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Burns and the Smuggler Rosamond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Franklyn Bliss Snyder
Franklyn Bliss Snyder*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

The good ship Rosamond first appeared in an account of Burns's life in the spring of 1828, when Constable & Co. issued a Life of Robert Burns, by J. G. Lockhart, LL.B., as Volume XXIII of their Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications. Inevitably Lockhart had based his biography upon Dr. Currie's, which since its appearance in 1800 had run through many editions, and had carried Burns's fame to virtually all parts of the English-speaking world. But Lockhart, working under the eye of his distinguished father-in-law, was not content merely to rehash old material. Though modestly stating that his purpose was “no more than to compress, within the limits of a single small volume, the substance of materials already open to all the world,” he admitted that “little touches of novelty” might be discovered in his narrative, particularly in the chapters dealing with Burns's later years. Robert Chambers, whom Lockhart characterized as a “diligent local antiquary of Edinburgh, to whom I owe many obligations,” had passed on to the biographer whatever he had gleaned from conversation with Burns's surviving acquaintances; William M'Diarmid, editor of the Dumfries Courier, had supplied other “particulars”; Allan Cunningham, who shared with James Hogg the honor of Lockhart's dedication, was the authority for still more new matter; various unpublished journals and letters were also laid under contribution. The total result was a picture of Burns recognizably like Dr. Currie's, but tricked out with such a wealth of anecdotal novelty that the subscribers to Constable's Miscellany must have been well aware that here in truth was an “original” and not merely a “selected” publication. And in this original publication everything concerning the Rosamond was new.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , June 1935, pp. 510 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935

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References

* My thanks are due to Dr. Henry W. Meikle, Librarian of the National Library of Scotland, for courteous assistance in the preparation of this article, and to John Dunlop, Esq., of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for a large-scale map of the Firth of Solway, based upon surveys made shortly after the capture of the smuggler.

1 According to Dr. H. W. Meikle, unpublished letters in the National Library of Scotland make it clear that Scott watched Lockhart's work with interest. See Burns Chronicle for 1934, p. 46.

2 Op. cit., p. vi f.

3 Ibid., p. vii.

4 Ibid., p. 109, n.

5 Ibid., p. 184, n.

6 E.g., ibid., p. 280.

7 Op. cit, passim.

8 Op. cit. (New York, 1892), p. v.

9 Op. cit., p. 218 f.

10 Allan Cunningham, The Works of Robert Burns; with his life (London, 1834), i, 284.

11 Robert Chambers, The Life and Works of Robert Burns (N. Y., 1851–53), iii, 225.

12 The Life and Works of Robert Burns, edited by Robert Chambers, revised by William Wallace (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1896), iii, 317, n.

13 Op. cit., iii, 76 f., n.

14 Op. cit., p. 228, n. (New York, 1892).

15 Ibid., p. 230, n.

16 Hans Hecht, Robert Burns (Heidelberg, 1919), p. 274.

17 F. B. Snyder, The Life of Robert Burns (New York, 1932), p. 397.

18 Glasgow Herald, November 11, 1932. Dr. Meikle's article, somewhat amplified, appears also in the Burns Chronicle for 1934, pp. 43 ff.

19 Op. cit. (London: Adams & Charles Black, 1897), p. 25.

20 Of what sort, the records fail to show.

21 John Sinton, Burns, Excise Officer and Poet (Kilmarnock, n.d.), p. 47.

22 Ibid.

23 Ten o'clock in the morning.

24 Five o'clock in the evening.

25 Horses had to be hired for four officers, as Burns's accounts make clear. Crawfurd was probably riding his own.

26 Dr. H. W. Meikle points out, in the Burns Chronicle for 1934, p. 43, that the Edinburgh Evening Courant of Thursday, March 8, 1792, says the smuggler was seized at Sarkfoot, a short distance east of Brewhouses.

27 ? barr.