ABSTRACT
Frequently reprinted during and after Burns’s lifetime, this was by far the most influential contemporary account of his poetry. Its immediate effect was to create intense public interest in the poet, who had newly arrived in Edinburgh. The view of Burns as ‘a Heaven-taught ploughman’ caused lasting confusion (see Introduction, p. 16). Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831), comptroller of taxes for Scotland, was the author of The Man Of Feeling, which Burns prized ‘next to the Bible’. He edited two periodicals, the Mirror (1770) and the Lounger (1785–6). In 1814 Scott dedicated Waverley to Mackenzie, describing him as ‘our Scottish Addison’.
