The Kilmarnock Burns
FOR the benefit of " the genuine Burnsian bibliophile'" Dr. Ross has soilght to' bring together all. the information bearing upon a famous first edition. He ranges from contem- porary appreciations to the corrective notes supplied by Burns's latest biographer, Mr. Franklyn B. Snyder. Inevitably the old material is so familiar as to be threadbare, while the new could be compiled by any student in a short time having the easily available material before him. Comments by the Rev. Dr. Blacklock and centenary articles in The Glasgow Herald in 1876 were at no time inspiriting reading and age has not unstaled them. Neither is the new of an absorbing nature. But it is convenient to have old and new bound up together with lists of prices obtained by the Kilmarnock Burns at different dates.
The author's own contributions are sentimental rather than scholarly. _Ile solicits us to observe him as he presses
his lips " at random " to some of the poorest lines his idol ever Wrote, merely because they are in the first imprint. He reasserts the silly tradition that Burns went into print in order to pay his passage to Jamaica. The money brought by the success of the Kilmarnock book did enable Burns to defray the projected passage instead of relying on an advance from his prospective employer. But he had not expected to Make a penny out of publication. Money was not among his motives for publishing. .
- In his account of known existing copies Dr. Ross omits one, imperfect but genuine, which is in the possession .of the descendants of the Rev. Peter Hately Waddell. In the same hands are the famous spurious portraits of the poet and his son which Dr. Waddell discovered in Ireland.
C. C.
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