The Creation of the Historical Sublime in 
Joanna Baillie’s “Legend of William Wallace”

	The Wordsworthian idea of the sublime, according to Thomas Weiskel in The Romantic Sublime, uses nature as “a kind of screen on which the multiplicity of representations is projected” (172).  That is to say, nature is the means through which (or, in Weiskel’s terminology, on which) poets approximate their experiences of the sublime to their readers.  Weiskel also remarks that there is a great difficulty in attempting to form a sublime experience into language, in that an experience of the sublime may be characterized by knowing “a presence uncompounded by the absence which makes speech necessary” (171).  This perfect knowledge of the Other is complicated when the poet wishes to translate that direct experience into words, since, as David G. Riede points out in Oracles and Hierophants, “language [for Wordsworth] mediates between feeling and its expression, but. . . [he distrusts] language, even simplified and purified language, to communicate experience” (155).   
    Although Joanna Baillie concerns herself overtly with the poetic expression of the sublime, she adds to her subject two factors which, I argue, help to answer Wordsworth’s problem with the feasibility of effectively transmitting a sublime experience in words: intermediary textual sources and emotional tension.  I argue that these differences from the Wordsworthian idea of the sublime are the tenets of a new construction of the experience of sublimity: what I term the “historical sublime.”
	To preface my argument, it may be helpful to turn directly to Wordsworth, who intimates in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802) that the effect of the sublime upon the senses is to stir the emotions, and thence to fire the poetic faculties: 
. . . poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. (19)  
This “perfect knowledge” of the subject must then be translated into words, and from this process can come either well written or poorly written verses:
Whence arises this difference? Not from the metre, not from the language, not from the order of the words; but the matter expressed. . . .  The proper method of treating trivial and simple verses. . . is not to say, This is a bad kind of poetry or This is not poetry; but This wants sense; it is neither interesting in itself nor can lead to anything interesting; the images neither originate in that same state of feeling which arises out of thought, nor can excite thought or feeling in the Reader. (21-22)
The last part of Wordsworth’s assertion leads me into my discussion of the capability of language to adequately express the sublime; Wordsworth argues that the intent of “good” poetry is to transmit or approximate the sublime experience which the poet has undergone.  If the poem fails to do so, it “wants sense” and cannot “excite thought or feeling” which comes close to the sublime.  Especially strong examples of this meta-linguistic concern for the written expression of the sublime can be seen in representative passages from Joanna Baillie’s poem “A Metrical Legend of William Wallace” from Metrical Legends (1821).  I wish to use this poem as a vehicle for probing into the manner in which Baillie builds upon a Wordsworthian sublime, through the addition of second-hand documentation her own text, in order to flesh out direct experience, thus presenting a fuller, richer, “historical” sublime.
	In “William Wallace,” there are numerous instances where the author admits that the written word is incapable of adequately describing the events she wishes to convey. Martin Heidegger expresses the problem this way:
When the issue is to put into language something which has never yet been spoken, then everything depends on whether language gives or withholds the appropriate word.  Such is the case of the poet.  Indeed, a poet might even come to the point where [s]he is compelled--in [her] own way, that is poetically--to put into language the experience [s]he undergoes with language.  (qtd. in Williams 177-178) 
In order to explicate my hypothesis, I will perform a close reading of the primary text with regard to how Baillie negotiates circumstances when “language. . . withholds the appropriate word.”  Specifically, I have chosen this poem as representative of the historical sublime based on two criteria. 
	The first criterion is that “William Wallace” is based on research of earlier documents, and not on direct experience.  The direct experience of the sublime, according to Wordsworth, is most often connected with an awesome direct brush with the forces of Nature.  Baillie often expresses the sublimity of the historical events from which she takes her subject matter, in addition to versifying on the sublime power of the natural settings for the poem, combining reportage with direct experience.
	Secondly, the poem deals with the moments of--it is assumed--greatest emotional tension in the historical narratives from which it is taken. The author’s sources for her poetic passages are considered “straight” historical narrative, intentionally devoid of emotion.  The invention of emotional conflict in the poem where none is explicitly described in the source implies a further construction of the sublime.
	These criteria help to support my conclusion that Baillie concerns herself with the expression of the sublime, but in a manner more complex than direct experience of her subjects, utilizing additional sources of sublimity: historical sources and the invention of emotional tension.
	Baillie was not actually present to witness the events about which she writes in “William Wallace,” and this may seem to pose an initial obstacle to the effective transmission of sublimity.  Wordsworth used nature as a “guarantor of the discourse” (Riede 154), an effective conduit through which the sublime could be most fully expressed; he also “made explicit in The Prelude that the great poet can have the same effect as nature on the mind because his [sic] work embodies nature” (Riede 154).  With this in mind, I will look at specific passages in Baillie’s poem that are based on both her sources and on her own experience of Scottish topography, as the base from which Baillie expands her idea of the sublime.  
	Baillie makes use of nature to introduce the plot structure of “A Metrical Legend of William Wallace,” and relies on her source texts for the description of specific incidents in her poem.  For instance, the opening of the poem relies on a topographical metaphor of Wallace as identified with a waterfall in the woods of Clyde:
Full, rapid, powerful, flashing to the light,
	Till sunk the boiling gulf beneath,
	It mounts again like snowy wreath,
	Which, scatter’d by contending blasts,
	Back to the clouds their treasure casts,
A ceaseless wild turmoil, a grand and wondrous sight!  (9-10)
This metaphoric comparison of the young Wallace to “his native scenes, sublime and wild” (10), is described by Baillie in detail: the sublime power of the waterfall is able to be described by the poetess in order that she may compare it to the powerful attributes of Wallace.  Another example of this occurs in canto X, when Baillie represents the young Wallace as a nascent thunderstorm:
As light’ning from some twilight cloud,
	At first but like a streaky line
	In the hush’d sky, with fitful shine
	Its unregarded brightness pours,
Till from its spreading, darkly volumed shroud
	The bursting tempest roars;
	His countrymen with faithless gaze
	Beheld his valour’s early blaze.  (12)
A final example of Baillie’s ability to express her idea of the natural sublime in words comes toward the end of the poem, when she retells in canto LXXVI the tradition that the clouds often take the shapes of dead chieftains who watch over the living:
It hath been said, that gifted seer,
	On the dark mountain’s cloudy screen,
	Forms of departed chiefs hath seen,
In seeming armour braced with sword and spear. . . 
	As if their phantom forms of empty air,
Still owned a kindred sense of what on earth they were.  (59)
Each of these three examples reveals that Baillie is working from a direct experience of the natural phenomena which she describes; each notes particularities of feeling, setting, and mood that mark the experience as sublime.
	Compared to the relative ease with which Baillie is able to form metaphors to reflect the general sublimity of the Scottish landscape, she is hard pressed to form such metaphors when she discusses the particulars of the narrative of her poem.  She is often at a loss to describe the historical events and people she is dealing with, so she makes use of intermediary texts, such as Blind Harry’s account of Wallace or Holinshed’s Chronicles.  An example of this addition to the Wordsworthian sublime occurs early in the poem, when Baillie introduces Wallace and his comrades victorious after their first battle against the English:
O for some magic power to give
In vision’d form what then did live!
That group of heroes to pourtray. . . (15)
It is interesting to note that this passage follows a long list of the names of the participants in the fight (13).  The only information the reader is given about the battle is general, and taken from the works of Barbour, Wintown, and Holinshed (95-98).  Thus, the particulars of battle go by in a flash, too horrible to be recounted in detail, and Baillie is left at the end trying to express the ineffable.  Another reason for this inability to find the words is that Baillie was not present to witness the battle like she was present to see waterfalls, thunderstorms, and cloud formations.  Because Baillie was not present, she relies on her source texts as capable of transmitting as much sublimity as her own, direct experience.
	Another example of the historical text aiding the poet in her experience of the sublime comes in cantos LXXX and LXXXI, when Baillie says
But how shall verse feign’d accents borrow,
To speak with words their speechless sorrow, (62)
and
	Too bold it were for me to tell,
 How Wallace fought; how on the brave
	The ruin of his anguish fell,
Ere from the field, his bands to save,
	He broke away. . . (63)
These further examples of the poet’s inability to express the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” on the part of Wallace in his sorrow, wrath, and anguish serve also to emphasize that there is very little description of the action of the narrative in the poem.  Such description is found at length in Baillie’s notes which follow the poem; for the death of Grame, Baillie explains the incident by using Holinshed, a direct gloss on Blind Harry’s chronicles, and a curious argument, a part of which reads
That Wallace withdrew from the field, in the bitterness of his resentment for the ingratitude of the nobles and the insults he received. . . is not mentioned, I believe, by any general historian or chronicler; but as it is stated so circumstantially by Harry the Minstrel. . . I must consider it as authentic.  (113)
This suggests that Baillie is able to tap into the “spontaneous overflow” of these earlier writers when she is reading from source texts as much as when she recalls her direct experiences with nature and inserts them into her narrative.  A related factor which further enhances Baillie’s construction of a “historical sublime” is the invention of emotional tension.
	The fact that Baillie adds her own emotional elements to the “facts” of her sources brings up the question posed by the critic A. E. Powell in 1962: 
. . . if the intuition by which the critic [or reader] apprehends a work of art is merely the expression of himself, his own volitions, desires and repulsions, what assurance have we that it will reproduce, or even resemble, the original intention of the artist?  (The Romantic Theory of Poetry 241) 
Joanna Baillie anticipates this kind of issue in the prefatory material to Metrical Legends when she says that
In relating a true story, though we do not add any events to it, and abstain from attributing any motives for action, which have not been creditably reported, or may not be fairly inferred, yet, how often do we spontaneously, almost unwittingly, add description similar to what we know must have belonged to the actors and scenery of our story!  (ix)
The key words here are “creditably reported,” which allude to Baillie’s addition of emotional elements not to be found in her source texts. Because the “facts” of her source texts have been “creditably reported,” it can be assumed that the source texts are therefore true accounts; the sensitive poet can then use her source texts as stand-ins for the actual experience of having been present at Wallace’s side in battle.  
	This assumption is challenged by Powell’s question: is it possible to have a sublime experience of an event which one does not personally experience?  Baillie’s answer is yes, and she qualifies her earlier statement in her prefatory remarks by saying that “I have written the following Metrical Legends, describing such scenes as truly belong to my story” (xii).  For Baillie, borrowing from, and adding to, earlier texts is the highest form of tribute, and she makes free to add emotional circumstances of her own invention, in order to more fully transmit the experience of the sublime.
	For example, in the passage where Baillie describes the violent deaths eventually met by all Scottish patriots, she attributes to them
	Feelings of joy so keen, so true,
As he who feels, with up-rais’d eye,
	Thank Heaven for life, and cannot rue
The gift. . . (16-17)
In the notes to this section of the poem, Baillie quotes Barbour as saying of the Scottish prisoners of Edward, “Sum they ransowet, sum thai slew./ And sum thai hangyt, and sum thai drew” (98), which contains no emotional charge like that invented by Baillie.  By imputing emotional motives to the characters of her poem where no emotion is present in the source text, Baillie further enhances her ability to transmit a sublime experience to her readers.  
	The reason for this addition to the Wordsworthian sublime is that the poet’s direct experience of the emotions of the warriors is mediated by the agency not only of the text, but of the poet’s own conjecture, and it would be unfair to urge that Baillie should have done other than she has with her sources.  A second example of this emotional invention will serve to illustrate its necessity.
	Baillie’s very short treatment of Wallace’s retributive burning of the barns at Ayr describes the deaths of Wallace’s enemies who have, through a false flag truce, put many of his followers to death:
	New-waked wretches stood aghast
To see the fire-flood in their rear,
Close to their breast the pointed spear,
	And in wild horror yell’d their last. (23)
The note which covers this entire episode refers to one line only: “That form is Wallace wight” (24).  The note of explanatory text from the “interesting novel” by “Miss Porter” runs to nearly a solid page of text--all to explain the meaning of one line.  Baillie says that although she has
made a larger extract from this able and popular writer, than is necessary for my purpose, the terrific sublimity of the passage, which has tempted me to transgress, will also procure my pardon.  (102)
It is interesting to note that the sublimity lies, in this case, not in Baillie’s line of poetry.  By her own admission, the length at which she quotes Porter’s novel in her note is to excused because of the “terrific sublimity” of the passage Baillie uses.  Thus, the level of sublimity in the source is greater than can be achieved in Baillie’s own poetry; therefore, the source must be included in the notes to give the reader the full effect of the horror felt by the English when they saw Wallace looking down at them from amidst the flames.  The emotional content which Baillie invents is not explained by the note, which has its own freight of emotion in it already; thus Baillie uses the note to augment a passage of her own.  
	Baillie’s poem “A Metrical Legend of William Wallace” is an effective vehicle for the transmission of the sublime to her readers.  The addition of intermediary historical texts and the invention of emotional content to her poem help Baillie to overcome some of the limitations of a strictly Wordsworthian model of the sublime.  
	One of the problems with a strict Wordsworthian idea of the sublime is that it cannot allow for sublimity in experience that is outside the direct experience of the poet.  Thus, the fact that Baillie lived many years after Wallace did implies that Baillie can never have a direct sublime experience relating to the topic of Wallace, even if that sublime experience comes from reading a passage in a text, as Baillie asserts happened to her with the above-mentioned snippet from Miss Porter’s novel.  However, I conclude that Baillie’s augmentation of the Wordsworthian sublime--what I term the “historical sublime” effectively answers the implications posed by a strict Wordsworthian idea of the sublime, thus making “A Legend of William Wallace” a more effective vehicle for the transmission of sublimity.

Works Consulted
Baillie, Joanna.  Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters.  London, 1821. 
Coleridge, [Samuel Taylor], and [William] Wordsworth.  Lyrical Ballads: 1802.  Ed. H[enry] Littledale.  2nd ed.  London: Oxford UP, 1927.
Gaull, Marilyn.  English Romanticism: The Human Context.  New York: Norton, 1988.
Heidegger, Martin.  The Nature of Language.  Trans. Richard Schmitt.  Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1976. 
McGann, Jerome J.  The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.
Mellor, Anne K.  Romanticism and Gender.  New York: Routledge, 1993.
Monk, Samuel H.  The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England.  Chicago: MLA, 1935.  Rpt. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1960.
Porter, Carolyn.  “Are We Being Historical Yet?”  The States of “Theory.”  Ed. David Carroll.  New York: Columbia UP, 1990.  27-61.
Powell, A[lice] E[lizabeth].  The Romantic Theory of Poetry: An Examination in the Light of Croce’s Æsthetic.  New York: Russell and Russell, 1962.
Rajan, Tilottama.  Dark Interpreter: The Discourse of Romanticism.  Ithaca: Cornell UP: 1980.
Riede, David G.  Oracles and Hierophants: Constructions of Romantic Authority.  Ithaca: Cornell UP: 1991.
Riley, Denise.  “Does a Sex Have a History?”  “Am I That Name?”: Feminism and the Category “Women” in History.  Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988.  1-17.
Schmitt, Richard.  Martin Heidegger on Being Human: An Introduction to Sein und Zeit.  Random House Studies in Philosophy series.  Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1976.
Simpson, David.  Romanticism, Nationalism, and the Revolt Against Theory.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993.
Thiselton-Dyer, T[homas] F[irminger].  Folk-Lore of Women as Illustrated by Legendary and Traditional Tales, Folk-Rhymes, Proverbial Sayings, Superstitions, Etc.  London: E. Stock, 1905.
Weiskel, Thomas.  The Romantic Sublime. Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence series.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.
Wordsworth, William.  Selected Poems.  Ed. George W. Meyer.  Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1950.
Williams, John T.  Pooh and the Philosophers.  New York: Dutton, 1996.