common spite-also sent the rubbish to Captain Miller, PINNED M.P., in May 1794, with a view to printing in The Morning To MRS. Chronicle, under the signature 'Nith'; but it was treated RIDDELL'S as it deserved. It was inscribed in the Glenriddell CARRIAGE Book, presumably after Captain Riddell, as a result of the estrangement (see ante, p. 420, Prefatory Note to Impromptu on Mrs. Riddell's Birthday), had returned that volume to its author.

TO DR. MAXWELL

PUBLISHED in Currie (1800). A copy, sent to George Thomson in September 1794, is at Brechin Castle; another, sent to Mrs. Dunlop, at Lochryan. To Thomson Burns wrote:-' Dr. Maxwell-the identical Dr. Maxwell whom Burke mentioned in the House of Commons-was the physician who seemingly saved her [Miss Staig] from the grave.' To Mrs. Dunlop he gave a fuller description, both of Dr. Maxwell and of the circumstances of the lady's illness and recovery (Lochryan мss.). For Miss Staig, see Prefatory Note to Young Jessie Blooms (Vol. iii.).

Dr. William Maxwell, son of a noted Jacobite, James Maxwell of Kirkconnell, was born in 1760. He was educated at the Jesuits' College at Dinant, and afterwards studied medicine at Paris. In 1792 he started a London subscription for the French Jacobins, and he is the Englishman said in Burke's speech (28th December 1792) to have ordered three thousand daggers at Birmingham. As a National Guard he was present at the execution of Louis XVI., and is reported to have dipped his handkerchief in the King's blood. When Burns wrote, he had just returned to Scotland and started a practice in Dumfries. Burns and he became fast friends. He attended Burns during the last illness, when the dying man presented him with his pistols. He died 13th October 1834.

LINE 1. Maxwell, if here you merit crave,' erroneous reading.

TO THE BEAUTIFUL MISS ELIZA J—N

PUBLISHED in Scott Douglas (1877). A copy is included in the Creech MSS.

ON CHLORIS

PUBLISHED in The Edinburgh Advertiser of 8th August 1800, and included in Oliver (Edinburgh 1801), Duncan (Glasgow 1801), and Stewart (Glasgow 1802). With an additional stanza, a change in the heroine's name, and a change in one of the lines, it was set to music by William Shield, and sung-as The Thorn-by Incledon at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in his entertainment called Variety; and as The Thorn it has been popular with English tenors ever since. For the opportunity to inspect a copy with Burns's name to it we are indebted to Mr. Walter Steven, Montrose.

The song was presently attributed to Charles Dibdin, who no doubt wrote the second stanza; and several Editors, knowing nothing of the earlier copies, have held that the original quatrain was ascribed to Burns by mistake. But it was sent by Burns to Creech (Creech мss.). It is included in Scott Douglas (Edinburgh 1877).

LINE I. From the white-blossom'd sloe my dear Chloe requested,' Newspapers and early Editions. 3. Nay, by heaven, said I, may I perish, if ever,' Newspapers and early Editions; if ever,' Scott Douglas. 4. 'I plant in your bosom a thorn,' newspapers and early Editions; I plant,' Scott Douglas.

TO THE HON. WM. R. MAULE OF PANMURE Sent to Mrs. Dunlop

HERE published for the first time. in a letter of 24th October 1794.

After telling her that

the Caledonians had been at Dumfries for the last fortnight, Burns adds :-'One of the corps provoked my ire the other day, which burst out as follows.'

The Hon. William Ramsay Maule, the second son of

ΤΟ

George Ramsay, Earl of Dalhousie, was born 27th October MAULE OF 1771. He succeeded to Panmure on the death of his PANMURE uncle, William Earl of Panmure, in 1787, when he assumed the surname of Maule; served for some time in the 11th Dragoons; was chosen M.P. for Forfar in 1796 as a supporter of Fox; on 9th September 1831 was raised to the British Peerage as Baron Panmure; and died 13th April 1852. He appears (with his horse) in Kay's Edinburgh Portraits as 'a generous sportsman.' In effect, he was ardent in racing and cocking, much given to obstreperous practical jokes, and not too exemplary in his general habits: at the same time that he was generous to his dependants, and liberal in regard to schemes for the public welfare. He bestowed an annuity of £50 on

Burns's widow.

ON SEEING MRS. KEMBLE IN YARICO PUBLISHED in Stewart's Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns (1801). A copy was sent to Mrs. Dunlop in the same letter as the preceding epigram, and another about the same time to Peter Hill.

The lady was Mrs. Stephen Kemble, who appeared at the Dumfries Theatre in October 1794.

LINE 3. At Yarico's sweet note of grief,' erroneous reading.

ON DR. BABINGTON'S LOOKS

PUBLISHED in Cromek's Reliques (1808). There is a copy at Lochryan, sent in an undated letter; another is included in the Creech MSS. ; a third is in the Glenriddell Book.

Burns, in his letter to Mrs. Dunlop, refers to the subject of his satire as a well-known character here '— that is, presumably, Dumfries. He explains that it was in answer to one who said there was falsehood in his looks.' The initials were long supposed to stand for

ON DR. Dr. Blair, but the name is given in full in the Glenriddell BABING- Book. Dr. Babington may have been a physician.

TON'S LOOKS

LINE 3. They tell their master is a knave,' Scott Douglas and others. Scott Douglas, who gives no authority for 'tell,' remarks that 'Cromek has “say”'; but so have all the мss.

ON ANDREW TURNER

PUBLISHED in Cunningham (1834). The Epigram was written at Turner's own suggestion; but the information set forth in it is wholly the writer's own, except the date of Andrew's birth in Line 1.

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT

PUBLISHED in Cunningham (1834) as follows:

'The Solemn League and Covenant,

Cost Scotland blood-cost Scotland tears,
But it sealed Freedom's sacred cause,

If thou 'rt a slave indulge thy sneers.'

The original, by no means so unconditional as this, was inscribed by Burns in the Dumfriesshire volume of Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, in a footnote to a narrative of the Persecution in Balmaghie parish. The volume is in the library of the Dumfries and Maxwelltown Mechanics' Institution, and the inscription was published, correctly, in M'Dowell's Burns in Dumfriesshire (1870).

TO JOHN SYME OF RYEDALE

PUBLISHED in Currie (1800). John Syme, son of a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, was born in 1755. He entered the army in his nineteenth year, but after his father's death resided on the little estate of Barncailzie, Kirkcudbrightshire. Constrained to sell by the failure of the Ayr Bank, he obtained the office of Dis

SYME

tributor of Stamps in Dumfries in 1791. Burns inha- TO JOHN bited the floor immediately above his office, and presently got to regard him as his 'supreme court of critical judicature' in literary matters. Syme's rather glowing description of a passage between him and Burns (when, being rebuked for his excesses, the Bard half drew on him) was made the matter of a piece of criticism by Walter Scott in a review of Cromek's Reliques. In July 1793 Burns and Syme went touring in Galloway (see ante, pp. 440-1, Prefatory Note to Against the Earl of Galloway, and Prefatory Note to On the Laird of Laggan) and after Burns's death Syme was Alexander Cunningham's chief co-operator in the work of starting a subscription for his friend's family and projecting the publication of his posthumous poems and letters. It is much to be regretted that he did not undertake the editorship, as at one time it was thought he might, instead of Currie. He died 24th November 1831.

ON A GOBLET

PUBLISHED in Cunningham (1834). The goblet belonged to Syme.

APOLOGY TO JOHN SYME

PUBLISHED in Currie (1800), with the explanation :-' On refusing to dine with him, after having been promised the first of company, and the first of cookery, 17th December 1795.'

ON MR. JAMES GRACIE

PUBLISHED in M'Dowell's Burns in Dumfriesshire (1870).

AT FRIARS CARSE HERMITAGE

PUBLISHED in Cunningham (1834). Cunningham states that it was inscribed on a pane in the Hermitage after Riddell's death.