ABSTRACT
Wordsworth, Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns (1816); review by John Wilson, [Blackwood’s] Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, I (June 1817), 261–266. This issue of Blackwood’s appeared under the old regime of Messrs. Pringle and Cleghorn, when Wilson was merely a contributor. Note the statement that the contributor is writing “from England,” a fiction probably agreed to by Wilson and Blackwood (without informing the editors) to protect Wilson from the charge of traducing Wordsworth, his old friend and patron. The “blue cover” of the Edinburgh Review (p. 265, col. 2) was an important symbol of the time, for the buff and blue colors were those of the Whigs in England (as of the Continental Army in the American Revolution), in opposition to the red of the Tories.
