[In the essay below, Kindrick comments on the influence of Henryson's poetry on literary tradition and subsequent British authors.]

Henryson's accomplishment and his importance for Middle Scots verse can hardly be overestimated. He forged a group of exceptional poems that has become an inspiration to later poets, and, by his eclecticism, he infused Scottish verse with some of the best elements of other cultures and literatures. Perhaps most important of all, he brought to Scottish poetry the broad sympathetic understanding which is a mark of all great writing.

Through the Fabillis he explored a wide variety of social classes and types of individuals. Perhaps no other single work in all of Scottish literature contains a greater range of characters. Orpheus and Eurydice provided Scottish poetry with a model blend of intellectual and emotional appeal. Although not as imposing in its structure or development, Orpheus is based on a design similar to Dante's. The Testament of Cresseid continues the tradition of learning established in his other poems, but shows the finest human sympathy for the fate of the fallen heroine. Along with Orpheus, it explores psychological development of character, especially with regard to love and maturity. The shorter poems exemplify Henryson's debt to medieval traditions, but they also show the synthetic genius which marks the best poetry of all ages.

Henryson's general strengths are now widely recognized. His love and understanding of his fellowman are perhaps the foremost qualities in his verse that have attracted generations of readers. He was not just “a good person to know,”¹ but he was a man who apparently achieved true charity at least in his poetry. For the medieval church, caritas, the general love of one's fellowman, was a virtue always to be pursued. Henryson's caritas seems to remain directly connected with the religious attitudes and didactic techniques that were its roots. His style, which is outstanding among the Makars, also shows the influence of instructional literature. He generally avoids the flash of aureation for the plainer but still striking colloquialisms of the native Scots tradition, the Latin in the common vocabulary, and his own occasional coinages. The simplicity of his style has sometimes led him to be undervalued, but his work shows the deeper complexity of finely polished plain and middle style.

Henryson's rationalism and use of classical resources should also not be overlooked. As a precursor of the Renaissance, he shows evidence of the humanistic love of classical learning which was to mark the literary production of the later period. But his learning is never obtrusive, though it is always evident. His rationalism, particularly in its reliance on right reason and the fashion in which it is blended into his theology, looks backward to the twelfth century and forward to the seventeenth. The rational element in Henryson's theology is one of the most distinctive aspects of his thought.

With all of the reasons for Henryson's importance and lasting value as a poet, his relative neglect by later generations appears all the more remarkable. Doubtless he exercised considerable influence through Thynne's edition of Chaucer. We now know that Heywood was apparently influenced by him in A Woman Killed with Kindness,² but it is impossible to tell for certain how many literary men believed The Testament of Cresseid to be Chaucer's and how many found their concept of Cresseid's character was shaped by Henryson's poem as well as the Troilus. For the most part, however, after his death he was known as the author of Robene and Makyne³ one of the pastorals in the development of a tradition that led to The Shepherd's Calender. It is true that he was well known to many of his contemporaries: Dunbar, for instance, lists him along with the notice of his death in his poem on the Makars. His influence on Dunbar, however, seems relatively slight. Perhaps more affected was Gavin Douglas, translator of the Aeneid; in Douglas' heavily alliterative description of winter (Prologue, VII), Witting contends that one is “forcibly reminded of Henryson's verse portrait of Saturn.”⁴ Beyond this, however, all of the Makars were affected by Henryson's impact on the development of the Middle Scots language. Henryson's style was closer to common speech in its diction for the most part than Dunbar's. The language and metric forms he uses largely reflect the same “homely realism” as his use of descriptive detail. In his preservation of colloquial elements in literary Middle Scots, Henryson provided a standard for later generations to emulate. It is a language similar to his, not Dunbar's, that appears in poems of Ramsay and Burns.

In both language and subject matter, Henryson appears to have influenced Allan Ramsay. The strength of Ramsay's verse is largely in the direct and precise nature of his diction. Much of the force of Ramsay's word choice can be attributed to his knowledge and imitation of older poems such as those he published in Ever Green. Among these poems were Henryson's Robene and Makyne and two of the fables. Such influence, generalized though it might have been, also appears as Wittig suggests in the art “of suggesting the tenderness that underlies the hard outer surface,”⁵ a quality which Ramsay clearly shows in his apostrophe to his book and in some of his poems based on folk sources. Insofar as Ramsay attempts to find roots in the Scottish peasantry, he makes use of techniques which he also admired in Henryson.

Probably the most famous culmination of the tradition of Henryson is to be found in the work of Robert Burns. Burns uses the same kind of blunt, clear diction; although he is often archaic he seldom tends to use euphemisms or Latin decorations. Perhaps most important is Burns' interest in similar subjects, treated in a similar manner. “To A Louse” and “To A Mouse” both share with Henryson's fables distrust of pretension, championing of the underdog, pity, and sad, wise understanding. Burns would have had available to him ”The Lion and the Mouse” and a variant version of “The Two Mice” in Ramsay's Ever Green. Similarities between the tone and structure of Burns' fables and those of Henryson make it clear that Burns was profoundly influenced by the tradition which also inspired Henryson. The general similarities in disposition are unmistakable, as is the interest in folklore and native traditions. The contempt for hypocrisy, especially in members of religious orders, marks the social satire of both. Throughout the poetry of both there is also a democratic spirit often coupled with a direct approach to God. As Lindsay has shown, there seems little doubt that Burns was specifically influenced by Henryson.⁶

Henryson's emphasis on the dignity of the lower classes even appears in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, but it is not his influence on the nineteenth century that is outstanding. Henryson's impact on the present seems sure to bring forth even more remarkable results in the future. It was not until 1865 that David Laing published his landmark edition of Henryson's poems and reviewed the Henryson canon along with all the evidence relative to his biography. Although Laing was carried too far into the realm of speculation in his attempt to identify facts about the author's life, his work was invaluable. Appreciation of Henryson gradually began to increase, and, with the work of G. Gregory Smith on the Scottish Text Society edition of the poet's works in 1908, a more important place for him seemed assured. Unfortunately, critical acceptance was late in coming, partially because he has been overshadowed by Dunbar. In 1916, in fact, Neilson and Webster could write “it is doubtful whether there is in the whole of English literature a case of neglected genius so remarkable as that of Henryson.”⁷

The neglect of Henryson's writings has been much remedied already. Numerous editions of the works, three major volumes of criticism, and a large number of articles have helped to make the public familiar with his genius. As his renown has spread so, likely, will his influence. In his edition of Henryson's poems Hugh MacDiarmid takes note of Henryson's neglect and corrects his own error in creating the battle cry of the recent Scottish Renaissance. When modern Scottish literature was trying to escape “quaintness” and “provinciality,” he coined a phrase to give young writers a goal: “Not Burns—Dunbar!” MacDiarmid admits his mistake and asserts: “I can now wish that in the early twenties I had chosen Henryson rather than Dunbar.”⁸ Such too are the sentiments expressed by many modern critics and students of Scottish literature. Dunbar, despite his brilliance, does not wear nearly so well as Henryson. The sparkle of Dunbar's satires is attractive, but it is no match for the mature wisdom of Henryson's fables.

But in addition to being a master of wisdom literature, Henryson has many other gifts. In his description of the court of the gods in The Testament of Cresseid, there is as much stylistic brilliance as to be found in any of his Scottish contemporaries or successors. In both grandiose descriptions of the heavens and their inhabitants and realistic portrayals of poverty and disease, Henryson has an eye for details that capture the reader's imagination.

The salient characteristic of his verse is not its folksy wisdom or its stylistic brilliance; instead it is his humane love of his fellowman. If at times he seems stern, it is because he cares how other human beings affect one another. He is not a student of speculative ethics; for him ethics and morality must be judged by their human results. And it is this concrete sense of morality that is the key to Henryson's synthetic genius. He adopts from the changing climate of ideas surrounding him those elements which fit his world view, and in the poetry that world view is built on love. He accepts medieval notions of God and charity, but he accepts them not simply as matters of faith; rather it is because they have practical human results. If avarice is bad, he judges it so not because it is one of an abstract list of Seven Deadly Sins but because it results in permanent damage to the greedy person and those he victimizes. He uses a similar basis for judging lechery; Cresseid's sins are not merely sins because the church so pronounced them. She has in fact done considerable harm to her lover and herself and must be judged by natural laws no more charitably than she is judged by Henryson's court of the gods.

The ease with which Henryson introduces elements of the new humanism into his medieval values is not surprising. With their emphasis on specific human acts and the importance of human values and ideas, the new humanists are very close to Henryson's sense of ethics in his mature works. Like the doctrine of charity found in medieval religious thought, the tenets of humanistic thought became an integral part of the climate of ideas during the period of Henryson's birth and maturity.

Henryson has several roles in the history of British culture and literature. He is a major link between the Scottish literary tradition and the influences of England and the Continent. He was perhaps the most skillful poet writing in Britain during a century when England and Scotland alike were being changed by intellectual and spiritual forces which culminated in the Renaissance. He has become a source of pride and tradition for later generations of Scottish poets in search of their heritage. Finally, he is an excellent poet, capable of verses which touch both intellect and emotions; and his gift for poetry transcends the boundaries of time and place.

Notes

1. Maurice Lindsay, A Book of Scottish Verse (Oxford, 1967), p. xvii.

2. John J. McDermott, “Henryson's Testament of Cresseid and Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness,” Renaissance Quarterly 10 (1967), 16-21.

3. Henderson, [T. F., Scottish Vernacular Literature, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh, 1910)] pp. 118-19.

4. Wittig, [Kurt, The Scottish Tradition in Literature (Edinburgh, 1958)] p. 79.

5. Ibid., p. 167.

6. Maurice Lindsay, Robert Burns (London, 1968), p. 129.

7. W. A. Neilson and K. G. T. Webster, Chief British Poets of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Boston, 1916), p. v.

8. Hugh MacDiarmid, ed., Henryson (Baltimore, 1973), p. 9.