ABSTRACT
James Gray, an Edinburgh schoolmaster who had known Burns in Dumfries, sent Wordsworth Peterkin’s Review (No. 51), and passed on a query from Gilbert Burns about how his brother’s name could best be vindicated. This was Wordsworth’s reply, published in 1816. Gilbert Burns did not publish a revised edition of Burns’s Works until 1820, and then it proved to be disappointingly unadventurous (see Nos 16, 29, 33, 44, 51, 70 and Introduction, pp. 37–8).
