There are continually fresh manuscripts of Burns casting up. The most important of these that has come to light since the publication of my closing volume is a volume that has been bequeathed to the Library of Edinburgh University by the late David Laing. There appears some internal evidence that the volume had been in the hands of Sir Walter Scott and Mr Lockhart, although it seems to have been bound after 1828. There is some wretched rubbish in shape of information or memoranda said to have been derived from John Richmond on the subject of Highland Mary and also of Clarinda-very damaging to Burns's moral character, and still more to that of the women referred to These statements can be proved to be atrociously untrue, and prompted by inventive malice. They are anonymous, and no guess can be formed as to the contributor thereof. Clarinda is represented as visiting Burns in Richmond's lodgings in Lawnmarket, while we know the Poet never saw Clarinda till December, 1787, long after he had parted with Richmond, a fellow-lodger.

But some very important original MSS. of Burns are bound up there; in particular, a beautiful holograph of "The Jolly Beggars (omitting the Merry Andrew interlude).

There is also a letter addressed to the Rev. Wm. Greenfield, of 5th December, 1786, which had been in Currie's hands, but as Greenfield was then in disgrace, and no allusion to the Poet's intimacy with him could be tolerated, Dr Currie took a large section of the letter and attached it to one addressed to Mrs Dunlop, and gave it as part of the correspondence with that lady. (See letter 15th January, 1787, the whole paragraph from "You are afraid to "vengeful triumph."

Mr M'Kie has drawn my attention to a curious corruption which had long been adopted in printing one of the lines of "The Jolly Beggars." The MS. in hands of Gilbert Burns, and also the one

in Edinburgh University, read

"A pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle

Wha us'd to trysts an' fairs to driddle."

All the editions of Stewart, in Cromek's of 1810, and in Peterkin's edition, 1814 or 1815, the MS. is adhered to. But in Oliver & Co.'s edition, 1801, and in all editions of "The Jolly Beggars" printed after 1815 that I know, the corruption is adopted. The corruption has arisen through a false conception of the meaning of the word "driddle." See Cunningham's Glossary, also Waddell's, &c.-Very truly yours,

George Thomson to Alex. Peterkin.

Edinburgh, October, 1814.

MY DEAR SIR,-With reference to your enquiry respecting Mr Cromek, I have to acquaint you that he called on me, professing what he really seemed to feel, an enthusiastic admiration of the works of Burns; and after telling me that Mr Roscoe meant to have introduced him to me, asked me for a scrap of the Poet's handwriting to keep as a relique. This I gave him. After visiting me several times, he mentioned his intention of making a pilgrimage to the birthplace and the grave of Burns, which he did; and upon his return informed me that he had obtained a number of unpublished letters and verses from different friends of the Poet; that he thought of giving them to the public, and asked me to show him the MS. correspondence between the Poet and myself; thinking it likely, he said, that Dr Currie might have omitted many things deserving of publication, which he, Mr Cromek, would wish to give in his intended volume. I, of course, declined any such communication, telling him that it was my fixed purpose never to part with a single paragraph which Dr Currie had thought fit to withhold. Mr Cromek was much displeased and disappointed, and took occasion, in stronger terms than I thought warrantable, to contrast my refusal with the confidence and liberality bestowed on him by other correspondents and friends of the Poet, who in general, he said, approved highly of his project. This gave me a fair opportunity of stating to Mr Cromek that I dissented from those friends, if he were to have the power of deciding on the letters and fragments to be laid before the public; and that I never could be convinced that such a project was justifiable, or the credit of the Poet safe, unless the whole of the manuscripts, solicited and obtained by him, should be put into the hands of Gilbert Burns, the brother and natural guardian of the Poet's fame; and whose sound judgment and purity of character were the sure and proper pledges that nothing would be suffered to meet the public eye injurious to the Poet or to the feelings of individuals. To Mr Cromek, however, this was

wholly unpalatable. I then submitted to him whether his right to publish those manuscripts for his own behoof might not be questionable, and whether they did not legally belong to the Poet's family, or to Messrs Caddel & Davies ; and in any event, since profit seemed plainly to be an object to him, I requested him to consider whether that would not be increased by getting Gilbert Burns to become the editor of the volume. In reply, he maintained his own right to what he had procured by his own diligence, and told me that Gilbert Burns, however respectable, not being much a man of the world, it was quite unlikely that they should ever agree

as to the pieces proper for public esteem; and therefore, that he

would take upon himself the task of editor.

し

*

*

Yours truly,

GEORGE THOMSON.

In the Life of Allan Cunningham, by the Rev. D. Hogg (1875), Cromek is an important figure in the part of the narrative which treats of The Remains of Nithsdale and Annandale Song, which Cromek, encouraged by the success of his Reliques, published in 1810. How he was deceived by "Honest Allan," who palmed off his own compositions as veritable antiques, is well known, and the deception is made all the more heinous by the unblushing confession of the forger himself. Writing to his brother (8th September, 1810), "Honest Allan " thus unbosoms himself :

'

'Well, we have at last printed that volume of Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song.... The thing which pleases me in it, every article but two little scraps was contributed by me, both poetry and prose; you will see what the Edinburgh Review says about it, for it must be noticed, and highly too... You enquire about Cromek ? Why, my dear James, he speaks as generous words as you would wish to hear from the pulpit. Oh! the bravery of the lips and the generosity of words are the current coin with which naked bards are ever paid; and as a specimen of his critical discernment, I wrote a queer song entitled 'A Song of Fashionable Sin,' beginning—

My ladie has a golden watch,' &c.

Now, I inserted this in a newspaper. I was at Mr Cromek's, and a lady was praising it highly. He did not know it was mine, and condemned it as a base thing and of bad Scottish. I never heeded him, but marked it down as a precept that a man may talk about the thing he does not understand, and be reckoned a wise fellow too."

To his friend, George, he writes:

"You edify me by your opinion on the Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song. The critics are much of the same opinion as yourself. Your conjecture is not very far wrong as to my share

of the book.

Was it the duty of a son to show the nakedness of his own land? No, my dear friend. I went before and made the path straight. I planted here and there a flower-dropped here and there a honeycomb-plucked away the bitter gourd—cast some jewels in the byepaths and in the fields, so that the traveller might find them, and wonder at the richness of the land that produced them. Nor did I drop them in vain. Pardon the confession, and keep it a secret."

Elsewhere, to the same correspondent, he writes:

"I was so extremely bashful when I came to London that I really could not utter a known falsehood above three or four times a day. Now I could assert in the face of a congregation that the sun derives his light from the moon. . . . Now, you must mind one thing, and I beseech you mind it, that these songs and ballads (the Remains), being written for imposing on the country as the reliques of other years, I was obliged to have recourse to occasional coarseness," &c., &c.

But he did not take everybody in; the "Remains were ever as suspect as Macpherson's Ossian, though Cromek died in the innocent belief that they were genuine. Whatever profit accrued from the Reliques must have been swallowed up by his second venture, for Mr Hogg informs us that he was not in good circumstances in his later years, and died a poor man. No man could have accomplished what he did without the enthusiasm which Thomson credits him with ; as for " profit for his own behoof," it was a necessity in his case, for travelling was expensive in those days, and his resources as a working engraver must have been limited. The recovery of the Glenriddel MSS. (not the Gribbel volumes) and the consequent exposure of his editorial misdemeanours by Mr James Dick, of Newcastle, utterly discredited that part of his work. It is charitable to suppose that his motive in taking liberties with the text was to supplement and improve the Clenriddel notes to the songs, and the excuse may be advanced that in doing so he, like Currie, was only following contemporary editorial example. If he made a collection of Burns MSS.-and there is reason to believe that he did

--it would be interesting to know if they were dispersed or are still in the hands of his descendants. In an informing

66

article on "Burns and Cromek, which appeared in the Glasgow Herald in January of the present year, the author, Mr Davidson Cook, informs us that Jean (Burns's widow) presented Cromek with the Poet's copy of Milton, in two vols., which bear the Poet's autograph and a note to the effect that they were presented to him by Lord Monboddo. Concerning these volumes, all the information given by Cromek's son is in these general terms : Comus and Lycidas have a great number of passages marked by the Poet with inverted commas, and one word misprinted has been corrected by him.” The representatives of Cromek's son (Mr Thomas Hartley Cromek) presented the volumes to the Library of St. Paul's School, London, where Milton was educated. Books annotated by Burns have a special value in showing his critical powers and literary tastes. A reflex of his thoughts on the text of Milton would be enlightening, and we trust some Burnsian in the metropolis will take the trouble to examine the volumes and report.

EDITOR.