ABSTRACT
Dr. Currie, the editor of the poems, and the compiler of the Life of Burns, which was published in 1800 for the benefit of the family of the poet, then lately deceased, has been repeatedly blamed for the manner in which he executed his task, and the object of the pamphlet which forms the subject of the present article, is through a Mr. Gray of Edinburgh, to give some advice to Mr. Gilbert Burns relative to the best mode of vindicating the memory of his brother, by the correction of the errors of his biographer, and by the omission of certain parts of Dr. Currie’s publication, which Mr. Wordsworth and others contend ought never to have been printed. The chief ground of complaint against Dr. Currie is, that he has either done too much, or not done enough; if he thought it right to lay before his readers so many of the private letters of Burns, he ought to have placed them in such a series as would have shewn the connecting links of impulse, and to have accompanied them with those observations that would have placed the offences of the poet, therein with bitter remorse confessed, in a fair point of view; if the crime be detailed, at least it ought to be related with some of the incitements and allurements without which crime is never committed. Upon this point Mr. Wordsworth well remarks:
‘Would a bosom friend of the author . . . it would have been absurd to attempt it.’
