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Roscoe was best known in his day as the author of The Life of Lorenzo de'Medici (1796, with several subsequent editions). He also wrote The Life of Leo X (1805), made strong public opposition to the slave trade, and was a close friend and patron of Henry Fuseli. See Henry Roscoe, Life of William Roscoe, 2 vols. (1833) and DNB. Theodore Besterman summarizes the publication history of Currie's edition of Burns in The Publishing Firm of Cadell and Davies: Selected Correspondence and Accounts 1793-1836 (1938), pp. xxi-xxii.

[6]

"Aspects of the Burns Legend," PQ, 11 (1932), 273. Burns refers to "my friend Roscoe" in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop (Letters, II, 282).

[7]

For a full biography of Currie and the story of how he came to edit Burns's works, see R. D. Thornton, James Currie the Entire Stranger and Robert Burns (1963).

[8]

Fuseli's letter of introduction to Roscoe for Cromek, dated July 16, 1806, is in the Liverpool Public Library and printed in G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (1969), p. 179. Cromek's edition of The Grave was published in July 1808. Much has been written about Cromek's vicissitudes with Blake. See, inter alia, Blake Records, pp. 166-174 and passim and Bentley, "Blake and Cromek: The Wheat and the Tares," Modern Philology, 71 (1974), 366-379.

[9]

Creech (1745-1815) was Burns's publisher during his lifetime. Their relationship was not entirely congenial. See the entry for Creech in Maurice Lindsay, The Burns Encyclopaedia, 2nd ed. (1970). Two Burns letters to Creech are included in Reliques.

[10]

Quoted in Robert Burns: An Exhibition (February 1971), comp. G. Ross Roy (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University [1971]), p. 34.

[11]

Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, was a staunch admirer of Burns's verse since August 1786, when he first read a volume of his poems.

[12]

Holy Willie was William Fisher (1737-1809), a farmer given, in Burn's words, "to liquorish devotion." See the entry for Fisher in Lindsay, Burns Encyclopaedia.

[13]

Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Bard, Not Contained in any Edition of His Works Hitherto Published (1801). See Egerer, pp. 83-84.

[14]

Henry MacKenzie (1745-1831) was the author of The Man of Feeling (1771). He also had long admired Burns's poetry—as Burns had his fiction.

[15]

Quoted in Robert Burns: An Exhibition, p. 34.

[16]

Cromek went to Bristol to look for more subscribers to his edition of The Grave on the eve of its publication. He placed advertisements for subscriptions in the Bristol Gazette, and Public Advertiser of June 9 and June 30, 1808. See my "Cromek's Provincial Advertisements for Blake's Grave," Notes & Queries, N.S. 27 (February 1980), 75.

[17]

James Ballantyne (1772-1833) was a well established Edinburgh printer. In his letter of November 17, 1807 to Constable, Cromek mentions Ballantyne as his intended printer of The Grave. The printing actually was done by Thomas Bensley, however.

[18]

Probably Dr. Craufuid of Bristol Hot Springs, a friend of Currie. See Thornton, James Currie, passim. Craufuid was also a Grave subscriber.

[19]

Because it was too late to remove all of Burns's Journal from the press, Cromek made a vertical tear through the three leaves comprising the remaining printed pages of the Journal; these leaves were then removed before the volume was bound. Some copies, however, survived this fate; one of them is in the Wellesley College Library. See Hannah D. French, "Cromek's 'Reliques of Robert Burns', a Footnote to Egerer 112," The Bibliothek, 5 (1967), 33-35.

[20]

Cunningham took various liberties with the text, as specified by J. DeLancey Ferguson in "Burns's Journal of his Border Tour," PMLA, 49 (1931), 1107-1115. See also Robert T. Fitzhugh, Robert Burns: His Associates and Contemporaries (1943).

[21]

Robert Burns: The Critical Heritage, ed. Donald A. Low (1974), p. 193. For other contemporary reviews of Reliques see ibid., pp. 196-217.

[22]

I gratefully acknowledge the following for their kind permission to quote from previously unpublished letters: The National Library of Scotland (Miss E. D. Yeo, Assistant Keeper), the Liverpool City Libraries (Mr. Ralph Malbon, F.L.A., City Librarian), the Sheffield City Libraries (Mr. Robert F. Atkins, F.L.A., Director), and the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (Mr. Richard M. Buck, Assistant to the Andrew W. Mellon Director of The Research Libraries). I wish also to acknowledge the generous attention and continuing encouragement this essay has received from Professor G. E. Bentley, Jr.