66 mightier than his sword, even to the slaying of her" haughty brother." Yet we find in one of his other poems that tragedy came to the Poet's door in grim reality— he lost a son, Captain John Mackenzie, who in 1809 fell leading a forlorn hope in battle. Many who in these nearer days have drank the same bitter cup, will read with a deep understanding this tender verse of the forgotten poet of the Manse of Grey Galloway : "Shade of my dear departed boy, Say what the cause can be That I can sing of others' woes, Their hopes, their fears, their griefs disclose, But cannot sing of thee? My wild harp grovelling on the ground, 16 Pollitt Street, Barnsley. DAVIDSON COOK, F.S.A. BURNS AND CREECH. FF ROM all that can be gathered from what is recorded of him, William Creech, Burns's Edinburgh publisher, appears to have been a man possessing many admirable qualities, none of which specially fitted him for the proper conducting of a publishing or any other business. He was dilatory and procrastinating, naturally averse to the routine work of business, which he left entirely in the hands of subordinates, and spent his time in holding levées in his private residence with probable customers of literary predilections, which were usually adjourned to his place of business each day as occasion dictated. All accounts agree that he had a keen eye for his own interests, and could drive a hard bargain when it came to be a question of money-so much so that he was reputed stingy and the reverse of punctual in the payment of his liabilities. That Burns was dissatisfied with the treatment accorded him is evident from the language he uses in several of his letters complaining of the difficulty he experienced in obtaining a final settlement with Creech, who kept him hanging about Edinburgh for months with fair promises which were repeatedly broken, and consequently again and again upset the arrangements he had made to leave the city lest it might be said he had out-stayed his welcome. Moreover, the fact that Burns had no other resource to fall back upon to defray the expense of maintaining himself in Edinburgh, showed a want of consideration on the part of Creech totally indefensible. The money received for the copyright must have been wellnigh exhausted by the end of 1787, and we can guess how the prospect of running into debt through no fault of his own would affect the independent spirit of Burns. That he did not submit to Creech's inconsiderate treatment without protest is made manifest by the letters referred to. He wrote him more than once in sharply pointed terms, he tells us, and received in reply communications which, he leads us to believe, were not uniformly in an apologetic vein. What were the exact terms in which each expressed himself we know not, for they have never been vouchsafed to the public. Dr Currie, who apparently perused the correspondence, remarks that he could find no proof in it of illusage of the Poet by Creech; and it is said he submitted it to Margaret Chalmers, who advised him to destroy it, which was accordingly done. This, as we take it, refers only to the Burns side of the correspondence. The other, we have somewhere seen it stated, is still in the possession of Creech's descendants; if so, the obvious way of proving the correctness of Dr Currie's verdict is to publish the letters received by Creech, for the purpose of making clear whether Burns's grounds of complaint were justifiable or not. Creech's delay in coming to terms had other and more deplorable results. If Burns had been enabled 66 to adhere to the time-table of engagements he had drawn out in 1787, the Clarinda" entanglement would never have had a beginning. He had returned from Ayrshire to settle finally with Creech, and intended to leave the city at the beginning of December. On the 4th of that month he was introduced, in Miss Nimmo's house, to Mrs M. Lehose; the accident to his leg happened a day or two afterwards, and this led to the " Clarinda correspondence which was carried on during the period of his confinement to his room. To comment at length on this passage in the Poet's life would be out of place here. Suffice it to say that he left Mauchline in 1786, with the certificate of bachelorhood in his pocket granted by Mr Auld, who was kept in ignorance of his irregular marriage with Jean Armour; and this may have had the effect of unsettling his mind on the validity of said marriage, and leading him to believe that he was still a single man. His letter to Ainslie of 3rd March 1788, however, clearly proves that he was ever haunted with the gravest doubts of its reliability. When the real state of matters was revealed to Mr Auld, and the private marriage publicly declared in 1788, the Sessional reproof was confined to the irregularity of the marriage, from which it followed that all Jean's children were born in lawful wedlock. Burns's relations with " Clarinda" have been so often referred to by his censors to his disadvantage that this fact alone gives to Creech's dilatory habits a sinister significance which otherwise would have given them less importance in the Burns narrative. Through the courtesy of Mr W. H. Turner, a leading member of the Sunderland Burns Club, we were, many years ago, put in possession of a correspondence on " Burns. and Creech," which had appeared in the columns of a local newspaper, and which we have kept in retentis ever since in the hope that further information on the subject might be discovered during the intervening years; but as that hope has been disappointed, we deem it incumbent on us to lay the said correspondence before our readers. Both disputants state their cases so lucidly and moderately that nothing need be added to aid the reader in coming to the right conclusion. We append a short sketch of Creech's life as an appropriate preface to the discussion. William Creech was born at Newbattle, near Edinburgh, on 21st April, 1745. He was the son of the Rev. Wm. Creech, parish minister of Newbattle, and Mary Buler, his wife, an English lady, related to an aristocratic family in Devonshire. His father died at the early age of forty, a few months after the birth of his son, leaving a widow and two young daughters. both of whom died in 1749. Mrs Creech retired to Dalkeith, and afterwards removed to Perth, where the education of her son was begun. Returning to Dalkeith, he was put under the tuition of Dr Robertson, minister of Kilmarnock, the sons of the Earl of Glencairn being his fellow-pupils, with whom he contracted a warm and lasting friendship. After completing his education, he removed with his mother to Edinburgh, where he was assumed a partner in the firm of Kincaid and Fell, printers to the King, ultimately succeeding to the business on the retiral of the seniors. At one time he attended the medical classes of the University of Edinburgh with a view to qualifying for that profession, but that idea was abandoned, and he went to London to gain more experience in the bookselling trade. In 1770, he made the "grand tour" through Holland, France, Switzerland, and Germany with Lord Kilmaurs. eldest son of the Earl of Glencairn, and returned home well fitted to engage in the line of business he had chosen for himself. He became publisher for most of the literati of the period, and founded a new era in the literature of Edinburgh by the publication of the periodicals The Mirror and The Lounger, both of which enjoyed great popularity. He became a magistrate of the city in 1788, and filled the office of Lord Provost from 1811 to 1813. He was highly respected in literary and public life, and still more distinguished in social circles, in which he was universally admired for his never-failing humour and engaging manners We extract the following from an obituary notice which appeared in the Courant of 19th January, 1815. He was an excellent and an elegant scholar; and although, from the extent of his business as one of the most eminent booksellers of his day, and his many social engagements, he had little leisure to direct his mind to any deliberate literary work, yet the frequent light pieces and essays which came from his pen evinced the elegance of his taste, his knowledge of character, and his capability of a higher attainment in composition had he chosen to aim at it. Several of these essays were afterwards collected into a volume entitled Edinburgh Fugitive Pieces. He will be long remembered by the numerous circles to whom his many pleasing qualities so much endeared him, and who now so sincerely regret that he is lost to them for ever." Mr Creech was never married. During his term of magistracy, a woman of the town, who called herself Margaret Burns, but whose real name was Mathews, a native of Durham, was charged with keeping a disorderly |