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The Club meets on the first Wednesday of each month (from October till March inclusive) in White & Smith's Trades House Restaurant, 89 Glassford Street, at 8 o'clock. Harmony at 8.45, to which members have the privilege of introducing friends.

M'Lellan Cup Bowling Competition. -This Competition takes place in June, and members desirous of taking part in the game should send in their names to the Secretary not later than 1st May (Entry Money, 2/).

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REVIEWS.

CLOSEBURN (DUMFRIESSHIRE): REMINISCENT, HISTORIC, AND TRADITIONAL. By R. M. F. WATSON. Glasgow: Inglis, Ker & Co., 105 West George Street.

WE heartily welcome this labour of love on the part of Mr. Watson, who is a native of the parish which has acquired additional fame from being so closely connected with the Dumfries period of the career of the National Bard. As a parish history, written not in the dry-as-dust but in interesting and popular style, Mr. Watson's work takes a high place amongst the literary efforts of its class, which we are glad to see are increasing year by year. Though almost every page teems with information and old-world lore, specially valuable from the local point of view, our interest centres in the Burnsiana contained in the chapters dealing with the "Eminent Men" of the locality. Mr. Watson's Burns notes are extensive, well-authenticated, and many of them entirely original. In the last-named category fall to be placed his account of the Bacons of Brownhill Inn, the landlady of which, it appears, was sister to Willie Stewart, and consequently the aunt of "Lovely Polly Stewart," whose untoward fate is chronicled in detail; as well as a full account of the dispute in which Burns interested himself on behalf of his friend James Clarke, master of Moffat Grammar School, which ended in the removal of the latter to Forfar Burgh School, from which place he forwarded in 1796, by request of the dying poet, two instalments of the debt he incurred to Burns when resisting the efforts of the Earl of Hopetoun to remove him from the office of schoolmaster at Moffat. The incident of "The Whistle" is also treated of in light of the evidence of Hunter, the blacksmith, who was footman at Glenriddel at the time of the occurrence. Kirsty Flint is also duly honoured, as she well deserves to be, as melodytester to the Poet when he wedded his words to music. In connection with this Mr. Watson relates a story, on the authority of Dr. Ramage, which we do not remember to have seen elsewhere. On one occasion, after Burns had listened to a rendering of "Roy's Wife" from the lips of Miss Yorston (afterwards Mrs. Lawson of Nithbank), a niece of the minister of Closeburn, he exclaimed—“Oh! dinna leave him lamenting that way, let him console himself thus

"Roy's age is three times mine,

I'm sure his years can not be mony,

An' when that he is dead an' gane

She may repent an' tak' her Johnnie."

an addendum which Miss Yorston ever afterwards made use of when asked to sing this song.

The volume is printed and bound in most superior style, is light and easily handled, and reflects the very highest credit on the publishers. Additional value is conferred by the splendid photogravures which accompany and illustrate the text.

"TO MARY IN HEAVEN." Music by Dr. ARTHUR W. MARCHANT. Dedicated to the Members of the Burns Federation. London: W. Morley & Co.

DR. MARCHANT has been very successful with this melody, which is in the minor mode as becomes the subject. It is sweet and expressive, and the accompaniment is classic and effective. The objection to the old air is that, while essentially Scottish, it is jerky and trying to the singer, like many others of the ancient type. Dr. Marchant's setting should do much to popularise the exquisite lyric which hitherto has been mostly relegated to the reciter.

NOTES AND QUERIES.

THE TWA DOGS.

BURNS AND CERVANTES.

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REPEATEDLY in his letters Burns speaks of his admiration of the "imcomparable humour of Smollett." Besides the works mentioned he had Humphry Clinker," and it seems very probable that his "Don Quixote was Smollett's translation, published in 1755, which Burns would likely prefer to that by Charles Jervas, issued in 1742, though Smollett stole unblushingly from Jervas. Burns has expressed no opinion regarding "Don Quixote," but the question arises as to whether he knew any other of the works of Cervantes. The following curious circumstance seems to indicate that Burns may have known at least one of Cervantes' "Exemplary Novels. The notion is not put forward as a charge of plagiarism, but rather as giving another instance of the receptivity of Burns's mind, and his quickness at taking up a suggestion and making it peculiarly his own.

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There has always been a suspicion of mystery about Burns's conception of the poem, The Twa Dogs. In a letter to John Richmond, dated 17th February, 1786, Burns writes :-"I have likewise completed my poem on the dogs, but have not shown it to the world." As Burns had not seen Richmond from the preceding November, it is plain that he had then spoken to him about this poem. Gilbert Burns asserts that the poem was "composed after the resolution of publishing was nearly taken." intention of the Poet had been to commemorate the death of his favourite dog Luath, by writing certain "Stanzas to the Memory of a Quadruped Friend." There is no hint as to any place where Burns could have found a precedent for his conversational dogs.

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In 1741 a very rare work was published in London with the imprint declaring that it was "Printed by H. Kent, for Ward and Chandler, at the Ship, without Temple Bar; and at their shops in York and Scarborough. The title reads thus-"Two Humorous Novels, viz.: I. A Diverting Dialogue between Scipio and Bergansa, two dogs belonging to the Hospital of the Resurrection, in the City of Valladolid, giving an Account of their Lives and various Adventures; interspers'd with their Reflexions and Sentiments on the Lives, Characters, Humours, and Employments of the different Masters they liv'd with. II. The Comical History of Rinconete and Cortadillo. Both written by the celebrated Author of Don Quixote,' and now first Translated from the Spanish Original." The name of the translator is not given, but the work is dedicated to Philip, Earl of Chesterfield; Theophilus, Earl of Huntingdon, and Rowland Cotton, Esq., Governors; the Rev. Mr. Fletcher, the Rev. Mr. Beach, and Mr. John Bower, Masters of Repton School, in the County of Derby. The translator describes himself as a former pupil of that school. As both Creech and Hill were commissioned by Burns to purchase books for him in London, it is quite possible that this book may have been thus acquired. But even though Burns had never seen the complete work, the descriptive title would have afforded a suggestion for his famous dialogue between Cæsar and Luath.

The method adopted by Cervantes with his two dogs is precisely the same as that followed by Burns. Scipio and Berganza were the watchdogs engaged at the Hospital, hence it was at night only that they could meet for conversation.-[People's Friend (6th Jan., 1902)].

BURNS AND THE FIRST STEAMBOAT.

THE following appeared in the " 'Glasgow Evening Times" of 16th October, 1901 :

"Lecturing on 'Seafaring Life-Past and Present' at Oban the other evening, Mr. Mackenzie, of the Sailors' Rest, Dunkerque, mentioned, what will be new to many, that Robert Burns, the poet, was the first to fire and engineer the first steamer."

The paragraph is certainly misleading, to say the least of it. The facts are these: Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton, Burns's landlord, took a great interest in mechanical navigation, and experimented on a small scale on Dalswinton Loch with paddles driven by hand before the year 1788. When Symington was engaged in solving the question by the aid of steam, Mr. Miller assisted him, and an experiment with steam paddles, attached to a small pleasure-boat, was successfully carried out at Dalswinton on 14th November, 1788. In James Nasmyth's autobiography it is stated that Burns and Lord Brougham were present on the occasion. Though the statement, so far as the latter is concerned, cannot be received without reservation, it is not at all improbable that the Poet was invited by his landlord to witness the success of the invention, and imagination is free to embroider the incident as it chooses. Symington's further experiments on the Forth and Clyde Canal were carried out at Mr. Miller's expense, but it would appear that he withdrew his patronage before the final successes of Bell and Fulton.--[ED.]

THE following is an extract from “The Unpublished Letters of William Cowper," by Thomas Wright.

COWPER ON BURNS.

"Still more interesting, however, are Cowper's remarks on Burns, which find place in a letter to Lady Hesketh (April 12, 1788), and Scotchmen will be amused at his opinion of the medium in which Burns's poems were written: :

"It is true that he was a ploughman when he composed them; but being a ploughman in Scotland, where the lowest of the people have yet some benefits of education, makes the wonderment on that account the less. His poetical talent has, however, done that for him which such a talent has done for few: it has mended his circumstances, and of a ploughman has made him a farmer. I think him an extraordinary genius, and the facility with which he rhymes and versifies, in a kind of measure not in itself very easy to execute, appears to me remarkable. But at the same time both his measure and his language are so terribly barbarous that, although he has some humour and more good sense, he is not a pleasing poet to an English reader. They came into my hands at a time when I was perfectly idle, and, being so, had an opportunity to study his language, of which, by the help of a glossary at the book's tail, I made myself master. But he whose hands are not as vacant as mine were at that moment must have more resolution than I naturally possess, or he will never account it worth his while to study a dialect so disgusting.'

[GEO. AIKMAN, A. R.S.]

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