "The Mistakes of a Night," but no more than Burns is Hogg ever bawdy or sly. Sex is a powerful attraction and an appropriate topic for an author. "Rough but racy-and welcome," Byron said, (Groves's quotation, p. 1) and the epithets fit the subject with Byron's usual clear-sighted accuracy.

223 216 Book Reviews "Seeking the Houdy," twelve pages, is a comic tale of a farmer riding a balky mare to get the midwife before his heir is born. But as usual that is only what it seems to be about. Dreams and supernatural visitations becloud the quest, and the cloddish materialistic farmer is seen (but not by himself) to be "seeking" what he would prefer not to fmd. His own imperceptiveness and sense of being bedeviled by women lead to consequences making this the most disturbing and tragic tale in the collection. "Some Terrible Letters from Scotland" might seem more gruesome with its account of a plague, but the physical details are less important than Hogg's use of the setting to show selfishness and vanity eroding family love and social concern. These four tales are perhaps the most substantial, and I do not wish to steal any more than I have already stolen from the reader's pleasure in Groves's insights, particularly into Hogg's wisdom in refusing to explain what cannot be understood, such as the farmer's vision of his child full grown before it is born, so I will end with a few remarks about the book's place in literary history. Hogg's birth and death dates neatly bracket the Romantic period, as far as a sensibility can be contained in a calendar, and his work displays that curious amalgam of skeptical deism and imaginative enthusiasm characteristic of the intellectual assumptions of the time. John Locke's theories about psychology and about the sources of our beliefs appear to be unquestioningly accepted as a rationale for thought and conduct in diverse contexts: "I dreamed of them both, and mixed them... there is no accounting for these vagaries of fancy in the absence of reason" (Hogg, p. 41); "strange combination of ideas which that foolish dream...impressed on my mind" (Hogg, p. 45); "he must derive his judgment from the consciousness of his own disposition, and impute to others the same inclinations which he feels...in himself' (Hogg, p. 46); "if a man cannot be believed in what he hears and sees, what is he to be believed in?" (Hogg, p. 188) Yet this phenomenalism does not preclude questions of the adequacy of our perceptions, as in that last question, and even the benighted hero of "Singular Dream" confesses that a good man confmns our faith in God. (Hogg, pp ) Hogg himself claims the priority of invention over rules: "the imagination which sketches the outline is the best qualified to finish the picture." (Groves's quotation, p. 4) And he puts in the mouth of a pert heroine these words worthy of Shelley: "A' self! a' selfl The very dread 0' hell, an' their glibness 0' claughtin at heaven, has something selfish in it." (Hogg, p. 128) We may wonder why so creative and forthright a person does not share the reputation of Smollett and of Bums, his nearly contemporary countrymen, and surely one reason is that Hogg did not begin to write until he was forty (Groves, p. 1) so that while he produced many works, many are unpracticed and mediocre, and perhaps another reason is that his belief in his own inspiration (Groves, p. 3) led him to discount criticism. But much of that criticism came from belletrists who scorned his candor and indifference to literary convention,

224 Book Reviews 217 so perhaps the recent appearance of his work in books like the one under review will lead to a better estimate of one of Scotland's most interesting authors. JOHN LINDBERG Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania Matthew P. McDiarmid and James A.c. Stevenson, eds. Barbour's Bruce: A fredome is a noble thing! 3 vols. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society Barbour's Bruce, the earliest surviving major work in the Scots tongue, merits special attention from students of medieval Scottish literature and history. Yet not since Mackenzie's 1909 edition has the entire poem been edited. Mackenzie, who was little concerned with textual matters, based his text on Skeat's STS edition of A new critical edition of the poem, then, has been long overdue. Further studies of the textual history, literary meaning, and historical contexts of The Bruce must undoubtedly take this new edition into account and will learn much from it. Unfortunately the edition is seriously flawed, leaving this reviewer, at least, with a sense of disappointment, since we are unlikely to see another edition for quite some time. Dr. Stevenson prepared the text itself, as well as the textual commentary and glossary. The main problem for an editor is that an unusually long time separates the composition of the poem in 1376 from the date of its surviving manuscripts, the defective Cambridge MS of 1487 (which is missing roughly the flrst 2050 lines) and the Edinburgh MS of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil (c. 1420), which quotes Barbour extensively, preserves about 280 lines, conveniently presented by both Skeat and Stevenson in their editions. For these lines, then, Wyntoun provides our earliest witness. In addition, the early printed editions, Lekpreuik's of 1571 and Han's of 1616, sometimes appear to have used manuscripts that have not survived. One of the chief merits of Stevenson's edition is that he collates the text of 1571 (which Skeat neglected) and prints its variants in the footnotes. Stevenson informs us in his introduction that Han's edition of 1616 (H) "is clearly based on 1571." Occasionally, however, the editions provide different readings (as opposed to Han's attempts to modernize or anglicize). It is therefore unclear the extent to which H really is based on 1571, and it is greatly to be regretted that the editor himself did not undertake the "close study of the differences between 1571 and If' which he suggests "would certainly throw some light on the sources available to those early editors." Unlike Skeat, who based his edition on C, Stevenson has based his on E-a choice that is sure to prove controversial among Bruce scholars. He

225 218 Book Reviews briefly sets forth his reasons for preferring the text of E: first, because "it preserves a more archaic stage of the language than does C"; and second, because (he thinks) the scribe of C has frequently subjected his text to "habitual 'improvement.'" In support of the first argument (he never supports the second) Stevenson refers us to a study by Muhleisen from I would agree that the language of E frequently preserves earlier forms than does C. Given the paucity of evidence for the state of the Scottish vernacular in the fourteenth century. this makes E of particular interest to students of the language, and may even have justified a diplomatic edition of E. But the appearance of linguistically conservative forms in E does not imply that the text is in all other respects more reliable and accurate than C. Stevenson tries to use the circumstantial evidence of the E-scribe's "professionalism" to reject the work of C. The frequent gaps in E and "the fact that on the whole E seems metrically 'rougher' than C," are taken "as indications that to a greater degree than C, the scribe of E was attempting to reproduce faithfully the text before him." Everything therefore hinges on how free from earlier scribal corruption the exemplar of E was in fact, though Stevenson never raises this issue. We simply do not know how far the exemplar of E may have been removed from the archetype of the poem. Stevenson provides a conservative edition of E, hesitating to use C for passages that seem to "correct" E, though he sensibly accepts the authority of C where it is "fuller or better ordered than E." Understandably, Stevenson is even more reluctant to adopt readings from the early printed editions or to supply his own emendations. The editor will alter E in favor of C, he tells us, when there appear to be "some objective grounds, usually linguistic or paleographic in nature." As a result, Stevenson's edition preserves the metrical peculiarities of E. This is Stevenson's only remark: "Lines which seem 'short' occur so frequently in E that I have come to accept them as characteristic of the poem." But this represents another unwarranted assumption, for logically we can consider these short lines (and Stevenson fails to mention the frequent long lines) to be characteristic not of the poem (if by that we understand the poem as Barbour wrote it or even the archetype from which later copies ultimately stem), but of MS. E. Archaic language notwithstanding, does E give us a more accurate impression of Barbour's poetic practice than does C? Stevenson never establishes that it does, and I have very serious doubts. Evidently, Stevenson has no theory of Barbour's meter and seems to think one unnecessary. But can an editor of a poem that appears to be written in octosyllabic couplets afford never to question the authenticity of a line on the basis of meter alone? The frequent appearance of lo-syllable or 6-syllable lines (not to mention the hundreds of 7-syllable lines), it seems to me, provides the beginning of "objective" grounds for preferring the much more regular C. We should probably assume that a poet is likely to write metrically competent verse and that scribes are more likely to corrupt the meter than hypercorrect it. In the absence of evidence to

226 Book Reviews 219 suggest the latter view, surely the flrst assumption is more consistent with our experience of other texts. Like Skeat and Mackenzie, I would accept the authority of C when its readings appear metrically regular so long as there is no contrary evidence to suggest corruption. We cannot take the time to examine Stevenson's emendations here, though it is worth observing that he often accepts more convincing or interesting readings from E where previous editors have followed C (e.g. III, 159 "pundelan"). Sometimes, however, he should have preferred C (e.g. VI, 489 "tray tour" [!]). A fuller glossary and a brief linguistic introduction to update Mackenzie's discussion would have been welcome. A few other points about the text deserve comment. Stevenson prints the flfteenth-century fonn of the thorn (which is indistinguishable from the flfteenth-century y) as modem y. This practice is not in general use and seems unnecessarily distracting. Moreover, the editor has provided unusually light punctuation, omitting apostrophes and question marks where their absence could lead to unnecessary confusion. Curiously, Stevenson prints Barbour's most famous line as "A, fredome is a noble thing" though it reappears without the comma as the subtitle to the poem itself. The decision to alter the traditional line numbering established by Pinkerton and followed by Skeat and Mackenzie will prove irritating to those who wish to refer to work based on the old numbering since few readers will have the patience to use the conversion chart provided in an appendix. Mr. McDiarmid's introduction and commentary are often helpful. Drawing on the work of previous editors and scholars, the notes usually strike a reasonable balance between historical and literary annotation. Unfortunately, his introduction and notes are often misleading on historical points and contain a disturbing number of errors. McDiarmid presents a useful biographical sketch, though he devotes too much space to an unconvincing argument for locating Barbour's origins in the southwest. It is one thing to say, as Professor Barrow has said, that Barbour "displays a reasonably wide knowledge of Highland topography." But it is quite another thing to claim that such details suggest Barbour originated in a particular zone-"between the Liddel and the Cart," McDiarmid speculates (i,4). McDiarmid believes that Barbour's infonnation about the Irish episodes was obtained in the west of Scotland and suspects that the poet's account of these episodes betrays a "local bias" (3). But there is no reason to assume that this bias was Barbour's own, rather than that of his infonnants. McDiarmid is also misleading about the exchequer scribes of the fifteenth century who "understood that it was as the author of the national epic" that Barbour had been awarded a perpetual annuity of ten pounds pro compi/acione libri gestis quondam Roberti de Brus. Surely the point that needs to be made is that this frequently repeated entry provides our only evidence connecting Barbour's literary activities with this or any other payment.

227 220 Book Reviews McDiannid also attempts to provide linguistic evidence for placing Barbour in the southwest, arguing that the poet's rhymes agree with the linguistically conservative southwest, though he admits there is little linguistic evidence for the region during this period. Indeed, many of the comments he makes on linguistic matters are open to question. He thinks the early history of Scots has been "strangely misrepresented" and disagrees with Murison's dating of the ascendancy of northern English over French to the years (16 n. 1). Yet how can McDiannid presume that '''Inglis' had achieved colloquial and literary (sic) ascendancy before the end of the thirteenth century" when not a single literary text survives to suggest this? He emphasizes the chronicle report that Margaret daughter of Alexander III taught English to her husband Eric of Norway, but a glance at the note reveals that the chronicler lists French (Gallicum) first. Scottish and English nobles of the later thirteenth century continued to make use of French, as the pleas entered in French during the Great Cause amply document. Murison's dating of the literary ascendancy of "Inglis" must surely be accepted; after all, he takes the composition of The Bruce as important evidence for that very process. McDiannid devotes a great deal of space to reopening the very old controversy concerning Barbour's canon. McDiannid's definitive discussion should put the older theories to rest once and for all. His discussion of the Scots Alexander translations puts forth some new and interesting suggestions; he also has interesting things to say about Walter Bower's complaint about Barbour's inaccuracy in his lost Stewarts' Original, which, as McDiannid shows, is the only other work we may safely attribute to Barbour. McDiannid has now retracted his earlier view that the Brute mentioned by Wyntoun was a separate work (see 34 n. 2). It should be noted, however, that The Wallace does not say that Barbour wrote "other verse than Bruce" as McDiarmid claims (17); the editor of The Wallace should have realized that the poem only speaks of Barbour's "othir werk" (XII, 1214). McDiannid continues to accept many traditional views of Scottish history that no longer deserve credence. He believes that the Declaration of Arbroath, for example, was "almost certainly" written by Abbot Bernard of Linton (38), while in his notes he takes this for granted. As Grant Simpson showed some years ago, there is no evidence that Bruce's chancellor Bernard is the author of the letter, though that is not impossible. Nor is there any evidence that the Declaration was "well known" in the fourteenth century as McDiannid claims (43 n. 7). It is thus unfortunate that McDiannid has repeated the older myths. McDiannid also shows an uncritical acceptance of Barbour's ideology of freedom. Ignoring Barbour's pervasive aristocratic ideology, McDiannid accepts the common belief in Barbour's "democratic element" (52 n. 15), and makes the too frequently repeated claim that serfdom "had been largely, if not wholly, disused in Scotland" by Barbour's time (68

228 Book Reviews 221 n ). My own investigations suggest that there is reason to suspect the continuing existence of neifs (hereditary serfs) into the fifteenth century. Finally, it will not do to claim that Barbour "denounces serfdom" (though we might wish that he had). While Barbour observes that the serf's condition is grievous, he never denounces the institution itself. It is thus especially unfortunate that the editors have chosen "fredome is a noble thing" as the poem's subtitle. Prospective users of the edition should also take note of the following list of errors (which is by no means exhaustive): 1. Surely the prologue to the last book of Wyntoun's chronicle is not by the "Anonymous" (12 n. 17). 2. Vita Edwardi, ed. N. Denholm-Young (London, 1957) notrs, 1883 (88). 3. The verses McDiarmid has Bower put in Bruce's mouth (51 n.3) are in Fordun, G.A. cxviii. In the same note, for "Fordun" read "Bower"; it was the latter who has Bruce learn from Wallace's words (see Scotichronicon ii, 175). 4. As Stones and Simpson show in their edition of the records of the Great Cause, there is no evidence that the Scots "invited" Edward I to arbitrate the case (67 n. I, 48-78). 5. McDiarmid (38,93) has misunderstood Jean Le Bel's unambiguous reference to an "hystoire faitte par Ie dit roy Robert." Mackenzie and Gransden have correctly understood the passage to mean that Robert Bruce had caused a narrative to be made about his deeds. As Gransden has recently suggested, the same work may have been used by Barbour. McDiarmid, influenced by Bower's worthless story (see Scotichronicon XIII, xvi-xvii) about Edward's herald Robert Ie Roy, has simply misread the earlier, more reliable evidence provided by Le Bel. 6. Lotario dei Segni (later Pope Innocent III), not Augustine, is the author of the passage from De Miseria Humane Condition is (also known as De Contemptu Mundi) which McDiarmid quotes (68 n. i, 49-74). 7. McDiarmid is frequently unfair to Barrow. On the date of the battle of Slioch, McDiarmid accuses Barrow of misreading Barbour's mention of Martinmas as "the precise day" (82 n. IX, ). What Barrow actually says is "just before Christmas." Likewise he is unfair at 84 n. IX, and ignores Barrow's point that Buittle Castle was almost within sight of the Dee, not the Cree. Again, McDiarmid is unfair at 88 n. XI, Barrow correctly translates the number of English cavalry at Bannockburn (3,100) according to verses which Bower attributes to Bernard abbot of Arbroath (Scotichronicon ii, 248). McDiarmid's 300,000 comes from a different passage (Scotichronicon ii, 254), which is not attributed to Bernard. 8. McDiarmid suggests a false verbal parallel between the Declaration of Arbroath and Bruce's speech which Bower attributes to Bernard. McDiarmid renders pro libertatis honore as "for the freedom that every

229 222 Book Reviews good man esteems an honour" (91 n. XII, ). He also oddly translates nobilitas as "wonhiest in the land." It would have been more helpful to provide the Latin text of Bruce's speech in the notes. In addition, I have noticed a great number of typographical errors in vol. i from which I select only a few: 36 n. 32 should read "and J. T. T. Brown"; 76 n. N, 38: for ar read AI, but if we should really understand "justice ayre" (not the town as the note suggests), why is the word capitalized in the main text? The glossary does not help here. At 77 n for "Vll, " read "VIT, " 100, n. XVI, : the correct year of the battle of Dunbar is n. XIX, : for "Proissan" read "Froissan"; 109, n. XX, : for "Vlerius Maximus" read "Valerius Maximus." In conclusion I should mention a few omissions: a map like the one which McDiarmid provided in his edition of The Wallace would have been very useful, as would a shon bibliography of the imponant secondary work on The Bruce. In his notes McDiarmid often addresses issues that have been elsewhere discussed. But it is distressing that McDiarmid once again fails to provide a list of the works he cites in his introduction and notes. Editing medieval texts is a thankless task. I am sorry that this edition does not replace Skeat or Mackenzie and cannot be relied on for accurate information. Surely Barbour, the father of Scottish literature, deserves better treatment. R. JAMES GoLDSTEIN Aichi University of Education, Japan Harvey Oxenhorn. Elemental Things: The Poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid. Edinburgh University Press x pp. This is the seventh book on MacDiarmid to appear this decade, a gratifying tribut to the work of one whom many judge to be Scotland's greatest poet. Written by an American primarily for Americans, this is an honest but uneven and disappointing study, largely because Oxenhorn's opinion of MacDiarmid is mixed and because he has some problems dealing with what other commentators agree to be the poet's greatest work, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. Oxenhorn is mostly sympathetic to MacDiarmid's need to use "the most natural, spontaneous vehicle of expression," i.e. Scots. To those who question the validity of a dialect under suspicion since the eighteenth century, Exenhorn replies, "Even in 1983 most lowland Scots understand many more of these words than they habitually employ." Copmposed in this idiom, the lyrics of Sangschaw and Penny Wheep "replace the fixed

230 Book Reviews 223 glass of Scottish [poetic] convention with a zoom lens of imagination, in whose perspective the data of quotidian life appear both more precarious and marvellous," Composed in this idiom, on the other hand, a long work like A Drunk Man becomes imprecise and forced, in Oxenhorn's view. Oxenhorn believes that MacDiarmid's chilhood is seminal to the success of much of his work, The early lyrics are largely effective because they are rooted in the kind memories of Langholm, and "however much Grieve's own thought subsequently changed, the emotions that underlay this childhood remained grounded in the rhythms and social relations of small town life. Much of his writing seeks, implicitly, to reconcile radical political and intellectual beliefs with a highly traditional, less alienated youth." Oxenhorn returns to this position later when criticizing MacDiarmid's political poetry in the 1930's, which "declaimed" rather than "moved" because it lacked sensory detail. His poems grounded in images of nature and nual Scotland are the most attracting; instead of a displaced (almost disembodied) poet, we hear a man speaking with a voice entirely his own. It may seem rod, after having considered so many complex issues, to arrive at so simple a dichotomy. Yet this is the sort of judgment that most existing MacDiarmid criticism shrinks from, and precisely what is needed to assess properly so complex a figure. The distinction has led us to dismiss certain poems on which MacDiarmid's popular reputation rests. Oxenhorn's book is less successful analyzing individual poems than in drawing generalizations about the strengths and weaknesses of the poet's work. Of the move to Whalsay, for example, he writes: First, and more obviously, it meant great physical isolation from other artists, from day-to-day political events in Scotland, and most of all from the lowland milieu in which his creative sources lay. The move induced a toning down of diction and palette; a shift in prevailing metaphors from water to stone; a turn from derivative metres and diction to more expansive, idiosyncratic verse whose long lines pile up like waves. Moreover. with no-one close at hand whom he could claim to represent, the masks which MacDiarmid had intermittently donned [especially in Drunk Man] were also less available. Henceforth he abandoned the lapsing in and out of "representative" roles for an unabashedly individual-and very lonely-voice. For Oxenhorn the major triumphs of this period are not the Hymns to Lenin but "On a Raised Beach," "Island Funeral," and most of all, "Harry Semen." For some critics the shift in prevailing metaphors is the most significant development in MacDiarmid's style after Cencrastus and the move off the mainland; to Oxenhorn the resolution of different poetic voices to one MacDiarmid felt comfortable with is more important. "In 'Island Funeral'... we find new readiness to have something 'interposed'--or rather, to concede that the sum of others' experience, embodied in ritual and tradition, might indeed express... the poet's own." In other words, once he moved to the island, MacDiarmid became less self-conscious about his role as the voice of political nationalism, less obsessed with telling us what his political and artistic intentions were, and

231 224 Book Reviews more capable of being inspired by the otherness of his immediate surroundings, as he was in the lyrics of the 1920's. Of all the studies of MacDiarmid since 1980, only Oxenhorn's devotes any attention to this poem, which this reviewer believes is one of MacDiarmid's finest pieces after The question of authentic voice is crucial to Oxenhorn's acceptance of MacDiarmid's later work and underlies his reservations about A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. Oxenhorn finds several similarities between the modem Scottish poet and Wordsworth-both in love with the long philosophical poem, both establishing their reputations early in linguistic ground-breaking, and both producing poetry uneven in quality. As I said before, one of the weaknesses of this study is, oddly, that it rarely declares what a poem is about; it is weak in the individual poetic analysis. Of "Harry Semen" he says, "One may more usefully approach the poem as one more expression in a long line of others of MacDiarmid's fascinations with necessity and probability, how spirit 'solidifies' to flesh-the relationship of what 'might have been' and what might be... Indeed, despite its paraphrasable content, we would be hard pressed, after fortytwo lines, to say what this poem is about." Thus a large collection of individual lyrics like Drunk Man seems beyond his grasp; the student cannot find many generalizations that satisfactorily sum up the essence of this otherwise brilliant work. Perhaps Oxenhorn is right when he says that Drunk Man suffers from too many uncertain voices, but that condition hasn't bothered all its admirers. There is no question that the work is challenging, but anyone turning to a study of MacDiarmid expects more than to read that "the first thousand lines in particular offer not a common denominator of meaning, but a sum of conflicting postures and perceptions, embodied in various styles... Most of the poems first thousand lines function chiefly as a somp of the sensuous imagination." Other books will prove more helpful. Gish and Boutelle attempt to block out the structure; Buthlay and Kerrigan are more interested in the abundance of its symbols and allusions. Bold attacks the poem with enthusiasm. One infers that Oxen hom did not want to attempt any approach others had tried but rather, admitting that the poem was difficult, tried to strike at the heart of the problem. His aim fell short. Additional help will come with Professor Buthlay's edition of the work for the Scottish Academic Press in Oxenhorn does not consider any poetry written after 1940, nor does he do much with the essays. Nevertheless there is something to admire in a book daring to assert that a great deal of MacDiarmid's work is simply unsuccessful, that challenges the superlatives typically associated with MacDiarmid's achievement. Toward the end Oxenhorn says, "For despite the greatness of individual poems, the career is dogged throughout by insecurity and bluster. As the last forty years in particular make clear, this poet could not sustain the integration of head and heart which his finest poems achieve. He could not resolve, in much of his own life, the

232 Book Reviews 225 contradictions in his culture." These statements seem rather unsympathetic in a study designed to promote the work of a fairly recent poet, but the book can also be read as a brave attempt to "shake down" and re-examine more objectively the work of one whom Scottish literature this century has so much to be grateful for. HENRY fulton Central Michigan University James Thomson. Liberty, The Castle of Indolence and Other Poems. Ed. James Sambrook. Oxford: Clarendon Press x pp. For 250 years now, James Thomson's poems have appeared perennially in print. Not only the popular Seasons, but also well-known works such as The Castle of Indolence, Liberty, Britannia, A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, as well as various minor verses, and even the Scottish-bred juvenile poems, have been handed down-and frequently mishandled in the process-by generations of Thomson editors. Some of these editors, like the poet's friend George Lyttelton, were wellmeaning but misguided "improvers" of the poetry; others merely misunderstood or carelessly misrepresented the Anglo-Scot Thomson, his poetic practices, his particular language and style. In 1981 James Sambrook's bravely executed critical edition of The Seasons righted innumerable editorial wrongs, to reveal the true beauties of that great poem. Now, his masterful second volume, Liberty, The Castle of Indolence and Other Poems, fulfills his commitment to high-quality textual scholarship, making even more of the poetry of James Thomson accessible to scholar and general reader alike. Sambrook, confronted with the textual complexities of Thomson's prolific poetry, seems steadily guided by a simple principle: he conscientiously and consistently attempts to understand the way Thomson's mind worked, and to carry out with integrity the poet's intentions as fully as possible. Here, in this comprehensive edition, all of Thomson's poems are brought together at last, to be enjoyed as their author would have wanted them to be. An editing job on this scale (five long poems, and over fifty shorter ones) involves countless editorial decisions, and Sambrook's decisions are almost always defensible, and lucidly and rationally defended in his Introductions to each section of the volume. Many such editorial choices come down to "judgment calls," and Sambrook's informed judgment is admirable. In his efficient and workable system of textual apparatus which accompanies each poem, he sorts out the textual tangle concisely and clearly, citing substantive and accidental variants from important early editions (primarily, the editions from Thomson' s lifetime), and

233 226 Book Reviews occasionally, where insignificant or editorially interesting substantive variants occur, referring also to later editions, such as Patrick Murdoch's important Works of He silently corrects obvious printer's errors as well. The numerous variants introduced as "improvements" by Lyttelton (1750, 1757), which unfortunately slipped into many subsequent editions, are put in their place, Appendix B of the volume. This edition of Liberty, The Castle of Indolence and Other Poems represents the first complete collection of "annotated critical texts of all Thomson's other [besides The Seasons] poetical works except the dramas... " (p. v). In a brief Preface, Sambrook outlines the structure of the volume. First, there are the five longer poems, in chronological order of composition: A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton (1727), Britannia, A Poem (1729), Uberty, A Poem (1735-6), A Poem to the Memory of the Right Honourable the Lord Talbot (1737), and The Castle of Indolence, An Allegorical Poem (1748), each with its own full textual history and critical introduction. These are followed by two major groups of shorter poems, the "Juvenilia" and the "Miscellaneous Poems," each group prefixed with a general textual introduction. Three appendices follow: Appendix A includes "Poems of uncertain authorship" previously attributed to Thomson; Appendix B gives "Substantive variants in Lyttelton's editions, 1750, 1757"; Appendix C describes three "Poems wrongly attributed to Thomson." After the texts of the poems comes the fascinating "Commentary" that Sambrook (as in his Seasons edition) does so well. These lively and leamed notes make good reading in themselves, telling the reader not only the details about the individual poems (sources, analogues, background information), but also a great deal about the poet Thomson himself, his life and times. Sambrook's notes provide a concise compendium of the best in Thomson scholarship, as well as a clear-eyed perspective on the poet's contemporary culture. Overall, the volume's clear and compact structure proves satisfying and workable. Sambrook makes no special attempt to place Thomson in a specifically "Scottish" setting, or to discover Scottish sources, references or literary and linguistic parallels, but after all, this was not his task. His significant contribution to Scottish studies here is the new edition of the Juvenilia-the first complete, critical and really reliable edition ever. He has drawn the juvenile poems (all written in Scotland) from the so-called Newberry MS, the earliest Thomson holograph (compiled ca ), and from the collection The Edinburgh Miscellany (1720), where the poet's first published verses appeared. Sambrook's job was made very difficult by the fact that the Newberry MS had been badly damaged even as early as 1819, when The Earl of Buchan described "'the antient mice's invasion'" of the torn and nibbled MS (p. 226). Furthermore, the MS itself has been missing from the Newberry Library since Thus Sambrook has had to work from a not-very-iegible photographic reproduction of the original MS. He has nonetheless succeeded in recreating a straightforward transcription of the MS poems, with care and concern for accuracy,

234 Book Reviews 227 indicating lacunae with periods, and wisely refraining from editorial conjecture to fill in the gaps. In his commentary to this section, he has sympathetically recorded several Scottish rhymes (e.g. "thee/die," in "Psalm 104 Paraphrazed" [I. 99]), and has glossed Scotticisms and local terms where they occur. Sambrook offers two theories for the provenance of the Newberry MS. It was long thought that the holograph was presented to Lord George Graham, son of the Duke of Montrose, either by Thomson or by his friend David Mallet (who was tutor to the young Lord) in the mid-1720's, and that the MS remained in the Graham family until the early nineteenth century when it was purchased by bookseller and editor William Goodhugh. Thereafter, the MS passed through several hands until it arrived at the Newberry Library in Sambrook, however, seems to prefer another and more interesting history, recounted by Lord Buchan. He believes that Thomson may have given the MS to Mallet at a very early date, possibly while Mallet and Thomson were students at Edinburgh University, and that Mallet kept possession of the MS until his death in 1765, when it passed to the Grahams. The juvenile poems are a surprisingly diverse group. Though they are mostly "gauche and schoolboyish pieces" (p. 228), they afford an intriguing glimpse of the apprentice-poet in Scotland. Some of the poems were probably written in the Borders when Thomson was quite young, and are aimed at a Border audience-" A Poetical Epistle to Sir William Bennet of Grubbat Baronet" and "Upon MarIe-feild," (Bennet's estate), and the curious Scots mock-elegy "An Elegy upon James Therbum in Chatto." Others were written while he was a student in Edinburgh-the mock-heroic "A Description of ten a-clock of night in the town," portraying the venerable Edinburgh custom of gardy-ioo, and various religious and pastoral verses such as "A Pastoral betwixt Thirsis and Corydon upon the death of Damon by whom is [meant] mr: william riddell." Still oothers reflect the urbane influence of Allan Ramsay, and particularly Ramsay's poems published in 1718-Thomson's "Upon Beauty" and "Upon the Hoop" were influenced by Tartana. The three relatively more polished poems printed in The Edinburgh Miscellany were "Verses on receiving a Flower from his Mistress," "Upon Happiness" (an ambitious Neoplatonic allegory possibly influenced by Ramsay's Content), and "Of a Country Life, By a Student in the University," the only one of these juvenilia which does not appear in the Newberry MS, and which is especially revealing as it anticipates Thomson's masterpiece The Seasons in many points of theme, descriptive detail and language. The Edinburgh Miscellany itself is an interesting collection; its advertised purpose was to publicize the efforts of aspiring young Anglo-Scottish poets such as Thomson and fellow-contributor Mallet. Two poems which previous editors have conventionally included among Thomson's juvenilia, Sambrook elects to move to "Miscellaneous

235 228 Book Reviews Poems," for good reasons. "Lisy's parting with her cat" is a clever mockepic describing an incident from the poet's boyhood ("Lisy" is his sister Elizabeth), but apparently polished and transcribed at a later date. The religious-philosophical "The Works and Wonders of Almighty Power" was first printed anonymously in Aaron Hill's Plain Dealer (1724), as by a young member of the Grotesque Club, an Edinburgh literary society to which Thomson and Mallet belonged. While internal evidence suggests that Thomson was indeed the author, attribution has not been verified, and in any case the verse was probably written or improved somewhat later than the other juvenile poems. The fifty "Miscellaneous Poems" (thirty of which have appeared in earlier collections of Thomson's poetry) were gathered from several sources: Thomson holograph MSS; transcriptions and attributions by the Countess of Hertford or James Spence; texts printed during Thomson's lifetime and not disclaimed by him; and texts printed in Lyttelton's 1750 edition and reprinted in Murdoch's Works. So Sambrook has added to and stabilized the canon of Thomson's shorter verses. He has used the earliest available copy-text for each poem, and has arranged them in "approximate chronological order." The "Miscellaneous Poems" comprise occasional verses, eulogies and elegies, religious verses, odes and songs including the heartfelt love-songs he wrote for his unrequited love, Scotswoman Elizabeth Young, in the 1740's, set to music by James Oswald. With characteristic wit and wisdom, the editor's commentary makes even minor verses, not very interesting in themselves, more appealing in the context of Thomson's world-his social and literary relations--where Sambrook is so much at home. Of the longer poems in the volume, Newton is particularly noteworthy in its historical associations with Edinburgh University, which Sambrook acknowledges. Edinburgh University was a very early center for the study of Newtonian science, and there Thomson was inspired with a knowledge and wonder he would never lose. Newton is also a lovely poem in itself and a pleasure to read here, as it illuminates the poet's skillful blending (as seen in The Seasons) of science with accurate and beautiful visual description and deep religious feeling. Britannia is important as Thomson's statement of opposition Whig indignation coupled with pro British patriotism, looking forward to Liberty. The elegy for Talbot pays tribute to Thomson's friend and generous patron, Baron Talbot of Hensol, whose son the poet accompanied on the Grand Tour in the 1730s. Liberty (1735-6), that vast poem of "historical review and visionary prospect" (p. 31), was last published in a major edition as part of J. Logie Robertson's James Thomson: Poetical Works (1908), an edition which Sambrook rightly characterizes as "incomplete and defective" (p. v) and which has been the standard Thomson text this century. A worthy poem in its moral, socio-political and patriotic motives and neoclassical ambitions, Liberty was unfortunately not very likeable as poetry, and has never

236 Book Reviews 229 inspired much editorial enthusiasm. A.D. McKillop did a scholarly study, The Background of Thomson's Liberty, but did not attempt a critical edition of the poem. Now, Sambrook presents us with the only critical text to date. There are anomalies-why, for instance, did Sambrook decide to use mixed copy-texts for this poem in parts-the Works, 1738, for Parts I and II, and the first editions, 1735 and 1736, for Parts III, IV and V? His justification seems reasonable enough (fhomson himself extensively revised Parts I and II for the 1738 Works), but this non-standard procedure is still somewhat surprising. Nonetheless, Sambrook abides by his first principle, as he attempts to reassert the editorial authority of the poet. There are occasional misprints (such as the description of the "mainly Race" instead of "manly Race," of Swedes, IV.372). Still, for overall accuracy in respect of both substantives and accidentals (and Thomson genuinely cared about his accidentals) Sambrook's edition is a tremendous improvement over Robertson's. The editor's Introduction to Liberty also provides an informative summary of the complicated political background to the poem. For The Castle of Indolence, Sambrook's editorial task was made easier by McKillop's excellent critical edition of 1961 which also included Newton and Britannia, in addition to the Hymn on Solitude and the song Rule, Britannia. Sambrook's brief but penetrating Introduction sensitively discusses the importance of the personal experience of the "indolent Bard" Thomson in the making of this moral and religious allegory. One wishes that Sambrook had had space to explore the Scottish subjective experience (and especially, the Scottish Calvinistic religious experience) of the poet, which is particularly relevant here. Both Sambrook and McKillop took the second edition (September, 1748) of The Castle as their copy-text; though this edition was published a month after Thomson's death, it is considered almost certainly to be authoritative. However, both editors had recourse to the first edition (May, 1748) in a few instances. One editorial difference worth noting occurs in Canto I, S1. LIX, 1.9, where Sambrook uses the second edition ("Ten thousand great Ideas fill'd his Mind;/ But with the Clouds they fled, and left no Trace behind"), but McKillop drew from the first edition ("...left no Tract behind"). Does the use of the word "Tract," meaning, in obsolete usage, a track or path or perhaps a feature, or trait represent a Scotticism in the first edition, emended and anglicized by the poet, the printer or Lyttelton for the second edition? Again, there are misprints (such as in Canto I, St. XI, I. 9, where Sambrook gives "Streams, with Blood and Rivers ran" rather than "Blood the Rivers ran," second edition, 1748), but these are extremely rare in this very readable edition of the delightful Castle. James Sambrook's edition of Liberty, The Castle of Indolence and Other Poems isn't perfect, but it comes remarkably close. It is a very fine work indeed, and a much-appreciated major contribution to Thomson

237 230 Book Reviews studies. One might voice only two' disappointments, neither of which is any reflection on the editor. The ftrst is that the volume is so expensive; yet it is well-produced, and to Thomson scholars, priceless. The second (which, one trusts, will someday soon be remedied) is that Thomson's dramas were outside the scope of Sambrook's edition. A critical edition of the plays is sorely needed, and although Sambrook himself does not plan to take on that formidable task, he expresses hope that the plays "will appear in a third volume, edited by another" (p. v). James Sambrook's two volumes of James Thomson's poetry will be the standard texts of this important Anglo-Scottish poet for a long time to come. MARY JANE SCOTI Columbia, South Carolina The Complete Works of Robert Burns. Ed. with Introd. by James A. Mackay. Alloway: Alloway Publishing pp. The Offtcial Bicentenary Edition; authorized by the Burns Federation. The phenomenon of Robert Burns's popularity continues to astonish even those of us who have spent much of our lives under his giant shadow. No wonder some of Scotland's most important twentieth-century poets (Hugh MacDiarmid and Tom Scott, to name but two) have cried "Enough!" Not, I am sure they would admit, because they thought the less of Burns, but because they feared that Scottish poetry was in danger of becoming identifted in the popular mind with only the one writer. MacDiarmid at least is having a sort of revenge, for we now ftnd his poems as the obligatory "representative" of Scottish twentieth-century dialect poetry in many collections. I see no evidence that Scottish literature is becoming a one-poet study; if anything I should hope that through Burns readers are led to enjoy both his antecedents and his successors. The present volume is a case in point about the sustained interest in Burns. The Bicentenary Edition was ftrst published in a Subscribers' Edition of 2000 copies, at a pretty hefty price, and was completely sold out long before its publication. This Souvenir Edition of the text is available, at a quite modest price, to those who do not have the Subscribers' Edition. Nor is this edition of Burns alone in the fteld-at any time in the past several decades there have always been at least a halfdozen editions of the poet's works for the reader to chose from. The Editor of this collection, James A. Mackay, brings impeccable credentials to the job. He is, among other things, Editor of the Burns Chronicle, and lives in the city of Dumfries where Burns spent the last years of his life. Mackay's arrangement of the poems and songs follows a

238 Book Reviews 231 chronological sequence. Given that about half of Burns's output was published by his editors James Johnson and George Thomson, and that the poet did not have control over the sequence in which individual works were printed, Mackay's arrangement gets him (and us) away from trying to second-guess the order in which the poet would have liked to see his works appear. It is also useful for the student to be able to trace how Burns's writing changed over the years, from very heavily weighted towards poems in the period to his second edition (1787) to mostly songs in the 1790's. His verse epistles were almost all written before he left Ayrshire for Edinburgh. We note a change in his song-writing, too, when he began working with Thomson in September A good feature of this edition is the glossing in the margins beside the text. I have always found glossaries separated from the text to be annoying to use, distracting the reader from following the flow of the poem. When I looked up one of the most famous of Burns's dialect words, skinking, in "To a Haggis," I found only one meaning "watery" in this edition, whereas Burns (who compiled his own glossary) for some reason did not gloss the word at all. One dictionary I consulted may have come closer to Burns's meaning with "thin, liquid, tasteless, weak and watery." An interesting study could be made of the changes in glossary definitions of dialect words to be found in Burns, starting with Burns's own definitions, which, incidentally, differed substantially between his editions of 1786 and The eight-page chronology will be found useful for situating the poet at various times. A seventeen-page Introduction eloquently sets Burns in his time and, I was pleased to note, addresses two of the things for which the poet has been unjustly censured over the years: his "adventures of the amatory kind" as Mackay calls them, and his drinking. Certainly Burns sired illegitimate children and at times drank too much; there is ample evidence that he was neither a lecher nor a drunkard. Mackay also reminds us that in Burns we are dealing with a genius, quoting John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, "I have been in the company of many men of genius, some of them poets, but never witnessed such flashes of intellectual brightness as from him, the impulse of the moment, sparks of celestial fire." The text used by Mr. Mackay is based on the definitive edition of the poems and songs established by James Kinsley (3 vols. Oxford, 1968). This was a choice by Mackay with which there can be no quarrel, although I must add that the edition edited by Henley and Henderson (4 vols ) is still very useful as a supplement to Kinsley. Establishing a text always, finally, falls on the editor, particularly, as in this case, if variant readings are not included. We cannot usually be certain of authorial intent, so that the decision of which of two or more alternate readings best serves the author is one of literary taste. I mention this because there are readings in Kinsley which do not follow the earliest printing: a good example of this is to be found in "The Holy Fair" where

239 232 Book Reviews in stanza 12 Burns's 1787 version ("tidings 0' damnation") is preferred to that of 1786 ("tidings 0' salvation"), and rightly so. Mackay has also preferred this reading, going, in fact, a step further in rendering Burns's "d-rnn-t--n" as the complete "damnation." If Kinsley had remained completely true to his stated method he would have given us the much less castigating "salvation." There are no hitherto unpublished poems in this collection, although there is evidence that some of Burns's poems have not yet come to light. We do have the so-called Merry Muses poems however, and it is refreshing to have the Burns Federation officially admitting that Burns wrote erotic verse. Some of what he produced in this sub-genre was pretty good (most of the good stuff is humorous). Now with all of what Burns is known to have written available in a scholarly and relatively inexpensive edition, scholars and readers can get down to assessing what a tremendous contribution Burns made to the poetry and songs of the world. G.R.R. Robert Keith Miller, Carlyle's 'Life of John Sterling': A Study in Victorian Biography. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press pp. What Dr. Miller has tried to do here is to focus on two neglected areas of nineteenth-century study: Carlyle'S attitude to biography (indeed substantial aspects of Carlyle's art of writing), and Carlyle's Life of John Sterling (1851), a work often anthologized in selection for its superlative portrait of Coleridge on Highgate Hill (as Carlyle remembered Coleridge from his own early meetings with him in 1824, an intense disappointment for which he never forgave the aging Coleridge) but rarely read in toto. Normally the Life of Sterling is given passing mention in a broad sweep through Carlyle's life and works, an aberration really, quiet, domestic, affectionate: the work of a man who was on holiday from more serious or acerbic duty, paying tribute to a dead friend. By focussing entirely on this book, Dr. Miller achieves the odd effect of putting into the shade those aspects of Carlyle most in public notice-the controversialist, the social philosopher, the historian, the prophet of woe-and concentrating on the "seeing eye," the extraordinary literary devices by which this biography was shaped in the conception and in the writing. That this is an eccentric production is never in question: Carlyle produced his effects by a series of stylistic devices well honed from the success of The French Revolution, of Chartism, Heroes, Past and Present: to be told he "hurries over material upon which he does not wish to dwell," that he "reaches outside his narrative to make connections with other events" (p.62) is to see the material of the familiar work bent to this unfamiliar task, the writing of a

240 Book Reviews 233 book on someone Carlyle loved wholeheartedly despite vast differences of background, and even vaster differences of religious attitude: Dr. Miller's analysis seems a most satisfactory one when he suggests that It is quite possible that the way in which Carlyle uses editorial intrusions and other stylistic devices to undercut the narrative of this, his most personal work. reflects an inability to reveal affection for any length of time. Embarrassed by the intimacy of his revelations, Carlyle halfheartedly tries to poke fun at them. This is a book about a very personal piece of writing, and in its narrow focus it does succeed in revealing personal traits of Carlyle, in amplifying the pioneer criticism of those like Carlisle Moore who have sought to look at the quirks of Carlyle's writings not as blemish but as style. If "Biography is a creative experience both to read and to write" (p. 11) then the nuances of attitude to biography (analyzed early in the book) and the unexpected insights into Carlyle's attitude to Sterling (the later chapters) show a dialogue at work between Carlyle and his subject matter which the reader, vigilantly, can indeed read creatively. For Dr. Miller, the relationship with Sterling is one Carlyle had to "recreate and justify... for himself' (p. 39) and the chief value of the Life "is that it reveals of Carlyle and his thought" (p. 78). To that end the extraordinary narrow focus of this book is well justified: it is a shame that a book published in 1987 should not make use of (nor, according to the bibliography, have access to) the volumes of the Duke-Edinburgh edition of the Carlyle Letters, published in 1985, and (covering the years ) rich in material for the student of the Carlyle-Sterling relationship. While the last word on the relation and on the stylistic devices displayed sorichly in the Life may yet be unwritten, Dr. Miller's book is a real advance. As the Collected Letters continue (the volumes for are appearing in Summer 1987 as these words are written) the relationship between Carlyle and his subject becomes richer and more fully documented, and the endlessly fascinating enigma of Carlyle, to say nothing of his Works, becomes a little less obscure. IAN CAMPBELL University of Edinburgh John Walker, ed. The North American Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press x pp. RB. Cunninghame Graham ( ), like W.H. Hudson ( ), is usually identified as a writer of English who lived in Argentina. Hudson, born in Argentina of North American parents, spent only his early years in South America and then settled in England, becoming a British subject On the other hand, Graham, though London-born, grew up in the Menteith region of Scotland. He is best known for his stories and

241 234 Book Reviews sketches from his wanderings through Spain, North Africa, and South America. At the age of eighty-three Graham made a return pilgrimage to the country where he spent youthful, happy years, and died in Buenos Aires. The North American sketches presented here fill in another part of Graham's actual and literary life. Recent interest in Graham has developed in both Spanish and English. A biography by Alicia Jurado, Borges' acquaintance in Buenos Aires, appeared in Two scholars devoted to Graham's works, Cedric Watts and Laurence Davies, produced a critical biography in But the leader in bringing to light neglected writings by Graham has been John Walker, a professor of Spanish at Queen's University, Ontario, Canada. Walker edited in 1978 The South American Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham, in 1982 The Scottish Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham, (reviewed in SSL, XIX), and now The North American Sketches of R.B. Cunninghame Graham. He predicts editing of the Spanish and North African pieces. The essays contained in this slim volume reflect the activities of the years , a period after Graham's return to Europe from his sojourn in South America. This brief time in the Southwest of the United States, Texas, and Mexico has left little factual information; the biography by Watts and Davies, for example, offers only six pages for these two years. The brevity of the stay belies the impact of the experience, for stories, letters, and descriptions in this collection date from the 1890's until shortly before Graham's death. On a personal level these years were important. In 1878 in Paris Graham met the French-Chilean Garielle de la Balmondiere and, against the wishes of his family, married her that same year in London. Like so many Europeans entranced with the hope for riches in the cattle business in Texas (British and Scottish bankers invested heavily in Texas ranching after the American Civil War), the young couple ventured where reasonably Don Roberto's experience as a gaucho should have prepared him. From their arrival in New Orleans in May of 1879 through their moves into the Texas towns of Brownsville, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio, their two-month cotton-selling attempt as far south as Mexico City, and their return to San Antonio, they gained knowledge-but no money. Graham even went west to New Mexico and Arizona. By April 1881 the Grahams were on their way out of San Antonio en route to Spain where they would spend most of the next two years. Walker assembled sketches, which usually had appeared first in periodicals, then later in revised form as parts of books, to place the topics in rough chronological sequence. Because of the amount of detail provided by Gabrielle's ''The Waggon-Train" (pp ) for the trip to Mexico City, Walker included this single work not from Graham's own hand. Walker claims that the order throughout the book shows the development of Graham's prose style.

242 Book Reviews 235 The writings begin with three letters on the Indian vs. white issue. In the late 1880's and early 1890's Graham took strong political and social positions that in a later generation caused the leftist and Scottish nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve) to admire him. Racial bigotry, capitalism, and man's inhumanity to man disturbed Graham when he encountered the Southwest United States; he early took a philosophical view toward society, asserting, "That the whole Indian question (like the question of the unemployed in London) is a most difficult and piteous one no one will deny" (p. 31). Graham's strengths, not only in this collection but also in his Scottish Sketches, lie in sharp character delineations and in brief narratives. The fate of the Mexican tried under Texas law for the murder of an Anglo shows in "Un Pelado," which treats an event in a small town south of San Antonio, Encinal. A vignette of a happier sort is "A Chihuahuefio," about a native of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, who, in this case, had migrated to San Antonio and traded his vocation of Indian fighter for the life of a guitar-player and story-teller. A story ironically entitled "Progress" retells the events from the Mexican novelist Heriberto Frias's Tomochic. It deals with the refusal of persons in an obscure town, Tomochic, in the state of Chihuahua, to pay taxes to the Mexican government headed by the "Imperial President," Porftrio Diaz. The leader of the insurrection, who, along with his followers, is killed, "preached a strange religion full of mysticism and sanctity of life unknown to clergymen, mixed with wild ideas of communism unfit for the conversing of good business men" (p. 69). The description of the Grahams' return to San Antonio after their illstarred attempt to make money through selling cotton in Mexico City is the basis for "A Hegira." It complements Gabrielle's "The Waggon Train," but though she gives details about such structures as the Bishop's Palace in Monterrey, churches in San Luis Potosi, flowers, and inhabitants, he focuses on six Mescalero Apache Indians who, having escaped from a Mexican prison, were trying to sneak back to Texas. As so often with his recounting of events, he philosophizes: "I checked my horse, and began moralizing on all kinds of things; upon tenacity of purpose, the futility of life, and the inexorable fate which mocks mankind, making all effort useless, whilst still urging us to strive" (p. 103). The best story in the collection is "Hope," which deals, not with the Mexicans or Indians who fascinated Graham, but with another ethnic group, the Germans. Many of these had come to Texas seeking land and peace away from the disturbances of, say, 1848 in Europe. An old couple west of San Antonio on their ranch on Christmas Even reminisce about their struggles, sorrows and achievements in this rugged region. Graham shows his versatility in portraying these simple people who still dominate the culture in such Texas communities as Fredericksburg and Comfort.

243 236 Book Reviews Rounding out the collection are several small pieces. One served as the preface to what Graham in 1916 envisaged as his final book, but it recalled a scene from forty years before-an example of his skill in reconstructing a long-ago scene through words. "Long Wolf' describes the grave in London of a member of Buffalo Bill Cody's cowboys-and Indians show. "A Hundred in the Shade" is, according to Walker, Graham's "North American swan song," for it is the last sketch inspired by the Grahams' stay in North America. It gives a story with the bromide of the good-hearted prostitute told, as Graham often selected, by a rough person within a primitive group of story-tellers. Lastly, Walker excerpted the North American portions Graham gave in book length on Aime F. Tschiffely's horseback ride from Buenos Aires to New York City. The ride, which took three years, began in The love of adventure combined with the respect for a good horseman and horse drew Graham to Tschiffely. Though at the time of the ride neither man knew the other, they later became friends and Tschiffely would write a laudatory biography of Graham. Walker provides a glossary of names (for example, Kickapoos) and terms (alcalde, tequila) and a bibliography of works by Graham together with a list of the major studies on him and his works. A bibliography of studies on Graham in the Southwest is given as well as a bibliography of bibliographies. Walker has carefully and lovingly fashioned another portion of Graham's writings. His general introduction offers selections from letters and other sources for understanding the sketches. Each selection is preceded by a brief preface and followed by detailed notes. Walker's proficiency in Spanish as well as his own background in Scotland aid him in comprehending the language and thought of Graham. Graham was a notorious scribbler and a poor speller. Walker's question mark after "drouth" (p. 15) is not necessary when one discovers that in Texas the word "drought" is often replaced by "drouth" and both words are pronounced as they are spelled. That Graham recorded "drouth" reveals his careful attention to the language he heard. ROBERT G. COLLMER Baylor University L.L. Bongie. The Love of a Prince: Bonnie Prince Charlie in France Vancouver, British Columbia: University of British Columbia Press pp. This is an academic work on what may initially seem to the reader to be a rather slender subject. However, as one progresses through this lucid

244 Book Reviews 237 and readable book, an interesting portrayal emerges of the turning point of the life of Prince Charles Edward. The first part of the book is taken up with the doings of the family of Charles Edward's young cousin Louise, daughter of the Duke of Bouillon and granddaughter of Prince James Sobieski. The Duke and his wife, Marie Charlotte, did not get along, and she went for a protracted visit to Prince James, her father, in Poland, hoping for fmancial support to clear the Bouillon debts. This amounted to a separation from her husband, to his relief. The Duke's odious agent M. de Bacqueville accompanied her on this hazardous expedition, Poland being in a state of war at the time. He did all he could to undermine the unfortunate Marie Charlotte, who was Charles Edward's aunt, with the Duke and with Prince James. Louise, still a child, was sent for by her mother and much was done in an attempt to marry her off into the Polish nobility. However, at last nothing came of this. Louise returned to France, and the aged Prince James died shortly after, soon to be followed by the tubercular Marie Charlotte. Up to this point the narrative is somewhat tedious (throughout the book the reader is hampered by substantial quotations in French, without translations). However, with the advent on the scene of Charles Edward, the story begins to take fire. L.L. Bongie does not deal at all with the Prince's childhood as he has with Louise's, presumably because it is too well known. Nor does he discuss in detail the famous and fateful expedition of What is most interesting is the author's profoundly researched account of the personal tragedy of the Prince. He rightly seems to think that the military tragedy has been well and many times described. The reprehensible conduct of the Prince and his twenty-two year old married cousin Louise, now Princess of Rohan, is treated with much gentleness in this book, though Louise comes out of it better than Charles Edward. The author claims that the affair was the last moment of innocence in what was to become the Prince's life of debauch, alcoholism and contempt for others and himself. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that he was breaking a solemn vow of chastity with the wife of a friend, and a subordinate friend at that, for Jules, Prince of Rohan, was a military colleague. Moreover, one has to take into account the breach of trust with the Bouillon family themselves, who had greatly helped him in the past. So this story is particularly interesting in that it marks at the inception of the affair Charles Edward's falling off in terms of generosity, honor and purpose, all qualities he had shown most admirably during the' 45 Rising. It has been said that it would have been better for him to have died at Culloden as he wished. Perhaps his moral decay began with that trauma. Certainly his behavior when on the run thereafter was, and is to this day, a most inspiring story. Nevertheless, it was while on the run that he developed a taste for alcoholic excess, not, I think, as L.L. Bongie states,

245 238 Book Reviews for whisky and brandy, but for brandy alone at this time, interestingly enough, in a country like Scotland where it had to be imported. I have described elsewhere the going to pieces of the man as a result of his alcoholism, which must have been incipient at the time he and Louise began their love affair. This time was marked by short temper and bitterness on the part of Charles Edward, characteristics the events and ending of the relationship can have done little to improve. But it remains the addiction to the bottle which ruined the man. It is utterly inadequate to apportion blame for conduct, reprehensible in appearance though it may be, that was distorted by such an illness as Charles Edward's condition was rapidly to become. There was much good that he could have done for others as a Catholic, a soldier and a focus for his followers. Liquor made that impossible and has to be admitted to have been in the end the real love of his life. One can only assume that Bongie does not deal in detail with this overpowering passion of the Prince for strong drink because he regards it as something that came later. However, the tendency was certainly there then and is likely to have been present in his relations with Louise de Rohan. It is not possible to say from this book to what extent this energetic and admirable young man was affected in this way at that time. However, Charles Edward's idiotic hectoring of the French government, his guilt which prevented his reunion with his father, and his entering into a treacherous adultery with Louise ought to perhaps be better seen as the afflicted behavior of a man beginning to be doomed with a crippling ailment. This, I believe, is the only way in which the lamentable decay of the man in later years can fairly be described. That is to say that what is visible in all the acrimony, the patheic wife-beating, the jealousy and the rest, are symptoms of the disease, rather than true traits of character. The Prince of the '45, courageous, chaste and magnanimous must remain our picture of the real man, a man that would have made an admirable de facto king. In his later life we are seeing the disease, not the person. The sheer lack of compassion with which the Prince's later life has been so often treated, in his lifetime and ever since, is little short of appalling. However, L.L. Bongie does not fall into this censorious trap. His account has every appearance of fairness, for all that he hardly mentions drink, and not at all in connection with Louise de Rohan. In this book Charles Edward emerges rather opaquely, if as an awkward customer. But then the book is really more about Louise and her family. For the former the author plainly has a soft spot. The poor girl had been hawked around the marriage markets of Poland and France. She had finally had to make a dynastic and probably loveless match with Jules, Prince de Rohan, who at least was young. They had talked of her marrying, while still a child, the Polish Petit General, who was nearly 50. Treated like a live pawn, she had been alienated from her mother at an

246 Book Reviews 239 early age, and probably did not mourn her death which occurred when Louise was still young. Nowadays she would be called a disadvantaged child, at risk. From her portrait she is certainly pretty, though not beautiful These facts go far to explain her neurotic and wayward behavior. Of her letters to Charles Edward, only two really celebrate their love. All the rest show emotional dependence, immaturity and irresponsible possessiveness, to say nothing of suicide threats. The fact that she was carrying his child at the time makes these hysterical outbursts more deplorable. Neither of them behaved well. Perhaps the only person who did was her father, who broke it up, but very gently. Of course, Louise's subsequent faithful domestic life does speak for her. But she must have become a serious incubus to Charles Edward at the time of the affair. Because she destroyed his letters at his request, it is not possible to know his side of the story. However, it was a terrible mistake for the hero of the '45, who could have been beloved by many women who were free, to get involved with this demanding child. Moreover the fact of her marriage to Jules de Rohan meant that Charles Edward had to forfeit the paternity of his only son. I don't think his first exploit into the field oflove can have been rewarding or finally satisfying, but rather clandestine, anxious and swamping. They harmed each other and must have had the guilt of knowing it. Louise was the one that had to have the baby, but Charles Edward lost out too. Fleeing from the persecuting arms of his first love, he took up with the Princess de Talmont, who was little better than an aristocratic demimondaine. The scene for his rapid moral decline was already set, and it began with Louise. So if the youthful Princess of Rohan had much to answer for, so had Charles Edward in taking her up and siring a child he could not father, to say nothing of letting down his uncle's family. Nevertheless, this book does not, and rightly so, shatter the Prince Charlie legend. For he too comes out of the story as ridiculously immature and inexperienced, to say nothing of damaged by the bloodbath he had witnessed and caused in Scotland. He was also a young man inextricably caught up in his conception of his own royalty, a Stewart vice, after all. Perhaps the real tragedy, unspoken in this book, is that he and Louise did not fall in love before her marriage, because for a time at least they certainly appear to have adored each other. The author supplies a comprehensive background to the story of Charles and Louise, complete with many letters in the text. In fact the actual love story takes up only a relatively short space. As an account of aristocratic life in 18th-century Poland and pre-revolutionary France, the book is invaluable. It demonstrates, for example, how far removed from ordinary everyday life French nobles like the Duc of Bouillon had become, intent as they were on agrandizing their estates, field sports, selfglorifying wars, endless protocol and, with the subject of much of this

247 240 Book Reviews book, heartless dynastic marriages of a kind that went out in Scotland at the beginning of the 16th century. That these nobles could be kindly family men as were Bouillon and his son-in-law, Jules, in no way brought them nearer the common man, and this, as we know, was their downfall at the end. Charles Edward himself was so pre-occupied with his own hereditary importance and status that he antagonized even the friendly Louis XV and provoked his own imprisonment and unseemly ejection from France. This episode is here dealt with in detail. The incredible folly of quarrelling with the most powerful monarch in the western world is painful to observe. It is also a further indication that the hero was alcoholically deluded. The story of Charles Edward's incarceration in the donjon of Vincennes, his subsequent humiliating expulsion from the country, sick with anger as he was, and fmally his going to A vignon thereby breaking his word to Louis, a thing he would never have done earlier, honorable as he was, make truly sorry reading. It is because this book is so well written and well researched that the subject is so poignant and, in the end, so depressing. For it is, in part, at least the story of a strong man beginning to go to decay, assailed by misfortune from without and alcoholic disease, then untreatable, from within. That the author does not give enough reasons for the Prince's moral collapse is a fault in the work. However, L.L. Bongie's otherwise psychologically satisfying treatment of the persona is a rarity in a study of academic history. The labor that has gone into the research and writing of For the Love of a Prince must have been considerable. As a work of scholarship the book remains a substantial contribution. It is good that it is also eminently readable. Any Jacobite library should add it to its collection. HUGH DOUGLAS-HAMILTON Begbie Farm House, Haddington John D. Rosenberg. Carlyle and the Burden of History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press pp. Carlyle and the Burden of History evinces a scholarly integrity seldom found in books of its kind: John Rosenberg from the outset admits his psycho-philosophic prejudices. While discussing the oft written about conversion archetype in Sartor Resartus, Rosenberg turns the epiphany of the Rue de l' Enfer inward and describes it as an "extraordinary recasting of traditional religious experience in psychological and political terms," a "defiant negation of Negation" (p. 12). What is far more significant than the rather traditional observation here is the positing of the asterisk which

248 Book Reviews 241 sends the reader to the bottom of the page and this frank confession by Rosenberg: "More ardent Freudians than I might make much of... " Rosenberg's identification of himself as a Freudian, however ardent, serves to define the perimeters and barriers of his work. The reader benefits from such honesty, and it is especially welcomed in the light of recent work on Carlyle that asserts as biographical fact psychological impression. Carlyle and the Burden of History is an historio-critical psychoanalysis by a self-proclaimed Freudian. For the reader to know this is essential; for the reader to be told this by the author is refreshing. Nothing is hidden here behind the guise of fact. Even the suggestive and leading title, Burden of History, is highlighted by italics. History itself is not on trial here; rather the burden that history places upon the imagination of its interpreters. The primary interpretive burden is Carlyle's; the secondary Rosenberg's. Yet in the end the reader is left to wonder just whose Zeitgeist is being examined. Although he does not say as much, Rosenberg would probably argue the reader's. In his own arena Rosenberg is a master. From beginning to end he manipulates the text and hence the reader to arrive at exegesis. His fone is the language of metaphor. Stated and implied comparisons abound. Carlyle'S burden-that is, Rosenberg's perception of Carlyle's burden--comes alive before our eyes as we are dazzled, often hoodwinked, by the power of the critic's voice. This is a well-thought out book with a premeditated thesis. Carlyle's failures are to be found in his successes. Carlyle is a paradox among paradoxes: "Radical and authoritarian, compassionate and bigoted, prophetic and blind" (p. vii). Rosenberg ranges through Carlyle's historical consciousness without hesitation. Sartor Resartus is a "Manichaean struggle" (p. 13); The French Revolution a "modem Armageddon" (p.29); Past and Present an "Ovidian mockery" (p. 130); Oliver Cromwell an "Orphic journey" (p. 142); the Latter-Day Pamphlets a binhing of "Demon-Cocks" (p. 149); and Frederick the Great a "Cyclopean wall" (p. 163). Such rhetoric captures the imagination of the reader. And, through such rhetorical flourish fact is woven into impression before being rewoven into fact. The reader is mesmerized, and the thesis thereby assured: Carlyle is the victim of the psychological wasteland of his own historical conscience. As the Burden of History unfolds the reader soon realizes that Rosenberg has set himself up as the interpretive historian of Interpretive History. We see Carlyle not so much through Carlyle's eyes as we see Carlyle through Rosenberg's eyes. Indeed, the subjective narrator intrudes so dramatically upon his subject that at points it is difficult to distinguish the critic from the historian. Passion is Rosenberg's tool. Anger flashes across the pages as he seeks to expose Carlyle's tragic flaw, the obstinate disbelief in the paradigm of reason. Yet within this anger there is a lyricism that repeatedly ameliorates critical repugnance. Slowly the reader begins to realize that Rosenberg admires Carlyle, not for what he was but for what he was to become. Carlyle was a prophet to an age that extended

249 242 Book Reviews far beyond Victorian. From this point of admiration Rosenberg often appropriates a language that is distinctly Carlylean. In a typical Carlylean burst of metaphor Rosenberg describes the mob of the Reign of Terror "as whirlwind, tidal wave, or volcanic upheaval exploding from the fiery bowls of the earth" (p. 96). In this language of volatility, Rosenberg, for a moment, has become Carlyle. However, Rosenberg's adopted lyricism can just as quickly give way to the personal invective he deplores in Carlyle. Our sensibilities are assaulted when Rosenberg dips his pen too far into the well of distaste as he tells us, for example, that reading the Latter-Day Pamphlets is "strangely like reading pornography, only the sexuality has been transmuted into scatology and aggression" (p. 152). In this language of hostility, Rosenberg, for a moment, has become the Carlyle he resents. Whatever the confusions that are raised by the intensely metaphorical language of Carlyle and the Burden of History, one can fmally say that it is, within its defined psychological genre, a book among books. Similar to Carlyle, Rosenberg's failures are his successes. He handles the paradoxical vision of Carlyle with a seriousness of conviction that invites challenge. We have here a book that grows larger through re-reading. With this in mind, we can only lament that it was not finished. Why is there no word on Carlyle's final history, The Early Kings of Norway, in order that the reader might see further into the totality of his historical vision? And, more important, where is the final chapter of synthesis and summation? In its absence, we are left with the feeling that Diogenes has somehow abandoned his lantern. It is shocking that this book got into print without such a chapter. True, Rosenberg's declared subject is The French Revolution, but by ranging wider he imposes a certain imbalance of generalization upon the whole. In spite of these flaws, we are in the end indebted to John Rosenberg for his continued stimulating work. ROOOER L. T ARR Illinois State University Hans Jtirg Kupper. Robert Burns im deutschen Sprgchraum (unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der schweizerdeutschen Ubersetzung von August Corrodi). Basler Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur, No. 56. Bern: Francke pp. [Robert Burns in the German-Speaking Countries (with Specific Reference to August Corrodi's Swiss-German Translations)]. Hans Jtirg Kupper's study can justly claim the right to receive an intense review for two reasons, one of subject matter, the other of quality. First, it gives evidence of the immense poetic echo which Bums produced

250 Book Reviews 243 in 19th-century Gennan-speaking countries. Second, it is, on the whole, an investigation of remarkable scholarly value. Unfonunately it suffers from self-imposed restrictions in three imponant aspects: 1) It deals predominantly with Corrodi's translations; 2) The Corrodi translations selected by Kupper for closer analysis are only those of five songs; 3) Three of those songs are love songs. The second and third restrictions ensue mainly from the substance and circumference of Corrodi's texts. Kupper's choice of the subject to be examined within the larger field of research which the title of his study promises is, as will become evident later, noticeably influenced by his opinion of its quality. For him, Corrodi's renderings of Bums's songs surpass the quality of most translations by others into any fonn of Gennan. Kupper's study [11'st gives an infonnative survey of the history of German translations of Burns. Then, those characteristics of Bums's language which are significant for translators, and the linguistic capacities and drawbacks of Gennan translators are discussed. After that comes the central object of Kupper's interest: Corrodi's translations. Corrodi's acquaintance with English and Scots and his emotional and mental relations to his native fonns of speech, namely High Gennan, Alemannic/Swiss Gennan, and his local idiom (Zurich Gennan) are outlined. Next follow the analyses of translations of five well-known Bums songs, presented in a paradigmatic fonn. Corrodi's handling of the various fonnal poetic aspects (i.e., euphony, metre, rhythm) is then discussed. Notes, a select bibliography, a table of Bums translations plus respective additional explanations, and an index of musical compositions for Gennan Burns translations are added. The concluding paragraphs contain a list of all translations done by Corrodi, another of all his publications, the imponant biographical dates and the draft of an autobiographical letter. At the outset of his study the enonnous bulk of Gennan translations of Bums is presented and briefly characterized (pp.9-48), and Kupper laments the impossibility of more thorough analyses-or the work would have required several volumes. Reasons for the existence of this astonishing quantity of Gennan translations are mentioned in pan. The limited linguistic affinity between Scots and Gennan is discussed. Other factors receive less attention: the veneration which the Gennans of the 19th century had for Schiller and apparently transferred to Bums, whose political achievement they considered similar to that of Schiller, and, distinct from that veneration a late romantic misunderstanding to which many Gennans were especially prone, the "Biedenneier" concept of their Burns reception and its narrowing consequences. This latter aspect is discussed at some length by Kupper.

251 244 Book Reviews A closer evaluation of Kupper's method of analyzing five of Corrodi's translations cannot be given here. Drawing attention to some more important aspects must suffice. Kupper's exposition and illumination of the second half of the 19th century in Switzerland as cultural background from which Corrodi's renderings of Burns's poetry spring is undoubtedly helpful, if not indispensable. Yet Kupper tends to exaggerate in ensuing considerations: he criticizes Corrodi for using a diction which, instead of reflecting the social conditions of the second half of the 19th century, tries to apply an "anachronistic" or "antiquarian" language form, that of the end of the preceding and the beginning of the 19th century. However, this aspect of Kupper's critique is in itself open to criticism, as its proposition repeatedly put forward is, nevertheless, too dogmatic, so that the question arises-why not translate a poet into a foreign diction that is, in terms of literary periods, akin to that of his own time? Still, of the five items of intense analytic comparison of original poetry and poetic translation (pp ), four may almost be called masterpieces ("A red red Rose"t'Min Schatz ist wienes Roseli;" "Wha is that at my bower door?"t'wer bopperlet a der chammer a?;" "Is there, for honest Poverty"f'Was soli en armen Ehrema;" "Auld lang syne"f'vor alter Ziit"). With regard to these pairs, the relevant aspects of lyrical craftsmanship are competently investigated; moreover, the achievements of other translations either into High German or into other German dialects are used as correctives. Some of these renderings are considered to be of remarkable value, such as Eggers's Low German version of "Wha is that at my bower door?" and Legerlotz's translation of "Is there, for honest poverty" into a "mixed language form" of High German and Southwest German. It is only when Kupper's critical appreciation of the original is defective, as is the case with "Thou lingering Star," which he regards too positively, that his results are misleading. Musical deliberations are for Kupper of no great importance, as Corrodi apparently did not take into account the melodies of the texts he translated. Kupper methodically examines the language status and forms, considering the degree to which language forms-morphological and phonetic features, lexical capacities, intrinsic characteristics of a given language/idiom/dialect ["Sprachform'1-Swiss German, High German and Scots show intrinsic affinities which support the task of translation. Kupper is well qualified to undertake such an investigation with his knowledge of his native Swiss German and other German idioms, even Low German, considered by some to be a language in its own right. If the bulk of German translations suggests, to Kupper, a certain limited specific affinity of Scots and German, the affinity of Scots and Swiss German seems to Kupper greater, which adds strength to his judgment that Corradi's Burns translations are among the best produced by German translators. Kupper maintains that Scots and Swiss German (or

252 Book Reviews 245 Alemannic )are two very manly idioms. On the other hand Kupper also has critical remarks about a surmized "organic relationship" between Scots and Swiss German. He rightly sees--and this is an interesting by-product of his study-that Scots and Swiss German occupy singular positions within the spheres of English and German idioms-both are more than dialects. They certainly have (to use the term coined by H. Kloss for such idioms) the status of "semi-language" (Halbsprache). He also notes that both Scots and Swiss German can produce intermediate forms of speech, mixtures of, on the one hand, English and Scots and, on the other, High German and Swiss German vocabularies, though in both cases this is true only with qualification. But then he moves toward a misunderstanding. Whereas he ascribes the more local, provincial character of Corrodi's translations (to some degree they are so) to COTTodi's intellectual limits, to his retrospectiveness, the reason for this more provincial character is, to a considerable degree, due more to the idiom itself than to COTTodi's limited literary creativity. Admittedly both Scots and Swiss German are more than dialects, but while Scots once had the status of a written national language (which Swiss German has never had), Swiss German is now to a great extent the spoken national medium of Swiss Germans, not infrequently even for scholarly communication, which is apparently not the case with Scots. Consequently the rank of "Halbsprache," granted to both idioms, is based on very different propositions. Therefore the shortcomings of COTTodi's translations are not, in the first place, the outcome of the latter's limited imaginative concepts, but the consequence of the fact that Swiss German, up to COTTodi's time, had never been used as the written vehicle of elevated speech and thought, a fact to which Kupper pays little attention. The expressive width which written Scots still retained in the 18th century must not be expected in 19th-century written Swiss German. Kupper's study unintentionally suggests a difference in linguistic rank between Scots and Swiss German as written media. It should be noted in passing that frequently COTTodi chose a specific variant of Swiss German as his poetic vehicle, ZUrich German, which naturally added to the provinciality in his translations. And yet it must not be denied that some of the limitations deplored by Kupper have their origin in Corrodi's poetic mind which was often not capable of productions congenial to Burns's poetry. Still, it is to be observed that some of the "limiting" means applied by COTTodi, as compared with other German translators, produced intensified effects for a Swiss German audience such as his introduction of the Rhine ("de Rhi") instead of Burns's "the seas" and that of the Rigi (a famous Swiss mountain) instead of "the rocks" in his rendering of "A red red Rose." In that case Kupper considers the creation of a Swiss setting to be poetically adequate, though on the whole he tends to see similar endeavors negatively,

253 246 Book Reviews notwithstanding his otherwise comparatively positive evaluation of Corradi's poetic achievement. It may be expected from what has hitherto been said that Kupper thinks less of the artistic value of most of the other translations into German. He does not blame the translators but rather the fact that most of them chose High German as their linguistic medium. He admits exceptions-the fitst part of Freiligrath' s version of "Is there, for honest Poverty"; he also considers Legerlotz's version of the same song a very adequate translation which presents a well-contrived texture of High German and Southwestern German elements. On the whole his evaluation of the bulk of German translations is probably to be accepted. Since most of the translators chose High German for their poetic medium, they were, for all their enthusiasm and pains, not able to match that unique Burnsian tone which frequently resulted from a happy blending of English and Scots elements, or of simple constituents common to English and Scots. This blending technique was not available to those who used Low German as their medium, though this idiom was well suited for Burns translations since like Scots it could boast of a past in which it was the official means of prose and poetic communication in the North German countries. But even the elementary constituents of Low German are of a nature that in most cases does not allow any mixture with High German words or forms, High German being separated from Low German (and from other Germanic languages) by a sound shift which drastically changed the consonantal system of what became High German. Still, there are the occasional exceptions of satisfying Low German renderings, e.g. Eggers's version of"wha is that at my bower door?" ("Wer is dat an min Kamerdor?"), which Kupper admits. On the whole he seems to think that the Low German area did not produce a translator possessed of the amount of congeniality to Burns's poetry which Corradi displayed in several of his renderings. The appendices are a valuable part of Kupper's work. His Notes and his Select Bibliography, along with his Appendix, form a substantial section of his investigation (pp ). The notes are meticulously done, leaving no room for any reasonable demand for more documentary information. This cannot be said of the Select Bibliography, though it has its merits. The omission of a number of important Burns studies is irritating. For this the argument of selection is not acceptable. Christina Keith's concept of evaluating Burns's lyrics might have proved particularly provocative for Kupper. As a matter of course several useful investigations, most of them in German, are listed that deal with such matters as poetry in German dialects, the relation of High German to German dialects and, more specifically, of High German to the dialects of German-speaking Switzerland. Some of them contain interesting insights into the problems of the relation of official idiom to semi-/non-official idiom and the consequences for poetry. It seems probable that several of

254 Book Reviews 247 these studies are not easily accessible for English-speaking scholars of comparative literary history; therefore, their listing in Kupper's book may well prove a welcome complement to the formers' expert knowledge. The same should be true of a few German titles given by Kupper that are concerned with the theory of literary translations, some of which address the rendering of poetry into a second language as an art in its own right. The Appendix (in the narrower sense of the word) ftrst lists Burns translations into German, the numbers following Kinsley. This record (pp ) is in itself an almost awe-inspiring proof of the immense popularity which Burns's poetry enjoyed in German-speaking countries throughout the 19th century. Kupper modestly states that this survey is certainly not complete, though it is difftcult to think of an omission. Kupper amply annotates whenever necessary for formal reasons (incomplete translations, minor or signiftcant changes of contents or names, different versions of a poem or song by the same translator, etc.). A further paragraph records the surprisingly long list of musical settings, not of Burns's originals, but of German translations, another proof of Burns's sometime fame within the German-speaking world. Following that, detailed information (pp.303-1o) about Corrodi's Burns translations into Swiss and (rarely) High German, published and unpublished, is presented about all of Corrodi's renderings that Kupper has not discussed earlier. The study is concluded by biographical information and dates, a list of Corrodi's publications, of which his Burns translations form but a small part. It contains his comparative study Robert Burns und Peter Hebel, eine literarhistorische Parallele, and the draft of an autobiographical letter (pp ). Kupper refers to L.M. Price's English-German Literary Influences, (1919/20) and H. Hecht's The Reception of Burns in German Literature (1939, incomplete because of the war) as studies to which he seems particularly indebted. On the other hand, W. Jacks's Robert Burns in Other Tongues (1896) is quoted merely in passing. Mention is made of the Catalogue of Robert Burns Collection in the Mitchell Library Glasgow (1959) which gives evidence of a fine assembly of German Burns translations (known and appreciated by the present reviewer). Kupper's predominantly critical judgments of the majority of German Burns translations are, on the whole, to be shared. At the same time one feels that these judgments, though perhaps correct, do no justice to the pains and enthusiasm which so many German translators invested in the task of rendering the poetry of their adored poetic genius into German. The explanations offered for the phenomenon that German-speaking translators far out-numbered those who translated Burns into any other language do not sufftce. More convincing reasons for those pains and that enthusiasm remain to be suggested. In this connection, one of the titles which one looks for in vain in Kupper's bibliography is W. Witte's study

255 248 Book Reviews on Schiller and Burns. Of the several parallels which certainly exist are their genuine "pathos" and their love of political freedom and individual independence. Another (on the whole underrated) is the fact that both enjoyed an almost unlimited veneration during the nineteenth century, greatly reduced in the twentieth century. Reasons for these developments no doubt exist, but they still need convincing scholarly explanation. May it not be that the artistic failure of the countless German-speaking Burns translators has something to do with the general decline in public esteem which the works of both poets had to suffer? Consequently, the results of the endeavors of those translators were, almost automatically, reduced in general appreciation. Kupper touches, if only indirectly, on this problem in his preface. Here lies a fertile field for studies in comparative socioliterary research. It has been Burns's tragic fate that two principal obstacles reduce the possibilities of poetically adequate translations of his poetry. The first, well known, is that his poetic medium was not the standard language, but an idiom which had, during previous centuries, declined almost to the status of a dialect. Consequently any translations into standard languages must suffer from obvious shortcomings. But if translations into nonstandard idioms are to be ventured, which are to be chosen? Apparently those which in their status and expressive capacity are, to a high degree, similar to Scots. Low German and Swiss German are sensible suggestions; even they, however, by no means correspond to all linguistic criteria which mark out Scots. Till now, little attention has been given to the second difficulty. Burns made superb poetic use of the possibility of combining Scots and English elements, or, in other words, of exploiting the linguistic affinities between Scots and English to a smaller or greater degree. Thus he could write songs like "It was upon a Lammas night" which far outdo any "normal" folksong, equalling the finest specimens of "Kunstlied" in their artistic lay-out and surpassing them in expressive vigor. These songs can hardly be translated into any other language because of their blissful blending of English and Scots components. An equivalent possibility does not exist for writers of Low German. High German elements do not organically fit into any Low German context. With Southern German dialects and Swiss German, the situation is different, yet even with them there are limitations to blending which cannot be transgressed as proved indirectly by Corrodi's renderings. Thus Kupper's study was dedicated to a field in which aesthetic phenomena had to be discussed that are of a defective quality. To a considerable degree, Corrodi's translations prove an exception from this finding, but even they bear the mark of the influence of the problems outlined above. The statement that Corrodi acted as a poetic mediator between the two peoples, the Scots and the Swiss, whose mental dispositions and political

256 Book Reviews 249 cultures have long been of a similar nature, is a by-product of Kupper's investigations. It should be noted that in order to fully appreciate Kupper's study a knowledge of German dialects and especially of Swiss German is indispensable. Anyone with this knowledge would certainly read High German competently. Therefore, a translation of Kupper's study into English is problematic. It remains to be said that Kupper has set a standard of methodical thoroughness and a degree of understanding the complex problems of Burns translations comparable with what G.R. Roy did in his "French Translations of Robert Burns" in the Revue de Litterature Comparee-which future investigations of the renderings of Burns texts into any other language cannot ignore. On the contrary, they will be measured by these. DIEfRICH STRAUSS Johannes Gutenberg-UniversitiitlMainz

257 Brief Notice Scottish Ambassador. Ed. E. Brian Wilton. Inaugural Issue, Summer It is unusual for SSL to review periodicals, but Scottish Ambassador should be brought to the attention of readers, scholars and librarians. E. Brian Wilton is publishing this work quarterly out of Comrie in Perthshire. It is a beautifully produced work on glossy paper devoted to most aspects of Scottish life. It is abundantly illustrated in black and white as well as high quality color. The first two issues list the following topics on their covers: History, Heritage, Nature, Sport, Leisure, Food, Drink, Property, Fashion, Literature, Business, Finance, Industry. Most of these topics make for mere "coffee-table" publishing, but so far Scottish Ambassador appears to be avoiding this pitfall. In the first issue, for example, there is a short but informative article "genealogy begins at Home" by Alwyn James. There is a good piece on the Battle of Bannockburn, with a reproduction of as well as a detail from Jim Proudfoot's incredible painting of that battle. There is also an article on Robert Burns, arguing that Burns was not the "simple" Bard he has been portrayed as; here Ian Grimble is doing Scottish letters a real service in undoing the mischief Henry Mackenzie first perpetrated on Burns's reputation. There is also short fiction in the magazine. In the second issue Graeme Cruikshank looks at a little-known battle in Scottish history, the Battle of Nechtansmere which was fought in 685 AD between the Picts and the Northumbrians. Ian A. Fraser writes in the first of what is to be a series on Scottish place-names. Louis Stott

258 Brie/Notice 251 contributes "The Waterfalls of Scotland"-some of them among the most beautiful in Europe, and the subject of numerous eighteenth-century engravings and poems. The surprise of the issue was to find lain Crichton Smith writing an appreciation of the greatest Gaelic poet of the century, Sorley MacLean. Smith is, of course, himself a native speaker and writes with great sensitivity on the subject. Scottish Ambassador is off to a good start; we all wish it success. G.R.R. Moira Burgess. The Glasgow Novel: A Survey and Bibliography. [Glasgow]: Scottish Library Assn. & Glasgow District Libraries. 2nd edn pp. Moira Burgess has given scholars a most useful bibliography of the Glasgow novel which has now gone into a second edition. Professor Edwin :Morgan's Preface and the 47-page survey are helpful both to the student and the general public alike, but the most important part of this book consists of the various compilations which constitute the bibliography proper. First there is a Reading List which includes general as well as single author bibliographies, histories and critical studies. The main part of the bibliography contains a listing divided into nine chronological divisions by period covered-thus Scott's Rob Roy falls into the period , not the section called "Early Nineteenth Century: " when the novel was written. Since Burgess has added a chronological list of the publication dates of the novels as well as an author index this arrangement does not present a problem for the user. The chronological arrangement makes the book particularly useful for the user who might be interested in what has been written about a given period. Of the 263 entries, it is interesting to note that only three of them deal with the period to 1699, and another eleven cover the eighteenth century, including Smollett's Humphry Clinker where it is admitted that the novel merely "includes Glasgow in its itinerary." Clinker should not be considered a Glasgow novel per se but Smollett certainly knew Glasgow and its vicinity and could give his mainly English audience a "feel" for the city. By far the largest group of novels (96) deals with the city in the postwar years, and most of those novelists concentrate on the present, although a few authors like Agnes M.R. Dunlop (who wrote under the pseudonym of Elisabeth Kyle) preferred to set their work in an earlier age. The crest of the city says in part "Let Glasgow flourish," and this book shows that the Glasgow novel has indeed done so. ALEXANDER FRASER

259 252 Brief Notice Jane Millgate, lain Gordon Brown, and Patrick Cadell. Sir Walter Scott's Magnum Opus and the Pforzheimer Manuscripts. Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland pp. This elegant pamphlet, illustrated with portraits and facsimiles, contains three essays "to commemorate the acquisition of two great collections by the National Library of Scotland." The fitst essay, by Jane Millgate, sets forth the importance of the Magnum Opus-the interleaved set of Scott's novels in which Scott, at intervals in the last six or seven years of his life, entered corrections, additions, and extensive notes for the revised edition of The second essay, by lain Gordon Brown, presents the history of this interleaved set stored in publisher's files for nearly a century, and hidden away in an American collector's library for nearly fifty years more. The third is a note on the important Scott manuscripts collected by Carl H. Pforzheimer (also virtually inaccessible for decades) and now bought by the National Library of Scotland. They include the holograph manuscripts of The Lord of the Isles, Quentin Durward, The Betrothed, Chronicles of the Canongate, three lesser manuscripts, and the corrected proofs of Tales of My Landlord, Fourth Series. Professor Millgate's essay is of major interest to all students of Scott. The interleaved set she describes has never before been available for study, and therefore not known to be of importance. Conceding that most of the material was actually printed in the edition of , she points out: The numerous small differences which occur in every note and on each page of introduction, the sheer mass of material in Scott's hand. the numerous physical evidences of the way in which the editorial apparatus was put together and modified over time-these constitute important data... The information it offers to scholars is enormous (p. 13). The pamphlet is thus not just a "commemoration"; it announces an important opening for scholars concerned with Scott's text and methods, and several new incentives to make use of the resources of the National Library of Scotland. THOMAS DALE

260 Brief Notice 253 Alan Bell, ed. Lord Cockburn. A Bicentenary Commemoration. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press vii pp. Henry Cockburn ( ) is well known for his reminiscences: MemoriaLs of His Time, one of the best books of its kind ever written in Scotland; his JournaL; and the Circuit Journeys. Cockburn was "a great citizen of nineteenth-century Edinburgh," as Sir James Fergusson titles his introductory essay. He had a distinguished career as advocate and judge, was a speaker and pamphleteer on Scottish parliamentary reform, and stood fmnly by his Whiggish principles. He was a man of cultivated taste and a keen observer who chronicled a passing age in eager anticipation of what was to come. His pen-portraits and brilliant descriptions vividly reveal to the modem reader an important period in Scotland's cultural and social history. Cockburn was a progressive Scotsman, patriotic but free from provincialism. The essays collected in the present volume discuss essential aspects of Cockburn's life and time. "Cockburn in his Correspondence" by Alan Bell draws our attention to the large collection of manuscript letters held by the National Library of Scotland. Apart from his MemoriaLs, it is in his letters that we encounter his "strong sense of period and place." In "Reason and Dream: Cockburn's Practical and Nostalgic Views of Civic Well-being," Bell traces the writer's views on urban layout and amenity, urban and rural setting, and the railway buildings issue in 1837 Edinburgh. "Cockburn and the Church" by lain F. Macinver refers to Cockburn's involvement as a public man in the affairs of the Church of Scotland, his attitudes towards Moderatism, contemporary Evangelicals and their social ideas, and the poor quality of preaching he sometimes had to endure on circuit. He could not avoid "immersing himself in the workings of an institution so deeply rooted in Scottish nationality and politics." Cockburn's professional life and his achievements as a legal writer are analyzed in "Cockburn and the Law" by John M. Pinkerton. His record as a lawyer is shown to have been an imperfect one, yet his skill as an orator before a jury must have been impressive. Karl Miller, in an essay entitled "Cockburn, Nature and Romance," presents "some afterthoughts" on his Cockburn's MilLenium (1975), dealing with the neglected subject of Cockburn's critical interest in poetry. In particular, he expands on the "relationship between the literary outlook of Cockburn and his friends... and that of the leading writers of Romanticism, in its early days or dawn." One of his main sources is the anthology of poetry compiled by Cockburn and his friends which is in the James M. and Marie Louise Osborn Collection, Yale University Library. "The making of Cockburn's MemoriaLs" by Bell examines the process of redrafting the MemoriaLs and stresses the importance of Cockburn's autobiographical writings, "both as history and literature." Cockburn's account of the Friday Club was printed for the first time by his grandson in the Book of the OLd Edinburgh CLub in In 1973 the original manuscript was presented to the National Library of

261 254 Brief Notice Scotland. The text is now reliably re-edited with an introductory note by Bell and adds to the vivid picture of the social, political and literary Scotland we gain from these perceptive essays. HORST W. DRESCHER John Mactaggart. The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia. Ed. with Introduction by L.L. Ardem. Strath Tay, Perthshire: Clunk Press; in association with the E.A. Homel Trust vi + xii pages. A facsimile of the edition of John Mactaggart ( ), the son of a farmer, and one of eleven children, published The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia in 1824 and left soon after for London where he failed in an attempt to found a newspaper, The London Scotchman. Having learned engineering, he went to Canada in 1826 where he surveyed the route for the Rideau Canal, returning to Scotland in The result of this experience was chronicled in Three Years in Canada (1829). Mactaggart left a long unfinished poem entitled "The Engineer" which has never been published. His Encyclopedia is a peculiarly idiosyncratic work which achieved only a very small circulation because of the entry "Star 0' Dungyle" devoted to the daughter of the Laird of Ingleston, Miss H---. In the entry Mactaggart wrote "the good boxer or bruiser were the only persons who could get to speak to her, and she was always fonder of that class... the low and mean were her associates... [she] would lay in bams with them at night. put on beggar weeds, and bade farewell to virtue altogether... " and so on for almost two pages. As a result the author was threatened with an action by the laird unless the book was withdrawn. In his Introduction Mactaggart states that he has not had recourse to books in gathering the infonnation for his encyclopedia-"the whole is the doing of habit and memory." And so this omnium-gatherum is part dictionary of Scoticisms (hirple: to walk in a lame-like manner); part encyclopedia (Macdiarmid: John M'Diarmid... Editor of the Dumfries and Galloway Courier... ); part compilation of folk belief (adder-beads: [here follow three pages about the mythical beads made by seven hairy adders and a white one]); and part pure puffery (Mactaggart: this is no less a personage than myself... [here follow over eight pages on the topic D. Twentieth-century readers have used the Gallovidian Encyclopedia to advantage; for example, K. Buthlay of Glasgow University has discovered that Hugh MacDiarmid used a phrase in an early poem ("Moonstruck") which originated in Mactaggart's encyclopedia. Scholars and general readers will find this reprint a useful and fascinatig book. G.R.R.

262 Contributors D' Arcy, Julian M.: Lektor in English Literature, University of Iceland. Main teaching and research interests are Scottish literature and modern fiction. Currently writing a doctoral thesis for Aberdeen, "Various Aspects of Old Norse Influence on Modern Scottish Literature." Recent and forthcoming articles on Davie Deans and George Mackay Brown. Beirnard, Charles A.: Associate Professor and Composition Coordinator, University of Alaska. Research interests are nineteenth-century British literature, and the analysis of non-fiction prose. Is editing a collection of essays for use in courses in the analysis of non-fiction prose. Among papers are two on Carlyle and one on Machiavelli's sophistic rhetoric. Evans, Deanna Delmar: Assistant Professor, Bemidji State University. Has attended N.E.H. seminars at Stanford and SUNY Binghamton on medieval and Anglo-Saxon literature and life. "Basing the Freshman Research Paper on Anglo-Saxon Materials" was published in the Minnesota English Journal in Harrington, David V.: Professor of English, Gustavus Adolphus College. Has published many articles on medieval literature and writing theory in such journals as The Chaucer Review, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Annuale Mediaevale, Neophilologus, College English, and College Composition and Communication. Huberman, Elizabeth: Professor Emerita, Kean College. Is working on the correspondence of Hermann Broch with William and Edwin Muir while they were translating his Sleepwalkers. They exchanged opinions on the theory of the modern novel and on the possibility of creating art in the rising tide of violence in Austria in the 1930's. Huberman's The Poetry of Edwin Muir was published in Jack, R.D.S.: Professor of Medieval and Scottish Literature, University of Edinburgh. Is the author most recently of Scottish Literature's Debt to Italy (1987). Editor of Vol. I (Medieval and Renaissance) of the forthcoming History of Scottish Literature.

263 256 Contributors McCleery, Alistair: Senior Lecturer at Napier College, Edinburgh. He has recently edited a collection of Neil Gunn's essays, Landscape and Light, published by Aberdeen University Press. McKenna, Steven R.: Instructor of English at the University of Rhode Island, is currently undertaking research on the relationship between medieval oral traditions,literacy, and Chaucer's poetry. He is, in addition, Assistant Editor of the American Transcendental Quarterly. Nicholson, Colin: Graduate of Leeds University; Lecturer in English and American Literature, Edinburgh University. Co-edited Tropic Crucible: Self and Theory in Language and Literature (1984). Currently editing a collection of essays on Alexander Pope while preparing a book on Scots-Canadian writing. Reid, David: M.A., S1. Andrews; Ph.D. University of British Columbia. Has taught at the Universities of Salonica, New Hampshire, British Columbia; since 1974 as Lecturer at the University of Stirling. Edited The Party-Coloured Mind (1982) and has completed a book-length study of the humanism of Paradise Lost. Scheps, Walter: Associate Professor of English, SUNY Stony Brook. Author (with J. Anna Looney) of Middle Scots Poets: A Reference Guide to James I of Scotland, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas (1986). Has published numerous articles on Middle Scots, on Chaucer, and on other subjects. Tarr, Rodger L.: Professor of English, lllinois State University. He has compiled Thomas Carlyle: An English-Language Bibliography (1976); coedited Carlyle Past and Present (1976) and The Collected Poems of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (1981). He is at present completing a descriptive bibliography of the works of Carlyle, and is editing Sartor Resartus. Ware, Elaine: Assistant Professor of English, Middle Tennesse State University, where she has for the past seven years been Director of the Writing Center. Her main teaching responsibilities are nineteenth- and twentieth-century American Literature. Wolf, Kirsten: A native of Denmark, has a degree from the University of Iceland, and M.A. from the University of London, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. Presently Lecturer in Danish, University of Wisconsin.