Romantic History

A range of elements in Burton’s multi-volume History are analysed as reflecting the characteristics of nineteenth-century romantic literature. These include the habit of ‘performative’ authorship. In addition, many events are conveyed in passages whose narrative incorporates romantic language and associations, including allusions to romantic literature, particularly the works of Walter Scott. Besides romantic content – at times incorporated despite the author’s explicit scepticism on their sources – it is argued his approach includes an identifiably romantic methodology. This is characterised by an emphasis on attending to the actual words and language of the sources, and a search, partly achieved through such attention, for the ‘spirit of the times’: the past should be understood on its own terms. The extent to which this approach involves the inclusion of source passages in the Scots language, and in the characteristic expressions of Scottish religiosity, is highlighted. The formative influences shaping these features in Burton’s work are then traced in the manuscript evidence of his literary juvenilia; his early familiarity with romantic fiction and poetry, particularly Scott; his admiration for T. B. Macaulay and Macaulay’s early essay on History; and his enthused response to the historiographic approach of P.F. Tytler.