belief these manuscripts are not beyond recall.]-Glasgow Herald, November 12th, 1913. THE GLENRIDDEL MSS. How MATTERS NOW STAND. I am able to state definitely (the London correspondent of the Scotsman says) that there is yet a possibility of the valuable Glenriddel MSS. of Robert Burns being saved for Scotland. It will be remembered that the documents were sold by the Committee of the Liverpool Athenæum in July last, through Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson, & Hodge. The purchaser was Mr J. Hornstein, the well-known bookseller, of 110 Victoria Street, London, who has sold many precious Burns MSS. to America. It is true that he has sent the Glenriddel MSS. across the Atlantic, but since they left this country strong representations have been made to him from Scotland. Mr Hornstein has listened with sympathy to the earnest Scottish appeal, and he is doing everything in his power to secure for Scotland the option of acquiring the collection, the proper resting-place for which is in some museum North of the Tweed-preferably the Burns Museum at Alloway. If this can be effected, it will remain with Scotsmen to buy the MSS. at a reasonable market price.-Evening Citizen, November 13th, 1913. THE GLENRIDDEL MSS. The special committee appointed at the annual meeting of the Burns Federation met last night in the Rooms of the National Burns Club, Douglas Street, Glasgow, to consider the latest phase of the question regarding the Glenriddel manuscripts. Mr Duncan M'Naught, President of the Burns Federation, presided, and others present were Dr William Wallace, Dr George Neilson, Mr Thomas Amos, Secretary of the Burns Federation; Mr Geo. A. Innes, Treasurer of the Federation; Mr J. C. Ewing, Mr Alex. Pollock, President of the Burns Clubs' Association of Glasgow ; and Mr J. Jeffrey Hunter, Secretary of the Association. The meeting was held in private. At the close it was intimated that on the suggestion of the President the meeting stood adjourned in view of the present position of affairs in connection with the MSS. It was announced that the two volumes of manuscripts were sold by Messrs Sotheby, the auctioneers in whose hands the books were placed by the Directors of the Liverpool Athenæum, to Mr Joseph Hornstein, bookseller in London. By him they were despatched to the United States, where he has several clients for literary manuscripts, and the books are still there. It is understood that they still await a buyer, though the name of a prominent American millionaire has been mentioned in connection with the transaction.-Glasgow Herald, November 15th, 1913. CHASING THE GLENRIDDEL MSS. There is as yet no development with regard to the Glenriddel MSS. Shortly after he procured them through Messrs Sotheby, Mr Hornstein, the well-known book-dealer of Victoria Street, sent the volumes to his agent in New York, who at once tried to place them before an important client particularly interested in Burns items. The client was travelling in Western America, and time being of consequence, a messenger with the Glenriddel MSS. speeded after him. Now Mr Hornstein is doing all in his power to meet the views of the committee, over which Lord Provost Stevenson presided, by intercepting the messenger before an offer has actually been made, or, failing that, again to obtain an option on the MSS. In a few days he expects to be in a position to give further information.--Glasgow Herald, November 21st, 1913. BURNS AND THE PRESS. OST eminent literary men, whether novelists, poets, M or essayists, are intimately associated with the periodical press. In its columns their productions are frequently offered to the public for the first time, and their subsequent embodiment in books often depends on the approval which has been given to them on their appearance in this form. The connection of authors with journalism is no new thing; it is as old as journalism itself, and one can hardly conceive of things having ever been otherwise. Litterateurs find in newspapers and magazines a ready means of disposing of such of their writings as are of current interest, and the editors of the principal journals are quick to invite contributions from distinguished authors, whose names, outside altogether of the subjects which they consider, are sufficient to attract, and perhaps to retain, new readers. Burns shared in this general experience of those who have gained distinction in literature, except on the one important point of payment for work done, a phase of the subject which will be dealt with in its proper place. His connection with the press, and also with pressmen, began when he first visited Edinburgh in 1786, and it continued, though never in a regular way, during the remaining years of his life. It is the object of this article to show what that connection was. The subject is not an easy one to deal with adequately, and though all the biographers of Burns have said something about it, I am not aware that any writer has hitherto devoted exclusive attention to it. "The difficulty of writing the story of his connection with the periodical publications of his day," says Dr William Wallace, himself a journalist of great repute, "is due partly to his extreme reticence, and partly to the fact that last century (these words were penned in 1896) little attempt was made to preserve for future reference the newspapers of the time." Burns did not aspire so early as most poets to see their verses in "good black print he is a rare instance of one who possessed poetic ability, and who yet never thought of sending his effusions to the periodical literature of the day before trying his fortune as the author of a book-but he did not abstain from this form of publicity because the subject had never been suggested to him. Richard Brown, his Irvine companion, seems to have been the first who thought that Burns should print his poems in this way. "Do you recollect," said Burns in a letter to Brown, dated Edinburgh, 1787, "a Sunday we spent together in the Eglinton Woods? You told me on my repeating some verses to you that you wondered I could resist the temptation of sending verses of such merit to a magazine. It was from this remark I derived that idea of my own pieces which encouraged me to endeavour at the character of a poet." Burns does not seem to have sent any of his work to a newspaper until December, 1786, when, shortly after his arrival in Edinburgh to arrange for a second edition of his poems, "To a Haggis" appeared in the columns of The Caledonian Mercury. JAMES SIBBALD AND 'THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.” Several newspapers and magazines were published in Edinburgh in 1786, and proprietors and editors were included among the friends Burns made on his first visit to the capital. He does not seem to have met James Sibbald, the owner of The Edinburgh Magazine, which, in its issue of October, 1786, contained the first review of the poems, followed by other notices equally favourable in November and December. He was, however, so deeply conscious of the encouragement given that he felt obliged to thank Sibbald by letter, and early in the following year, from his lodging in the Lawnmarket, he addressed him as follows: 66 So little am I acquainted with the modes and manners of the more public and polished walks of life, that I often feel myself much embarrassed how to express the feelings of my heart, particularly gratitude. Rude am I in speech, And little blest in the set polish'd phrase ; For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith, And, therefore, little can I grace my cause In speaking for myself. The warmth with which you have befriended an obscure man and young Author in your last three Magazines-I can only say, Sir, I feel the weight of the obligation and wish I could express my sense of it." DAVID RAMSAY AND HENRY MACKENZIE. With David Ramsay, the proprietor of The Edinburgh Courant, in which the "Peregrinations" of Captain Grose were first printed under the nom de plume "Thomas A. Linn," Burns was on intimate terms, and while he addressed no letters to this journalistic friend he made several allusions to him in his correspondence with Peter Hill, the Edinburgh bookseller. Thus, in an Ellisland letter, undated, but written, it is supposed, in March, 1791, Burns, in sending Hill a ewe milk cheese, enumerates the friends who are to participate in its delights :-" David Ramsay, with his Courant comes too across my recollection, and I beg," says Burns, "you will help him largely from the said ewe milk cheese to enable him to digest those damn'd bedaubing paragraphs with which he is eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so a fresh egg is a good thing; but when thrown at a man in a pillory it does not at all improve his figure, not to 66 |