to be reasoned with than is generally thought. Strong and indelible impressions are to be made before the mind be agitated and ruffled by the numerous train of distracting cares and unruly passions, whereby it is frequently rendered almost unsusceptible of the principles and precepts of rational religion and sound morality.

But I find myself digressing again. Poor William ! then in the bloom and vigour of youth, caught a putrid fever, and in a few days, as real chief mourner, I followed his remains to the land of forgetfulness.

JOHN MURDOCH.

CANCELLED PASSAGES IN THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BURNS TO GEORGE THOMSON.

Contributed to the Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America, and printed here by kind permission of the Author and of the Association.

If any part of Robert Burns's extensive correspondence would seem to have been thoroughly edited, it is the series of letters he wrote to George Thomson in the course of his contributions to that worthy's Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs. Unlike the rest of the correspondence, this series was never dispersed. Though one letter somehow found its way into the Pickering Collection, and so into the British Museum, the remaining fifty-five continued in Thomson's possession until his death in 1851. In the following year they were bought by Lord Dalhousie, in whose collection they remained until they were acquired by Mr. J. P. Morgan. Thomson had placed the letters in the hands of Dr. Currie, the poet's first biographer, who selected mangled fragments for publication, and during their half-century at Brechin Castle they were freely accessible to Burns scholars, among them Scott Douglas and William Wallace. The former of these declared in his 1877-79 edition of the Complete Works that the letters to Thomson" are here for the first time printed exactly as they appear in the original manuscripts "-a claim which with true editorial amenity is balanced by Wallace's statement that "an examination of the letters written by Burns to George Thomson . has enabled me to reproduce this correspondence accurately for the first time."'2

Though meticulous accuracy has not been the distinguishing trait of most editors of the Burns correspondence, it would seem reasonable to suppose that,

after two such scholars as Douglas and Wallace had gleaned a field, few awns would remain for any one who followed them. Yet in their transcripts of the letters to Thomson one looks in vain for any mention of the existence in those letters of a whole series of cancelled passages. The passages are not merely cancelled; they have been almost-in a few cases wholly-obliterated by spiral sweeps of a broad-nibbed pen, and can be deciphered only after patient scrutiny with a strong reading-glass. Possibly, owing to the unequal fading of the ink, these passages are more legible to-day than they were fifty, or even thirty, years ago, but even if Douglas and Wallace were unable to read them, one is surprised at their failure to mention their existence.

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Of the fifty-five letters to Thomson in the Morgan Library, twelve, ranging in date from August, 1793, to July, 1796, contain cancelled passages which vary in length from a single word to four or five lines of manuscript, and total a little more than three hundred words. The substance of the passages, as well as the manner in which they have been cancelled, indicates that Thomson was responsible for their deletion. The only other persons who might conceivably have done it are Dr. Currie and Burns himself, and they are excluded by both the manner and the matter. When Burns had occasion to strike out anything he had written he did it as one would expect of a man of his impetuous temperament— with a single slash of the pen. Had he wished to modify or retract something he had said, he might have added a postscript, but he would never have taken the pains elaborately to blot out four or five lines. And though Dr. Currie has justly earned a bad name for his handling of the poet's letters, his actual tampering with the manuscripts was limited to bracketing passages which he intended to omit, or occasionally drawing a line through a naughty word. And that the nature of the cancelled matter is such that only Thomson could have had the

slightest interest in its suppression will be plain from a glance at the passages themselves, which here follow in chronological order. The cancelled portions are in italics, and enough of the previously published context is given to make them clear:

་

1. Opening of letter postmarked August 19 (1793):

My dear Sir,

That unlucky song, "O poortith cauld," &c. must stand as it stands-I won't put my hand to it again."Let me in this ae night "-I shall overlook. I am glad that you are pleased with my song, "Had I a cave," &c.-as I liked it myself.'..

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2. Postscript to letter of September, 1793, enclosing the first draft of "Bannockburn ":

'P.S. I shewed the air to Urbani, who was highly pleased with it. Clarke's set of the tune, with his bass, you will find in the Museum; though I am afraid that the air is not what will entitle it to a place in your elegant selection.However I am so pleased with my verses, or more properly, the Subject of my verses, that although Johnson has already given the tune a place, yet it shall appear again, set to this Song, in his next & last Volume.-"

'6

3. Long letter, about September, 1793, commenting on Thomson's list of the 75 airs he had chosen for his first three numbers:

Ye

'No. 69. Todlin Hame-Urbani mentioned an idea of his, which has long been mine; that this air is highly susceptible of pathos: accordingly, you will soon hear him, at your concert, try it to a song of mine in the Museum, Banks & Braes o' bonie Doon "-I mention this so as to make it worth your attending on Johnson [several words illegible] of the Museum, from which he will if it [words illegible] things-1 printed [words illegible] known to him, to give them material for celebrity.—'7

4. Letter of September, 1793, suggesting English sets for some of the airs which Thomson intended to publish:

The faulty line in Logan Water, I mend thus

'How can your flinty hearts enjoy

The widow's tears, the orphan's cry

The song otherwise will pass. [Words illegible] "Quaker's Wife" [words illegible] your taste.-I am pleased with my song; & very proud of my success [?] with the lovely Heroine.

You cannot, I think, insert Fye let us a' to the

Bridal, to any other words than its own.—

[Words illegible] declare off from your taste.—Toddlin hame is a song that to my taste is an exquisite production of genius. That very Stanza you dislike

"My kimmer & I lay down to sleep

is to me a piece of charming native humour.-What pleases me, as simple & naive, disgusts you as ludicrous & low.-For this reason, [a title illegible], "Fye gie me my coggie Sirs," Fye let us a' to the bridal," with several others of that cast, are, to me, highly pleasing; while, "Saw ye my father saw ye my mother " delights me with its descriptive, simple pathos.-Thus my song, "Ken ye what Meg o' the mill has gotten pleases me so much, that I cannot without [word illegible] try my hand at another song to the air; so I shall not attempt it.-I know you will laugh at all this; but, "" Ilka man wears his belt his ain gate.'

or

5. Letter of July, 1794, beginning,' Is there no news yet, my dear Sir, of Pleyel?':

'I told you that our friend Clarke is quite an enthusiast in the idea that the Air "Nansy's to the greenwood gane," is capable of sentiment & pathos in a high degree. In this, if I remember right, you did not agree with him. I intend setting my verses which I wrote & sent you, The last time I came o'er the moor for to this air; & Clarke is to take it in hand as an adagio air.”

6. Letter of 30 August, 1794:

'The last evening as I was straying out & thinking of your favorite air O'er the hills & far away-I spun the following stanzas for it.'

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7. Letter of September, 1794, enclosing Sae flaxen were her ringlets to a blackguard Irish song called Oonagh's Waterfall':

The air is charming, & I have often regretted