The name is absent

Whittier’s Critical Creed         35

gratification, careless of the world’s opinion.”³ The strict
ethical tone and polemical purpose of these writings strength-
ened his moralistic view of Uterature and distrust of the
passions. Many of Whittier’s early poems dealt with social
and political issues; and already the practical aspects of
Quakerism led him to defend fighters for human liberty, to
enlist in the temperance movement, to dedicate himself as
the poet of peace, and finally to devote his mature years to
the cause of abolition.

Whittier’s isolated rural background, lack of education,
and his Quaker dedictation to humanitarianism strangely
paralleled the career of Robert Burns; and it seemed only
fitting that his early introduction to Burns stimulated his
poetic ambitions. Whittier said about his reading of Burns’
poetry: “This was about the first poetry I had ever read . . .
and it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make
rhymes myself. . . . In fact I lived a sort of dual life, and in a
world of fancy, as well as in the world of plain matter-of-fact
about me.”¹ The themes, subject matter, and finally the style
of Burns had a direct and lasting effect upon Whittier. Burns
was a poet who appealed to his own people as he wrote of
their ordinary thoughts and feelings. His themes were theirs
too—the dislike of the harsh CaIvinistic church rule, belief in
the innate dignity of man and social equality, an admiration
for simple rural virtue, and Iove of nature. He delighted in
the common tilings of the local community, its social gather-
ings, folklore, and superstitions. These themes predominate
in Whittier’s poetry and there can be no doubt that Bums
first showed him their poetic value.⁵ Finally, all of Burns’
better poems have an underlying realism achieved by the use
of the Scottish dialect with its rich, native teπns, by the
manipulation of simple, ordinary words, and by the présenta-

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