Canceled Passages in the Letters of Robert Burns to George Thomson

Extract

If any part of Robert Burns' 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 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.”