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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
During the last decade of his life, Joseph Ritson compiled a catalogue of Scottish authors, a Bibliographia Scotica. He had brought it nearly to completion by 1801, and intended to publish it as a companion volume to his Bibliographia Poetica. On Jan. 31, 1801, he sent the prefaces of both works to Thomas Park for correction. But he circulated the manuscript also among other friends, notably George Chalmers, and Walter Scott, in the hope of making it more perfect; so that when he died, in September, 1803, the work was still unpublished. It was known that in the paroxysm which ended his life he had destroyed many of his papers; and for a time his friends feared the Bibliographia Scotica had perished. A fortnight after Ritson's death, Chalmers, writing to Archibald Constable of these things said:
page 122 note 1 Cf. Haslewood, Some Account of the Life and Publications of Joseph Ritson (1824), 27.
page 122 note 2 T. Constable, Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents (1873), i, 502. Letter dated Oct. 4, 1803.
page 122 note 3 Ibid., i, 410 and 502. Oct. 27, 1803.
page 122 note 4 It was disposed of on the last day, as lot 985. Cf. the Ritson sale-catalogue, Dec. 5–8, 1803 (Leigh and Sotheby).
page 123 note 5 Op. cit., i, 503.
page 123 note 6 The British Bibliographer, 1812, iii, 301.
page 123 note 7 Haslewood, Account, etc., p. 35.
page 123 note 8 Cf. the reference to Bibliographia Scotica in Geddie, Bibliography of Middle Scots Poets, Scottish Text Soc. (1912), p. cii: “This work came into the hands of George Chalmers, as did Ritson's materials for an edition of Dunbar. Chalmers meant to complete both, but at his death his History of Scottish Poetry [Aeneas Mackay, D.N.B.] and his Dunbar remained in manuscript.”
page 123 note 9 His own Notices, in six volumes, lot 1891, came into the possession of David Laing, and are now part of the Laing MSS. in Edinburgh University Library.
page 123 note 10 Cf. Notes and Queries, 1st Series, iv, 58, 196.
page 123 note 11 Lot 198 in the Benzon sale-catalogue.
page 123 note 12 Notes and Queries, 5th Series, x, 287, 412.
page 124 note 13 As part of lot 276, it was purchased by C. A. Stonehill, Inc., London and New Haven, Conn., and has since, through the large courtesy of Professor C. B. Tinker, come into the possession of the writer.
page 124 note 14 Cf. the ample physical description in the Goelet sale-catalogue.
page 124 note 15 This and the address, “George Chalmers, esquire, N? 28, Green-street, Grosvenor-square,” are sufficient to date the note in the Spring of 1803, when Scott paid a visit to London. The ambiguous reference in Chalmers's first letter to Constable, quoted above (“he [Ritson] sent for it, in order to show it to Mr. Scott, when he [Scott] was up here [London] lately”), is not contradictory.
page 125 note 16 Ritson has altered Bibliographia from Bibliotheca, which explains Park's and Haslewood's reference to the volume under the latter title. Cf. Haslewood, Account, p. 27n.
page 126 note 17 The numbering of the leaves runs to 407, but there are errors and duplications in the pagination. The figures skip from 156 to 177 and from 305 to 396, but the text is continuous at both points, and there seems to be only one gap, foil. 67–70 and fol. *67, in the MS.
page 126 note 18 The date 1800 is of common occurrence, and Ritson clearly made his catalogue as complete as possible to that year. The latest date in his hand is Aug. 18, 1803, barely a month before he was carried off.
page 131 note 19 There is a second entry [foll. 198–199] for Douglas's poetry: only six works are mentioned: Aenead, 1553, 1710; Palace of Honour, 1553, 1579; King Hart, 1786 [“printed, with sufficient inaccuracy, by John Pinkerton”]; Ovid's De Remedio Amoris, not extant; Aureae Narrationes, and Comediae Sacrae, both mentioned by Bale and Dempster, but latterly unknown.
page 132 note 20 Chalmers adds the date of death, Jan. 3, 1791.
page 133 note 21 The poetical works of Knox, “the thundering reformer, alias ‘Knocking Jack of the north’,” are noticed later, where the entry concludes: “but, miserable poetaster as he was, it would have been for the essential benefit of his country and mankind had he never been otherwise employ'd.” Fol. 242.“
page 136 note 22 Chalmers has struck this item through and under Blair has queried whether the commentary be not by Andrew Symson.
page 137 note 23 To this list of books and MSS, Chalmers was able to add: (1) Sibbaldi Auctarium Musaei Balfouriani, Edinr. 1697, 12mo; (2) Sibbaldi Vita Buchanani. Ib. 1702.
page 138 note 24 The reference, of course, is to Pinkerton.
page 139 note 25 For his Caledonian Muse, Ritson had taken several poems from Lord Hailes's Ancient Scottish Poems, but before publishing the work, he collated with the MS. and found the text hopelessly inaccurate. Cf. PMLA, xlvi, 1203, and Letters, ii, 2.
page 140 note 26 Ritson owned this MS which was bequeathed to him by John Baynes, and is now MS. Douce 324 in the Bodleian.
page 140 note 27 Cf. Ritson's letter on this subject in the Gentleman's Magazine, Jan. 1793, p. 32, and his Letters, ii, 4, 11.
page 143 note 28 Ritson was the first scholar to print the text of Susan, and to identify it with the poem above attributed to “Huchowne.” Cf. PMLA, xlvi, 1208–11.
page 144 note 29 The reference is to J. G. Dalyell's “Scotish poems of the Sixteenth Century,” a work which Ritson execrated. Cf. his counterblast to it in his Letters, 1833, ii, 213–214. “I will not suffer such an infamous and detestable heap of trash to pollute and infect my shelves” etc., etc. This to the book's publisher and Ritson's friend, Archibald Constable!
page 145 note 30 The reference is to pp. 812–814, where is printed a letter from Ritson, signed Anti-Scot, taxing Pinkerton with “artful and impudent forgery.” Cf. also Nichols, Illust. Lit. Hist. viii, 103.
page 148 note 31 Ritson owned the only known copy of the first edition of The Seven Sages. It was sold as lot 950, at the sale of his library, Dec. 5–8, 1803, to the Duke of Roxburgh, for £30.10.0, and is now in the Huntington Library. Cf. Introduction to the recent edition of it for the Scottish Text Society (1933). The title in Ritson's MS above was “corrected” by Park, who has written in the margin “with the variations marked above, in the title page.” The note and the corrections were deleted by Ritson upon the return of his MS. The incident terminated their friendship. Park wrote to Robert Anderson, May 31, 1803, the following (unpublished) account of the affair:
“To his ‘Bibliotheca Scotica’ I had also contributed whatever was in my power, & in calling upon the ungrateful compiler last week, I had the insulting recompense of being charged with having made a knavish alteration.
“I had it seems offended this hypercritic (tho' most unwittingly) by correcting the title of Rolland's scarce book to a copy in the King's library wh. was the second edition, not knowing or suspecting that Ritson himself had the first, from which he had transcrib[ed]. For this I was stigmatized, very vehemently, as above. My indignation was somewhat roused,—though I had borne much before from the same quarter—& I wished my gentle & grateful friend … a good morning!—never intending again to cross his threshold.” [Nat. Lib. Scotland. MS. 22.4.10 foll. 239v–240.] Cf. also Haslewood's MS additions in his copy of Account etc., 1824, in the Grenville collection, Brit. Museum. [Grenville 12123]
page 149 note 32 Doubtless this note adopts the position defended in Ritson's lost essay on the author of Christ's kirk. Cf. PMLA, xlvi, 1202 ff.
page 153 note 33 Cf. Burd, Joseph Ritson (1916), pp. 126–129.—Burd failed to notice, or to record, that the paper upon which Ritson's letter was written is water-marked 1799. [It is Edinb. U. MS. Laing II 589, rather inaccurately reproduced by Burd.] I myself have little doubt that the letter was addressed to George Chalmers. See also Chalmers' note, p. 124 above.
page 153 note 34 This characterization of Warton has been crossed out, just possibly by Park, who writes that he “blotted out with my pen a severe sarcasm against Warton's mendacious ‘History of English Poetry,‘ which Ritson forbore to reinstate.” Haslewood, Account, p. 27.
page 155 note 35 Ritson has “corrected” his spelling throughout the MS., but occasionally he forgets!
page 157 note 36 Ritson quotes two more stanzas, beginning: “Tho Tomas asked ay,” and “In o robe Tristrem was boun.”
page 158 note 37 Apparently Ritson, if I read him correctly, has inadvertently duplicated both these errors of Pinkerton just above!