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Robert Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 Open Knowledge Commons 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/robertburnsmediOOfind 
 
Dr. JOHN MACKENZIE 
 
 By William Findlay, after an Oil Painting, by James Tannock, at present in the 
 possession of the Misses Mackenzie, Edinburgh. 
 
Robert Burns 
 
 and 
 
 The Medical Profession 
 
 WILLIAM FINDLAY, M.D. 
 
 ("GEORGE UMBER'') 
 Author op "In Mv City Garden' and "Ayrshire Idylls'' 
 
 WITH THIRTEEN FULL-PAGE PORTRAITS 
 
 ALEXANDER GARDNER 
 
 Publisher to Her Majesty the Queen 
 
 PAISLEY; and PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON 
 1898 
 
JZ.-7t>?2 » 
 
 T43 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I was asked, some time ago, at a Burns Anniversary Celebra- 
 tion, to reply to the toast of the Medical Profession ; and in 
 casting about in my mind what to say in justification of 
 the honour, it occurred to me that the name of the Bard was 
 associated with the medical faculty in a much more intimate 
 manner than at first sight appeared, or was even generally 
 understood ; and that it was, therefore, a not inappropriate 
 toast to be proposed at a gathering of Burns admirers. 
 
 Afterwards, pursuing the same train of thought, and going 
 deeper into the subject, I soon became convinced of the 
 accuracy of my conjecture — that, indeed, the field, if some- 
 what circumscribed, was so rich in materials and interest, 
 that justice could not be done to it within the prescribed 
 limits assigned either to an after-dinner toast or in a reply to 
 the same. A lecture, or even a book, as the matter grew 
 under my hand, seemed the likelier and the truer destination 
 to which its dimensions should reach. This solution of the 
 business, I may say, became still more apparent as I pro- 
 ceeded on my way, and came to tackle those controversial 
 points which have, more particularly of laic years, gathered 
 around Dr. Carrie's biographical achievement ; and which 
 have so long, and, I venture to think, so harmfully, in- 
 
2 Preface. 
 
 volved the good name of the Poet. Such an unfortunate 
 effect, moreover, has been mainly brought about by virtue 
 of the biographer's very conscientiousness (over-righteous- 
 ness) in discharging the duty which he considered he 
 owed to the memory of his subject, to the public, and to 
 himself; conferring, thereby, a sort of classicism on his 
 pronouncement of Burns's errors and characterisation, which, 
 from the warmth of approval with which the doctor's judg- 
 ment had been quoted by so many distinguished authorities 
 and from so many different quarters, came to be looked 
 upon as possessing the stamp of finality, and, therefore, 
 endowed with a correspondingly long lease of life. 
 
 In the execution of my task, the materials for which are, 
 in many instances, difficult to find, and not always accessible, 
 I have tried to state the case temperately and fairly for all 
 concerned. How far I have succeeded, the i - eader must be 
 the judge. 
 
 That these pages are a perfect or complete statement of 
 the inquiry, Robert Burns and the Medical Profession, I do 
 not for a moment contend. In my researches amid Burns 
 bibliographies, library catalogues, and other dry-as-dust out- 
 of-the-way nooks and corners of book-shelves, it is probable 
 that I have missed out some contribution ; but the statement 
 is as complete as, with care and labour, I have been able to 
 make it. 
 
 I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Alexander 
 Patterson, Glasgow, for his kindness in allowing me free 
 
Preface. 3 
 
 access to his extensive and most valuable Bumsiana library ; 
 and to Dr. James Finlavson, Hon. Librarian to the Faculty 
 of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow, for many important 
 bibliographical notes bearing on the subject of my inquiry. 
 I have also to thank Mr. F. T. Barrett and his assistants, of 
 the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Mr. D. M'Naught, the dis- 
 tinguished editor of the Animal Burns Chronicle, Dr. H. 
 Vevers of Hereford, Mr. James Smith, Raemoir, Ayr, Mr. 
 Alexander Anderson of the Edinburgh University Library, 
 Messrs. Thomas Rcnnie and William Reid, Glasgow, Mr. 
 James Carment, Dumfries, and others, for their obliging help 
 and assistance in furnishing me with numerous hints and 
 points of information, or otherwise aiding me towards the 
 successful completion of my task. I have likewise to express 
 ray acknowledgments to Col. J. Maxwell Witham, Kirk- 
 connell, Newabbey, Dumfriesshire, for kindly permitting me 
 to photograph the oil painting, in his possession, of Lis 
 celebrated relative, the late Dr. William Maxwell, Dumfries; 
 and to John Mackenzie, Esq., W.S., Edinburgh, for furnish- 
 ing me with a photograph of his grandfather, the late Dr. 
 John Mackenzie of Mauchline, from which the drawing for 
 the present work was made. 
 
 WILLIAM FINDLAY. 
 
 Fern Villa, 
 
 1T0UN, 
 '.[■ 00W, 
 
 li TOM B, IS98. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Dr. John Mackenzie, Mauchline, 9 
 
 II. Drs. Gregory, Wood, Adair, etc., Edinburgh, .. 22 
 
 III. Dr. John Moore, London, 35 
 
 IV. Drs. Maxwell, Thomson, Mundell, etc., Dum- 
 
 fries, 57 
 
 V. James Currie, M.D., F.R.S., Liverpool, . G9 
 
 VI. Dr. David Macbeth Moir (Delta), and the 
 
 Grand Alloway Festival, 91 
 
 MI. Drs. Fr. Adams, 0. W. Holmes, etc., 100 
 
 VIII. Dr. John Brown and Others down to the end 
 
 of the Eighties, Ill 
 
 IX. A Decade of Medical Burnsites, including 
 
 Dr. James Adams, Glasgow, 124 
 
 Appendix- 
 Sources of Information for this Inquiry, 135 
 
 Index, 143 
 
 Subscribers' Names, 151 
 
LIST OF PORTRAITS. 
 
 DR. JOHN MACKENZIE, .. 
 PROFESSOR JAMES GREGORY, M.D., 
 DR. ALEXANDER WOOD, .. 
 DR. JOHN MOORE, 
 
 DR. WILLIAM MAXWELL, 
 JAMES OURRIE, M.D., F.R.S., 
 
 DAVID MACBETH MOIR, M.D. (DELTA), 
 FRANCIS ADAMS, M.D., LL.D., .. 
 DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 
 DR. JOHN DROWN, 
 
 JAMES ADAMS, M.D., F.F.P.S.G., 
 
 Frotitispii ce. 
 to face page 22 
 
 28 
 35 
 ■12 
 51 
 GO 
 88 
 91 
 103 
 107 
 111 
 124 
 
Robekt Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 i. 
 
 Dk. JOHN MACKENZIE, MAUCHLINE. 
 
 The association of the name of Burns, particularly in his 
 lifetime, with the learned professions is matter of commonest 
 familiarity to the most ordinary reader of his works. In his 
 confession, 
 
 " I've been at drunken writers' feasts, 
 Nay, been bitch-fou 'mang godly priests," 
 
 he has focused for us, in his own pithy style, the close and 
 bibulous character of that communion ; though he, doubt- 
 less, intended us to receive the declaration with a pinch of 
 salt — to take from the lines the usual liberal discount ac- 
 corded to the man of humour, who is generally also a man of 
 exaggeration. 
 
 It might have been better for Burns, especially in the be- 
 ginning of his poetical career, while farming at Mossgeil 
 with his brother Gilbert, had he been less intimate with 
 lawyers and new-liclit ministers, all of whom, Carlyle de- 
 clared, would require to be sleeping in their graves before 
 
10 BuENS AND THE MEDICAL PltOFESSIOX. 
 
 the world would be able to see their quondam champion 
 and boon-companion aright. It is questionable if their 
 society did the Poet any good ; the probability rather is 
 that it did him harm ; and it was certainly owing to his 
 friendliness with the new-lichts, together with the fact that 
 he was their daringly clever and candid mouthpiece and 
 most brilliant fighting man, that the auld-licht party, not 
 only in his lifetime, but long after his death, was so bitterly 
 hostile to him. 
 
 If his relationship to the most rigidly orthodox section 
 of the clergy was, in those days, marked by scathing satire 
 on his side, and by hatred and denunciation of his charac- 
 ter and poetry on theirs, continued down to our own time 
 by the narrower and more intolerant descendants of the 
 auld-lichts, no such dishonourable wordy-warfare and slander 
 distinguishes his intercourse with the medical faculty, with 
 whom he was always on the best of terms, though he has 
 never employed his muse to celebrate their particular virtues, 
 as he has those of some lawyers and ministers. 
 
 In the following enquiry, then, I propose to trace this 
 honourable connection of his with members of the medical 
 profession ; for there are next to no materials in the works 
 of Burns themselves, out of which might be woven a piece of 
 literary fabric, with some such title as Medicine and the 
 Kindred Aits in Burns. There are none of those riches, like 
 what we have in Shakspere, for instance, from which might be 
 made such a wealthy contribution, or even the poor pretence 
 of such, as Medicine and the Kindred Arts in the Plans of 
 Shakspere, by the late Dr. John Moyes, edited by his friend, 
 Dr. James Finlayson. With the exception of a few allusions, 
 scattered here and there throughout his poems, which, doubt- 
 
Dit. John Mackenzie. 11 
 
 less, show some knowledge of medical nomenclature, as well 
 as acquaintance with the symptoms of disease and the art of 
 healing, there are practically no materials at all for a similar 
 undertaking, even of the most limited kind. That his medical 
 knowledge, so far as it went, was not without both soundness 
 and point, is proven by its truthfulness to nature and skilled 
 experience, as well as by the easy familiarity with which he 
 handled it for the purposes of humourous satire. The man 
 of poetical genius, to be sure, arrives at a good deal of his 
 knowledge by intuition. That line, for instance, in " The 
 Farmer's Ingle," by Burns 1 * great exemplar, Ferguson — 
 
 " The mind's ay cradled when the grave ia near," 
 
 is a very good illustration of the doctrine in question. It 
 might have been written by an old man who had been witness 
 to an hunched death beds, instead of by a mere youth of 
 twenty who had probably never once seen a human being die, 
 so Shakesperian is it in character. In the same way Burns, 
 however he came by his medical knowledge — whether by the 
 royal road of intuition, or the more prosaic one of obser- 
 vation and reflection — had the gift of employing it with 
 equal effect, of which there are some striking specimens, 
 though in a different vein from Fergusson's, in some of the 
 verses of his "Epistle to John Goldie in Kilmarnock. " 
 
 " Poor, gapin, glowrin Superstition ! 
 W'ae's me, she's in a sad condition : 
 Fye ! bring Black Jock, her state physician, 
 
 To see her water : 
 Alas, there's ground fur great suspicion 
 She'll ne'er get better. 
 
14< Burns axd the Medical Profession*. 
 
 physic, so conspicuous in the Hornbook grandfather, must 
 have run in the blood after all. 
 
 Since, then, the works of Burns afford no scope for linking 
 his name with medicine and the kindred arts in any substan- 
 tial sense, my task must, therefore, of necessity confine itself 
 to his connection with those individual members of the medi- 
 cal profession who have been more or less distinguished as his 
 intimates, correspondents, biographers, and critics and pane- 
 gyrists of his life and writings. The materials for such an 
 undertaking, if somewhat limited in extent, are exceedingly 
 rich in character ; and, as I said before, alike honourable, in 
 the main, both to Burns and his medical friends and admirers. 
 
 If the doctors, in his own day and since, never boggled over 
 his frailties, like the clergy, but have always been honourably 
 distinguished by a wise toleration and charity, and the high- 
 est regard and enthusiasm in estimating the poet and his 
 work, it is not, I trust, because the question of right conduct 
 in man or woman is a less vital matter with them, but rather, 
 I am inclined to believe, because of the difference of their 
 point of view. This larger and more inseeing vision, which 
 they generally bring to bear on all questions of human nature 
 and conduct, they owe, I think, to their peculiar education 
 and to their intercourse with disease, which makes them ac- 
 quainted, in a most near-hand way, with the infirmities of 
 their fellow creatures. The lawyer is chiefly conversant with 
 the more equivocal side of human nature ; the minister with 
 the affected side — with mankind on their best behaviour ; but 
 the doctor knows us as we are — in undress, and that in more 
 senses than the literal one. In a matter, therefore, of seeming 
 moral declension the clergyman only sees what's done, not 
 what's resisted. The medical man, on the other hand, sees 
 
Dr. Johx Mackenzie. 15 
 
 what's done too, but he also discerns what was perhaps irre- 
 sistible, through some organic frailty, flaw, or imperfection, 
 hereditary or acquired, in the unfortunate constitution of 
 the delinquent, more sinned against, it may be, than sinning, 
 hence his frequently greater charity and toleration. 
 
 Burns's first intimacy with a member of the medical faculty 
 is a matter of some doubt. Chambers says that, although 
 Burns was taken little notice of while flax -dressing in Irvine, 
 it would appear that he was not unknown to the family of 
 the provost, Mr. Hamilton of Craighlaw, whose house still 
 stands at the corner where Glasgow Vennel and High 
 Street meet — the immediate locality of the Poet's " heck- 
 ling "-shop. His son, Dr. Hamilton, was one of the ac- 
 quaintances of Burns who became security to the printer of 
 the Kilmarnock edition. This, I presume, is the same 
 gentleman, Dr. Hamilton of Kilmarnock House, whom the 
 historian of Kilmarnock mentions when speaking of John 
 Goldie, Major Parker, Dr. William Moore, Thomas Samson, 
 Robert Muir, and others of the famous band of the Poet's 
 Kilmarnock friends. 
 
 From this statement of Chambers, it would, therefore, 
 appear more than probable that he may have been acquainted 
 with Dr. Hamilton prior to his intimacy with Mi\ John 
 Mackenzie, a Mauchline surgeon, which began when he was 
 twenty-four years of age, after his return to Lochlea, Tar- 
 bolton, and during his father's last illness, about the end of 
 \~Wi. In an account of the good doctor's impressions of this 
 remarkable Lochlea household, supplied to Josiah Walker, 
 Esq., we learn something of the esteem in which he held its 
 members. For the father and mother, and two eldest sons, 
 Robert and Gilbert, he entertained the highest regard, and 
 
16 BURNS AND THE Mf.DICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 was struck by the amount of general culture and intelligence, 
 considering their sphere of life, shown by his patient and two 
 sons ; and especially by the brilliant conversational gifts of 
 the Poet, of the extent of whose talents, he says, no person 
 could have a just idea who had not had an opportunity to 
 hear him converse. 
 
 The intercourse between doctor and bard, thus begun in 
 the sick chamber of Lochlea, continued and ripened into 
 genial friendship after the old man's death and the family's 
 removal to Mossgiel. We have noteworthy testimony of 
 this in a versified epistle Burns sent to his brother mason, 
 inviting him to be present on the 24th June, 1786 (St. John's 
 Day), at a grand procession of the St. James 1 Lodge, Tar- 
 bolton, and of which he himself was Depute Master. 
 
 " Friday first's the clay appointed 
 By the Right Worshipful anointed, 
 
 To hold our grand procession ; 
 To get a blad o' Johnie's morals, 
 And taste a swatch o' Mansou's barrels 
 
 I' the way of our profession. 
 The Master and the Brotherhood 
 
 Would a' be glad to see you ; 
 
 For me I would be mair than proud 
 
 To share the mercies wi' you. 
 
 If Death, then, wi' skaith, then, 
 Some mortal heart is hechtin, 
 Inform him, and storm him, 
 That Saturday you'll fecht him. 
 
 Robert Bdrns." 
 
 " It is not very clear," says Wm, Scott Douglas, " who was 
 the ' Johnie ' thus expected to dilate on morals : Professor 
 Walker tells us it was John Mackenzie himself, whose 
 favourite topic was ' the origin of morals.' " 
 
Dr. John Mackenzie. 17 
 
 We also catch an interesting glimpse of their friendship on 
 a September Sunday some three months later. Burns was on 
 his way to church and had looked in on his friend Gavin 
 Hamilton, whose house was contiguous to the church, ex- 
 pecting that he might accompany him thither. Gavin, how- 
 ever, declined, but told him to bring a note of the discourse 
 in four stanzas. A bet was made between them on the point, 
 and accordingly at the end of the forenoon service, Burns 
 presented him with four of the verses of " The Calf," over 
 which he had been musing in his pew, strange to say, at the 
 very time that Jean Armour was giving birth to twins, but 
 of which interesting event he was ignorant till later in the 
 day. Dr. Mackenzie, happening to call at Gavin Hamilton's 
 at the time that Burns was reading his performance, was so 
 tickled with the verses that he extracted from him the pro- 
 mise of a copv, which he sent the same Sunday night, 
 accompanied by a brief note, telling him that the fourth and 
 last stanzas were added since he saw him that day. 
 
 Very vivid and human is the peep into this Sabbath nook 
 of Mauchline life upwards of a hundred years ago, than 
 which no other spot of Burns ground contains within such 
 small compass so many memorials of those personages and 
 dwellings celebrated in his poems and nearly associated with 
 his own life-history. There is the sacred quiet of the 
 two or three village streets, with the pensive colouring of 
 the woods and fields all around. The old church, sitting 
 dreamily amid its slanting tombstones, and overlooked from 
 three different points — Nanse Tannock's, Gavin Hamilton's, 
 and l'oosie-Nansie's, has " skailed," and dotting the uneven 
 surface of the churchyard are the sober forms of some 
 of the lingering worshippers in " rankled blacks.'" On 
 
18 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 the lawyer's parlour floor we recognise the three worthies, 
 as distinctly as if the event were a thing of yesterday, 
 Gavin Hamilton, Burns, and the village doctor, their heads 
 together, and their risible faculties in full exercise as the 
 verses of "The Calf'' are being recited. Meanwhile the 
 youthful minister, the Rev. James Steven, has descended from 
 the pulpit and entered the session-house, or betaken himself 
 to the manse, all unconscious of the three merry comrades in 
 the lawyer's parlour, one of whom has given such poetical 
 shape to his conceits, as will safely carry the young preacher 
 down to posterity — a service he was not very likely to have 
 done for himself. 
 
 Some six or seven weeks further on in the autumn, October 
 23rd, 1786, and three months after the publication of the 
 Kilmarnock edition of his poems, we find Burns, with his 
 doctor friend, a guest at the dinner-table of Professor Dugald 
 Stewart, who was then staying at his country seat near 
 Catrine, and to whose notice he had been introduced by the 
 Mauchline surgeon. How he enjoyed himself at the Pro- 
 fessor's dinner-table, that 
 
 " Ne'er to be forgotten day, 
 Sae far he sprachled up the brae, 
 
 He dinner'd wi' a Lord," 
 
 and the high opinion he formed of great folks and their 
 simple dignity and unaffected manners, he tells us in a 
 letter to the doctor a week after the event, enclosing a copy 
 of verses, entitled, " Lines on Meeting with Lord Daer " — 
 that young nobleman happening to be one of the dinner 
 party on the eventful occasion. 
 
 The Mauchline surgeon not only introduced Burns to Pro- 
 fessor Dugald Stewart, the philosopher, who, we know, from 
 
Dit. John Mackenzie. 19 
 
 that and subsequent interviews with him in Edinburgh, 
 formed a very high opinion of his great intellectual and 
 poetical gifts, his estimate in that respect somewhat re- 
 sembling Carlyle's, but he also introduced him to his patient, 
 Sir John Whitefoord, before that gentleman left Ballochmyle 
 for the capital ; and to the Hon. Henry Erskine, both of 
 whom became his patrons and friends in Edinburgh. He 
 likewise had the pleasure of making his works known to Dr. 
 Blair, when that distinguished divine was on a visit to Bar- 
 skimming, by showing him "The Holy Fair, 1 ' in which 
 poem, by the by, Mackenzie is himself said, by Chambers, 
 to be mentioned under the name of " Common-Sense," he 
 having written on some controversial topic under that title 
 shortly before. 
 
 " In guid time comes an antidote 
 Against sic poisoned nostrum ; 
 For Peebles, frae the Water-fit, 
 
 Ascends the holy rostrum ; 
 See, up he's got the Word o' God, 
 
 And meek and mim has viewed it, 
 While Common-Sense has ta'en the road, 
 And aff and up the Cowgate, 
 Fast, fast that day." 
 
 It so happened that Mackenzie on this day of " The Holy 
 Fair" was engaged to join Sir John Whitefoord of Balloch- 
 myle, and go to Dumfries House, in Auchinleck parish, in 
 order to dine with the Earl of Dumfries ; so, after attending 
 church, and listening to some of the out-door harangues, he 
 was seen to leave the assembly and go off along the Cowgate, 
 on his way to Ballochmyle, exactly as Peebles ascended the 
 rostrum. 
 
BuRXS AXD THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 The subsequent history of this worthy and genial doctor 
 may be briefly stated, as follows. On leaving Mauchline, 
 with which he was doubly associated, inasmuch as he was 
 married to one of its " six proper young belles," Miss Helen, 
 daughter of John Miller of Millockshill, he commenced prac- 
 tice in Irvine. After a long and honourable career in that 
 ancient and royal burgh, in the course of which he not only 
 attained the highest honours of the magistracy, but, towards 
 its close, in 1824, received from his Alma Mater the degree 
 of M.D. for a thesis on " De Care-inornate," he retired in 
 1827 to Edinburgh, where he died, January 11th, 1837, at 
 an advanced age. The well-known literary and antiquarian 
 collector — the late John Whitefoord Mackenzie, W.S., Edin- 
 burgh, was his son. 
 
 And as a convincing proof that the doctor's interest in 
 Burns had not cooled in the long interval since he left the 
 atmosphere of Mauchline and its neighbourhood, it is re- 
 corded of him that, on the founding of the Irvine Burns 
 Club in 1827, the year of his retiral, he presided at the 
 opening dinner on January 25th, with the well-known Mr. 
 David Sillar, " a brither poet " (Epistle to Davie), as vice- 
 chairman. 
 
 It is a singular circumstance and, therefore, worthy of 
 notice here, before finally passing from Mauchline to trace 
 the Poet's medical intimacies in Edinburgh, that another of 
 these belles, the witty Miss Smith, should likewise have 
 secured for a husband a medical man, who was also a valued 
 friend and correspondent of Burns : I refer to his old school- 
 fellow at Dalrymple and Ayr, 
 
 Mn. James Candlish. 
 
Dn. John Mackenzie. 21 
 
 It would appear that young Candlish was originally in- 
 tended by his parents for the Church, but, on account of 
 creed scruples, drifted into medicine. Towards the close of 
 his medical curriculum at Glasgow University he taught 
 languages at Mauchline, and while there formed the inti- 
 macy of Jane Smith, his future wife, who became the mother 
 of the celebrated divine, Dr. Candlish of Edinburgh. As he 
 was never robust, and diffident and shy almost to painful- 
 ness. he eschewed general practice, and settled in Edinburgh 
 about 1788, as a teacher of medicine, in which he won well- 
 merited distinction. Here he was made known to many of 
 its leading pei'sonages by Burns, who had just bidden his final 
 adieu to the city. In a letter to Mr. Peter Hill, written 
 from Ellisland about March, 1789, accompanying the gift of 
 a ewe-milk cheese, the Poet, in enumerating their common 
 friends who might be permitted to taste it, names Mr. Can- 
 dlish in the following enthusiastic terms : — " Candlish, the 
 earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on earth, 
 and one of the worthiest of fellows that ever any man called 
 by the name of friend, if a luncheon of my best cheese would 
 help to rid him of part of his superabundant modesty, you 
 would do well to give it him." 
 
 He died somewhat suddenly of a brain affection on April 
 29th, 1806, at the early age of forty-six, having been born 
 the same year as Burns — 1759. 
 
II. 
 
 Drs. GREGORY, WOOD, ADAIR, Etc., EDINRURGH. 
 
 In little more than a month after dining at Catrine House 
 Burns had bidden farewell, for a season at least, to the rural 
 life around Mauchline, and the congenial society of his 
 friends, Gavin Hamilton and Dr. Mackenzie, and betaken 
 himself to the gay capital. Thither Professor Stewart had 
 gone before him, to commence his winter session at the 
 University, in the beginning of November, carrying with 
 him a copy of the humble Kilmarnock volume to introduce 
 it to the notice of his friend, Mr. Henry Mackenzie, the 
 author of The Man of Feeling, who gave it a generous and 
 highly appreciative criticism in The Lounger, a periodical 
 work published in Edinburgh by Mr. Creech. By this means 
 the Poet's fame may be said to have, in a great measure, 
 preceded him, so that on his arrival in Fair Edina he was at 
 once installed as the intimate and associate of its aristocratic 
 leaders of fashion, its men of science, and its brilliant rem- 
 nant of Scottish litei'ati who adorned the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century, and who then formed such a conspicuous 
 element of the best Edinburgh society, numbering, as it did, 
 amongst its circle such names as Dr. Robertson, Dr. Blair, 
 Dr. Gregory, Dr. Adam Ferguson, Mr. Mackenzie, and Mr. 
 Eraser Tytler. 
 
 It was at the hospitable table of Lord Monboddo, who 
 was then as remarkable for his classic suppers as for the 
 
Prod oi I VM I 1 1REGORY, M.D. 
 
 Engraving, bj thi kin fames L. Ca 
 
 Scottish National Portrait ' iallery. 
 
Dr. James Gregory. 23 
 
 beauty of his daughter, that Burns made the acquaintance of 
 Dr. James Gregory, the Professor of the Practice of Medi- 
 cine in Edinburgh University, the scion of a family distin- 
 guished for generations for their great learning, and himself, 
 not only the leading member of his profession in Edinburgh, 
 but the witty and humorous associate of the men of letters 
 and fashion in the capital, and a brother of the Cannongate 
 Kilwinning Lodge of Eree Masons. 
 
 The following incident is related by Chambers as happen- 
 ing at the table of Lord Monboddo between Burns and the 
 doctor at the beginning of their acquaintanceship. " Dr. 
 Gregory, who, feeling some interest in the psychology of such 
 a prodigy of genius, began to question Burns about his 
 family history. The Bard had been dining with Mr. 
 Howden, jeweller, Parliament Square, and was much in 
 a humour for waggery. ' Well, Burns,' said the learned 
 physician, ' What sort of man was your father ? — a tall 
 man? 1 'Yes, rather.' 'A dark-complexioned man?' 
 ' Yes. 1 ' And your mother ? ' ' My mother was not a man 
 at all, sir.' By this grammatical quip the doctor was sadly 
 discomfited ; and Burns next day made his friend Howden 
 laugh heartily at the joke in his shop in Parliament Square." 
 
 In spite of this somewhat inauspicious-looking commence- 
 ment, the intimacy thus begun soon ripened into genuine 
 friendship, which is nil the more remarkable considering 
 the difference in their education and position ; but perhaps, 
 as Chambers suggests, " their common liability to the saeva 
 indignatio when their feelings were offended by foolish or 
 sordid conduct, 11 had contributed towards it. That Burns, 
 at anyrate, on his part, was deeply impressed from their first 
 meetings at Lord Monboddo's M with the large intelligence, 
 
24 BURNS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 vigorous thought, and high-minded benevolence of the 
 learned author of the Conspectus Medianae? we have his 
 own testimony to prove, written on the blank page of an 
 English translation of Cicero's Select Orations (London, 
 1756), presented to him by the doctor. 
 
 " Edin., 23rd April, 1787. 
 
 " This book, a present from the truly worthy and 
 learned Dr. Gregory, I shall preserve to my latest hour, as 
 a mark of the gratitude, esteem, and veneration I bear the 
 Donor. So help me God ! 
 
 " Robert Burns." 
 
 Three weeks after penning the above characteristic declara- 
 tion, we find him paying the doctor a compliment in verse. 
 The literary set who were in the habit of meeting at Lord 
 Monboddo's also frequented in the mornings the house in 
 High Street of Mr. Wm, Creech, the publisher, and that to 
 such an extent that the meeting used to be called Creech's 
 Levee. It happened, however, about this time, that the 
 continuity of these gatherings was broken for a little through 
 the absence of Mr. Creech on a visit to London, and Burns 
 took the occasion to indite to his publisher a humorous 
 lamentation, in the following couple of stanzas of which he 
 has enshrined not only the doctor, but the entire literary 
 coterie. 
 
 " Nae mair we see his levee door 
 Philosophers and poets pour, 
 And toothy critics by the score, 
 
 In bloody raw ! 
 The adjutant o' a' the core, 
 
 Willie's awa ! 
 
Du. James Gregory. 25 
 
 " Now worthy Gregory's Latin face, 
 Tytler's and Greenfield's modest grace ; 
 Mackenzie, Stewart, sic a brace 
 
 As Rome ne'er saw ; 
 They a' maun meet some ither place, 
 
 Willie's awa ! " 
 
 When the Poet was confined to his lodgings for several 
 weeks with his sprained knee (during which period transpired 
 the famous Clarinda and Sylvander correspondence) Dr. 
 Gregory attended him in the capacity of physician, while 
 Mr. Alexander Wood officiated as surgeon. During the 
 visits of the learned author of the Conspectus Medkinae, who 
 in his day and place was looked upon a.s a prince of critics, 
 he was in the habit of submitting not only his own verses, but 
 Clarinda's as well, to the doctor's critical inspection. In one 
 of his epistles to that lady he tells her that a gentleman for 
 whose character, abilities, and critical knowledge he had the 
 highest veneration had just called in, " and I read, 1 ' he says, 
 " to this much-respected friend several of my own bagatelles, 
 and, among others, your lines, which I had copied out. He 
 began some criticisms on them as on the other pieces, when I 
 informed him they were the work of a young lady in this 
 town, which, I assure you, made him stare. My learned friend 
 seriously protested that he did not believe any young woman 
 in Edinburgh was capable of such lines ; and if you know 
 anything of Professor Gregory, you will neither doubt his 
 abilities nor his sincerity. " 
 
 But this same able and sincere critic, who had been so 
 lenient and complimentary towards the versicles of Clarinda, 
 could, we shall see, be just as severe on occasion to the com- 
 positions of her Sylvander. From Ellisland Hums had sent, 
 
Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 for the doctor's criticism, a short poem " On Seeing a Fellow 
 Wound a Hare with a Shot, April, 1789," and criticise it he 
 did with a vengeance. To begin with, he acknowledges that 
 the verses have real poetic merit, such as fancy and tender- 
 ness, and some happy expressions ; so much so, indeed, that 
 they are the more deserving of careful revisal and the utmost 
 polish ; and he cites, as an example of what correctness and 
 high polish can do in enhancing such compositions, the two 
 last pieces of Mrs. Hunter's poetry that he had given him. 
 The Mrs. Hunter here referred to, by the by, is the wife of the 
 celebrated surgeon, John Hunter, and the authoress of that 
 beautiful song, " My mother bids me bind my hair." It is, 
 therefore, highly gratifying that, if we cannot link the name 
 of the father of British medicine with that of Burns in our 
 enquiry, we can employ his wife's in that connection. Dr. 
 Gregory appears to have been a great admirer of Mrs. 
 Hunter's poetry, though on the appearance of her volume 
 in 1802 it met with but little mercy at the hands of Francis 
 Jeffrey, who said, " Poetry does not appear to be her voca- 
 tion, and rather seems to have been studied as an accomplish- 
 ment than pursued from any natural propensity." There 
 were other critics, however, who, it is but fair to say, admired 
 her poetry equally with Dr. Gregory, who, in the letter we 
 are commenting on, requests Burns to furnish him with 
 another and amended edition of his verses on The Wounded 
 Hare to send to Mrs. Hunter, who, he feels sure, will have 
 much pleasure in reading it. " Pray give me likewise for 
 myself," he asks, " and her too, a copy — as much amended 
 as you please — of the Water-Fowl on Loch Turrit. Let me 
 see you," he adds, " when you come to town, and I will show 
 you some of Mrs. Hunter's poems." 
 
Dr. James Gregory. 27 
 
 To return, however, to his criticism of The Wounded Hare. 
 " As you desire it, 11 he says, "I shall, with great freedom, 
 give you my most rigorous criticisms on your verses. The 
 Wounded Hare is a pretty good subject ; but the measure, 
 or stanza, you have chosen for it, is not a good one ; it does 
 not flow well ; and the l'hyme of the fourth line is almost 
 lost by its distance from the first ; and the two interposed, 
 close rhymes. If I were you I would put it into a different 
 stanza yet. 
 
 " Stanza I. — The execrations in the first two lines are 
 strong or coarse ; but they may pass. ' Murder-aiming'' is a 
 bad compound epithet, and not very intelligible. ' Blood- 
 stained, 1 in stanza III., line 4, has the same fault : Bleeding- 
 bosom is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to 
 such epithets, and have no notion how stiff and quaint they 
 appear to others, and how incongruous with poetic fancy, 
 and tender sentiments. Suppose Pope had written, ' Why 
 that blood-stained bosom gored, 1 how would you have liked 
 it ? Form is neither a poetic, nor a dignified, nor a plain, 
 common word : it is a mere sportsman's word ; unsuitable to 
 pathetic or serious poetry. ' Mangled ' is a coarse word. 
 ' Innocent,'' in this sense, is a nursery word ; but both may 
 pass. 
 
 Stanza 4. — ' Who will now provide that life a mother only 
 can bestow, 1 will not do at all : it is not grammar — it is not 
 intelligible. Do you mean ' provide for that life which the 
 mother had bestowed and used to provide tor ?' 
 
 There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, 'Feeling 1 (I sup- 
 pose) for ' fellow, 1 in the title of your copy of verses; but 
 even fellow would be wrong : it is but a colloquial and vulgar 
 word, unsuitable to your sentiments. 'Shot" is improper too 
 
Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 ■ — On seeing a person (or a sportsman) wound a hare ; it is 
 needless to add with what weapon ; but if you think other- 
 wise, you should say, with a fowling-piece."" 
 
 More rigorous, blunt, and unceremonious, in view of the 
 above quotation, he could hardly have shown himself had he 
 been a schoolmaster correcting a pupil's English composition 
 exercise. Dr. Currie, in a foot note to this letter says, and 
 with truth, " It must be admitted that this criticism is not 
 more distinguished by its good sense, than by its freedom 
 from ceremony. It is impossible not to smile at the manner 
 in which the Poet may be supposed to have received it. In 
 fact, it appears, as the sailors say, to have thrown him quite 
 a-back. In a letter which he wrote soon after, he says, ' Dr. 
 
 G is a good man, but he crucifies me.' And again, ' I 
 
 believe in the iron justice of Dr. G ; but like the devils, 
 
 I believe and tremble.'' However, he profited by these criti- 
 cisms, as the reader will find, by comparing this first edition 
 of the poem, with that published afterwards." 
 
 Dr. Wood. 
 
 Alexander Wood, Surgeon, Royal Exchange, Edinburgh, 
 whom we saw attended Burns in conjunction with his col- 
 league, Dr. Gregory, though not the Johnsonian personality 
 in literary circles that the learned author of the Conspectus 
 Medicinae was, nevertheless, by virtue of his intimacy and 
 friendship with the Poet, deserves a notice to himself. Lang 
 Sandy Wood, as he was usually styled, on account of his 
 lengthy lanky figure, " was," says Chambers, " a man after 
 Burns's own heart — kind, quaint, fond of children and 
 animals ; he even resembled the poet so specifically, as to 
 
Dr. ALEXANDER WOOD 
 By the kind permission of A. W. Inglis, ] q., of G 
 
Dr. Alexander Wood. 29 
 
 have had at one time a pet sheep, which, like Burns's MalUe, 
 ' trotted by him ' tlirough all the town on his professional 
 visits — a trait of eccentricity that strongly recalls the simple, 
 cordial days of our grandfathers.'" This highly gifted, active, 
 benevolent, simple, and warm-hearted surgeon, was a member 
 of the C.K. Lodge of Free Masons, at one of the meetings of 
 which he is said to have first made the acquaintance of the 
 Poet, for whose genius he entertained the general share of 
 admiration. He afterwards, as before remarked, attended 
 him for his braised limb, while Burns was chafing at the 
 enforced confinement his injury entailed, and conducting the 
 romantic Sylvander and Clarinda correspondence. Clarinda, 
 herself the daughter of a Glasgow physician, in one of these 
 remarkable epistles, wrote, " I am glad to hear Mr. Wood 
 attends you ; he is a good soul, and a safe surgeon. I know 
 him a little. Do as he bids, and I trust your leg will soon 
 be quite well." 
 
 Lord President Dundas, of the Court of Session, dving 
 somewhat suddenly about this time, 13th December, 1787, it 
 is stated that Mr. Charles Hay, Advocate, pressed Burns to 
 compose some elegiac verses on the occasion, and that Dr. 
 Wood warmly seconded the proposal, suggesting that the 
 poetic compliment might lead to some beneficial results, 
 through the powerful political influence of the Dundas family. 
 There appears, however, to be some discrepancy regarding 
 these statements ; for in a letter to Charles Hay, Esq., 
 Advocate, enclosing a copy of the elegiac performance, while 
 Burns still gives that gentleman the credit of suggesting the 
 subject to him, he, in another epistle to Alex. Cunninghame, 
 says, " My very worthy and respected friend, Mr. Alexander 
 Wood, Surgeon, urged me to pay a compliment in the way 
 
30 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 of my trade to his Lordship's memory," a task in which he 
 does not appear to have had very much heart. Whichever 
 of the two gentlemen was the proposer, and whichever the 
 seconder, it was certainly Dr. Wood who carried the elegy, 
 together with a letter, (written, the Poet confesses, in 
 his very best manner, whatever the quality of the verses) to 
 Mr. Solicitor Dundas, the dead Lord's son, "And not rinding 
 him at home, left the parcel for him. His Solicitorship, 
 however, never took the smallest notice of the letter, the 
 poem, or the poet. 1 ' The following note subjoined to a copy 
 of the elegy shows how the Bard felt the treatment of the 
 great Dundas family. " The foregoing poem has some 
 tolerable lines in it, but the incurable wound of my pride will 
 not suffer me to correct or even peruse it. I sent a copy of 
 it with my best prose letter, to the son of the great man, the 
 theme of the piece, by the hand, too, of one of the noblest 
 men in God's world, Alexander Wood, Surgeon, when behold 
 his Solicitorship took no more notice of my poem, or me, 
 than I had been a strolling fiddler, who made free with his 
 lady's name over the head of a silly new reel ! Did the 
 gentleman think I looked for any dirty gratuity ? 11 
 
 If this proposal of the kind and simple surgeon, in the 
 interest of his poet-patient, turned out a melancholy failure, 
 he was more fortunate in another matter he took in hand. I 
 refer to his exertions in recommending Burns to the Com- 
 missioners of Excise, and on which recommendation his en- 
 rolment as an officer followed. 
 
Dr. M. Fyfe. 31 
 
 Dr. James M'Kittrick Adair. 
 
 A young relative of Mrs. Dunlop and the son of a physician 
 in Ayr, to whom Burns had before been introduced by the 
 Rev. Mr. Lawrie, minister of Loudoun, falls also, most con- 
 veniently to be noticed here, as it was from Edinburgh that 
 the doctor and he, sometime in October, 1787, and im- 
 mediately after the Poet's second visit to the capital, set out 
 together on a short tour, by Stirling, Devon, Clackmannan, 
 and Dunfermline, the highly interesting and piquant details 
 of which he afterwards communicated to Dr. Currie for his 
 memoir. In the vale of Devon, where they were storm- 
 stayed for a week, they were the guests of Mrs. Hamilton of 
 Harvieston, and the young doctor fell in love with the eldest 
 daughter, Charlotte, sister of Burns's bosom friend, Gavin 
 Hamilton of Mauchline, which lady, two years later, he 
 married, and settled down to medical practice at the 
 Pleasance, Edinburgh. Subsequently he removed to Harro- 
 gate, where he died in 1802, at the early age of thirty-seven. 
 His widow survived him four years, dying at Edinburgh at 
 the age of forty-three. 
 
 M. Fyfe, Surgeon, 
 
 with whose name, as a fitting close to the present paper, 
 I shall now bid farewell to the Edinburgh faculty ; and I 
 cannot do so more appropriately than in the Poet's own 
 words, addressed to his friend, Dr. Fvf'e, half-an-hour before 
 turning his back on the palaces and towers of Erf'tna, where 
 his marvellous personality had so bewitched its society, and 
 where, at a price, I fear, infinitely above its value, he had 
 bought such a variegated human experience. 
 
Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 " Saturday morn : six o'clock. 
 
 My Dear Sir, — My loins are girded, my sandals on my 
 feet and my staff' in my hand ; and in half-an-hour I shall set 
 off' from this venerable, respectable, hospitable, social, con- 
 vivial, imperial Queen of cities, Auld Reekie. My compli- 
 ments to Mr. M'Cartney, and I have sent him that engraving. 
 Farewell ! 
 
 ' Now, God in heaven bless Reekie's town 
 With plenty, joy, and peace ! 
 And may her wealth and fair renown 
 To latest times increase ! ! ! — Amen.' 
 
 Robert Burns." 
 
 Lht of' Medical Subscribers to First Edinburgh Edition, 
 
 1767. 
 
 Mr. James Arrot, Surgeon Edinburgh. 
 
 Dr. Aitken, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. John Andrew, Surgeon, Linlithgow. 
 
 Dr. Joseph Black, Professor of Chemistry, Edinburgh. 
 
 Brougham, of Brougham Hall, Esq. 
 
 Borthby, Esq. : 4 copies. 
 
 Dr. Blaw, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Benjamin Bell, Surgeon, Edinburgh, 
 
 Mr. J. Brown, Surgeon, Douglas. 
 
 Dr. Buchanan, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Brown, Surgeon, Dunbar. 
 
 Mr. John Beli,, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Walter Colquhoun, Surgeon, Dumbarton. 
 
 Dr. John Calder, FurnivaFs Inn, Edinburgh. 
 
 Robert Carswell, M.D., Paisley. 
 
List of Medical Subscribers. 33 
 
 Dr. Henry Cullen, Edinburgh. 
 
 Dr. John Campbell, Ayr. 
 
 Dr. George Charles, Ayr. 
 
 Dr. Andrew Duncan, Edinburgh. 
 
 Dr. James Deans. 
 
 Mr. Forrest Dewar, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Andrew Frodie, Surgeon, Dysart. 
 
 Dr. Charles Fvfe, Carolina Coffee-house, London. 
 
 Dr. Gregory, Edinburgh. 
 
 Dr. Nathan Heron, London : 2 copies. 
 
 Dr. James Hamilton, Edinburgh. 
 
 James Hunter, M.D., Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Hart, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Hay, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. William Inglis, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Robert Kerr, Surgeon. 
 
 George Kirkaldie, M.D. 
 
 Mr. Charles Kerr, Surgeon to the 37th Regiment. 
 
 Mr. James Law, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Dr. Lorimer, Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. 
 
 Mr. Hugh Longan, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Peter Liddie, Surgeon, Westmains. 
 
 Dr. Alexander Monro, Edinburgh. 
 
 Dr. Moore, London : 4 copies. 
 
 Mr. Hamilton M'Clure, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Dr. Alexander M'Dougal. 
 
 Mr. R. Montgomery, Surgeon, Beith : 6 copies. 
 
 Mr. John M'Kenzie, Surgeon, Mauchline : 2 copies. 
 
 Andrew Morris, M.D., Glasgow. 
 
 Mr. John Rae, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Dr. Si'ens, 
 
34 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 Dr. Stenhouse, St. James's Square, London. 
 
 Mr. P. Sandilands, Surgeon, Royal Navy. 
 
 Dr. Wilson, Kelso. 
 
 Dr. Williamson, Physician, Nevis. 
 
 Mr. John White, Surgeon, Paisley. 
 
 Mr. Alexander Wood, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
 Mr. Andrew Wood, Surgeon, Edinburgh. 
 
Dr. JOHN MOORE 
 By the kind permission of Messrs. Blackic & Son 
 
III. 
 
 Dr. JOHN MOORE, LONDON, 
 
 was the son of an Episcopal clergyman at Stirling, where he 
 was bom in 1730. He studied at Glasgow and Paris, served 
 as a surgeon in the army, and practised in Glasgow. He 
 had his residence first in Donald's Land, Trongate, opposite 
 the Tron Steeple (where his son, Sir John, the hero of 
 C'orunna, was born), and afterwards in Dunlop Street. He 
 was a great friend of Smollet, the author of Roderick 
 Random, who, a few years his senior, was at this time being 
 initiated into the mysteries of pharmacy and minor surgery 
 in Dr. Gordon's dingy little apothecary, situated in Gibson's 
 Land, at the north corner of Salt Market and Prince's Street, 
 where Moore had also been an apprentice before setting up 
 as a surgeon in the Trongate. From 1772 to 1778 he 
 travelled on the Continent with Douglas, eighth Duke of 
 Hamilton, and afterwards settled in London as a man of 
 letters. He wrote Zeluca, a novel ; A Viae of Society and 
 Manners in France ,• Edward, a novel, etc. 
 
 He would be some few years resident in London, when 
 Hums, during the early part of his Edinburgh career, 
 entered into a most interesting correspondence with him, 
 which extended over a period of fully four years, and con- 
 tinued down almost to the end of the Ellisland days. The 
 Poet wrote eight letters in all, including the famous auto- 
 biographical one, dated Moasgeil, August 2nd, 1787, which 
 
36 BmtNs and the Medical Profession. 
 
 he penned on his return home after his first visit to Edin- 
 burgh, and which has formed the basis of all his future 
 biographies ; while Moore, on the other hand, wrote six. 
 The immediate occasion of this correspondence was Mrs. 
 Uunlop sending to Burns certain passages extracted from 
 the doctor's letters to herself, containing flattering notices of 
 his poems, and suggesting that he would not be unwilling to 
 open a correspondence with him. These extracts he received 
 on the 30th December, 1786, and it was the 16th or 17th 
 January, 1787, before he mustered courage to write to Dr. 
 Moore, the reason he assigned to Mrs. Dunlop for this delay 
 being, that he wanted to write in a manner at once worthy of 
 such a celebrated author and his own character. 
 
 These two conditions, I should say, are amply fulfilled in 
 the opening letter of this correspondence. It is modest and 
 deferential, as became it, to the great literary magnate he 
 considered he was addressing ; and it is dignified and honest, 
 as it should be, coming from a peasant poet who, while per- 
 fectly well aware that the novelty of his character had by far 
 the greater share in the learned and polite notice he had 
 lately received — that, indeed, the hope to be admired for 
 ages, even for authors of repute, was often " an unsubstantial 
 dream," — nevertheless knew that he had some ability, and 
 had, moreover, claims to depict the humbler rural national 
 life of which his poems treat, he being himself, in birth, 
 education, and feeling, one of themselves. 
 
 The doctor, in his well-bred reply, January 23rd, 1787, 
 may be said to be equally happy. He compliments the Poet 
 on his disposition and temper, of which he takes a favourable 
 impression from his works — regrets he did not see him last 
 summer when in Scotland, which he certainly would have 
 
Dk. John Mooke. 37 
 
 done had he only seen his poems earlier, and which poems he 
 greatly admires, not so much for those original and brilliant 
 poetical beauties so lavishly scattered through them, as for 
 the love of his native country — that feeling of sensibility to all 
 objects of humanity which they display, and the independent 
 spirit which breathes through the whole. 
 
 In his second letter, February 15th, 1787, Burns is still 
 more deferential to the great literateurs, of whom he looked 
 upon Moore as one; and contrasts the time, when he followed 
 the plough and could boast of nothing higher than a distant 
 acquaintanceship with a country clergyman, with his present 
 situation, when genius, polished by learning, and at its 
 proper elevation in the eye of the world, is his frequent 
 associate, making him, whom mere greatness could never 
 embarass, tremble at its approach. That he has some merit, 
 he repeats, he will not deny, and again emphasises his belief, 
 which he has arrived at with frequent wringings of heart, 
 that it is the novelty of his character, and the honest 
 national prejudice of his countrymen, more than his poetic 
 abilities, to which he owes his present elevation among great 
 society folks. 
 
 The doctor in his reply, February 28th, 1787, and ap- 
 parently on the strength of his correspondent's over-generous 
 compliments to the Edinburgh literati in the contrast he 
 draws between his past and present, remarks, a little un- 
 graciously, I think, "It is not surprising that you improve in 
 correctness and taste, considering where you have been for 
 some time past.'" This taking of Burns so completely at his 
 word shows just the least touch of Ccdedonicmism in the 
 doctor, who, however, lias shrewdly enough read his poetic 
 character, to dare swear that there is no danger of his 
 
38 Burns and the Medical Profession 
 
 admitting any polish which might weaken the vigour of his 
 native powers. He is also obliging enough to say that he is 
 glad to perceive that he disdains to decry his own merit as a 
 poet, which, to do, would be to arraign the fixed opinion of 
 the public. 
 
 About two months after this, April 23rd, 1787, Burns 
 again writes, in terms of most grateful warmth, to thank the 
 doctor for his present of View of Society, a gift he values even 
 more as a mark of the author's friendly esteem than for its 
 own intrinsic worth. He talks of leaving Edinburgh soon, 
 and again comments on the fact, as if the subject haunted 
 him with a kind of grudge, that the intimacies and friend- 
 ships which he has formed among the rich, the great, the 
 fashionable, and the polite, are all of too tender a construction 
 to bear carriage 150 miles — -that, having no equivalent to 
 offer, he is afraid his meteor appearance will by no means 
 entitle him to a settled correspondence with any of those 
 who are the permanent lights of genius and literature. 
 
 Moore, in his acknowledgment of this letter, May 23rd, 
 1787, takes no notice of his correspondent's harp, harping 
 upon the old string — that the seeming friendship between 
 the Edinburgh celebrities and him must sooner or later come 
 to an end. His studious silence on the subject rather, I 
 should say, accentuates its point in the mind of the Poet ; as 
 does also that passage where he begs that he will not give 
 himself the trouble of writing to him when it is inconvenient, 
 and that he will make no apology, when he does write, for 
 having postponed it, but to be assured, nevertheless, that he 
 will always be happy to hear from him. Like a polite and 
 shrewd man of the world, and his correspondent's elder in 
 affairs literary, he takes up the safer role of critic and general 
 
Dr. John Moore. 39 
 
 adviser. He has just received the new edition of poems 
 through Creech, and points out to the author that it is not 
 incumbent on him to send copies to each subscriber propor- 
 tionate to his subscription money, most subscribers only 
 expecting one copy, no matter how many they may have 
 subscribed for. He thinks highly of some of the poems 
 added to the new edition, particularly the Winter Night, the 
 Address to Edinburgh, Green Grow the Rashes, and the two 
 songs immediately following, the latter of which, The Gloomy 
 Night is Gathering Fast, is exquisite. And here the doctor 
 shows his critical insight and discrimination by pointing out 
 to Burns that he has a peculiar talent for such lyrical com- 
 positions, which he ought, therefore, to indulge, as no kind 
 of poetry demands more delicacy or higher polishing. He is 
 of opinion, however, that there is nothing added equal to his 
 Vision and Cotter's Saturday Night, as in these are united 
 fine imagery, natural and pathetic description, with sublimity 
 of language and thought. Seeing he possesses such great 
 variety of expression and command of the English language, 
 he advises him to deal more sparingly for the future in the 
 provincial dialect. " Why should you," he asks, " by using 
 that, limit the number of your admirers to those who under- 
 stand the Scottish, when you can extend it to all persons of 
 taste who understand the English language ? " He proposes 
 to him to plan some larger work than he has yet attempted, 
 and to study first, with a view to its proper execution, the 
 best English poets, and a little more of history, such as the 
 Greek and Roman stories (abridged); also heathen mythology 
 for the charmingly fanciful allusions contained therein, .'111(1 
 modern history of France and Great Britain, from the be- 
 ginning of Henry the Seventh's reign. He asks a sight of 
 
40 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 his unpublished satirical and humorous poems, in which he 
 thinks him very strong, and pawns his word to give no copies; 
 understands he intends to take a farm, but hopes the business 
 of husbandry won't prevent him from making occasional 
 addresses to the Muses. Virgil, before him, proved to the 
 world that there is nothing in the business of husbandry 
 inimical to poetry, and trusts his correspondent may afford 
 an example of a good poet being a successful farmer. 
 Finally, he winds up by saying that if he is ever in Scotland 
 he will make a point of seeing him, and, on the other hand, 
 should Burns ever have occasion calling him to London he 
 promises him a cordial welcome from his family. 
 
 Since receiving this letter the Poet had made that pil- 
 grimage over some of the classic ground of Caledonia, Cowden 
 Knowes, Banks of Yarrow, Tweed, etc., which he told the 
 doctor in his last epistle he was about to set out upon, and 
 had returned home again to his family and friends at Mauch- 
 line. It was during his brief sojourn at Mossgiel that he made 
 a stolen visit, in the end of June, to the Western Highlands, 
 the calf-country of Mary Campbell ; and returning by Dum- 
 barton and Paisley made the acquaintance of another doctor. 
 He was standing in one of the streets of the latter town with 
 his friend, Alex. Pattison, bookseller, when Dr. John Taylor, 
 happening to be passing, and at once recognising Burns from 
 his portrait, introduced himself, and proposed that the Poet 
 and his friend should accompany him home, which they did (at 
 first with reluctance, but afterwards, as the " crack " became 
 good, seemed in no hurry to depart), and spent a most agree- 
 able afternoon in conversation ; for the doctor, if not exactly 
 a poet like every tenth Paisley body, possessed the tempera- 
 ment of that erratic class in a high degree. And it was also 
 
Dr. John Moore. 41 
 
 during his short stay at Mossgiel (for he was soon off to 
 Edinburgh again, and to his northern tour with Nicoll), that, 
 being confined, as he says, with some lingering complaints of 
 a gastric origin, and to divert his spirits a little from this 
 miserable fog of ennui, he penned his autobiographical letter, 
 August 2nd, 1787, to Dr. Moore, which, as I said before, has 
 formed the basis of all his subsequent biographies. 
 
 The doctor's reply, 8th November, 1787, if packed, as 
 usual, with good and serious advice, about the advisability of 
 his using the Doric more sparingly in future, planning some 
 larger and more important work, and looking forward to a 
 further publication of his pieces, carefully collected, revised, 
 and polished, is also exceedingly cordial and happy, parti- 
 cularly in his parodying of Othello's defence in acknowledg- 
 ing the merits of the Poet's own account of himself, " and 
 the admirable manner in which 
 
 " You run it through even from your boyish days 
 To the very moment that you kindly tell it. 
 Your moving accident in the harvest field 
 With her whose voice thrill'd like th' JEolian Harp. 
 Your hairbreadth 'scapes in th' imminent deadly breach, 
 The process raised by holy cannibals 
 Who such devour as follow Nature's law, 
 Your wild and headstrong rage for matrimony, 
 Your redemption thence, whereof by parcels 
 I had something heard, but not distinctly." 
 
 Bums had spent his second winter in Edinburgh, witli its 
 Highland and other tours; its Clarinda fever, and other 
 dissipations, revelries, and hospitalities; and had been in- 
 stalled for a few months at Kllisland when lie next, January 
 4th, 1789, addressed Dr. Moore. It is rather singular to 
 
42 B-URNS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 observe how he never seems to get away from his first idea of 
 the doctor's greatness when he begins to write to him. The 
 very thought of doing so, which has suggested itself to him 
 three or four times every week these last six months, he says, 
 " gives me something so like the idea of an ordinary-sized 
 statue offering at a conversation with the Rhodian Colossus, 
 that my mind misgives me, and the affair always miscarries 
 somewhere between purpose and resolve." Now that he has 
 started, however, he writes a pretty long letter, in the open- 
 ing paragraph of which he again declares that, though 
 willing to look upon himself as having some pretensions from 
 nature to the poetic character, he knows a great deal of the 
 late eclat was owing to the singularity of his situation, and 
 the honest prejudice of Scotsmen. Proceeding, he makes 
 some very acute observations on the Muses 1 trade, the apti- 
 tude to learn which, he acknowledges, is a gift from Heaven, 
 while excellence in it is the fruit of industry and pains. He 
 is not going to be in a hurry publishing again, but is, never- 
 theless, determined to pursue the vocation of poetry with the 
 utmost vigour and enthusiasm. The worst of it is that when 
 the poet finishes a piece, what with viewing and reviewing it, 
 he loses in some measure his critical discrimination. Then 
 he wants a friend, with a touch of kindness as well as can- 
 dour ; and he proposes to engage the doctor in that capacity 
 by sending him an essay in poesy, which, as if disposed to 
 take advice about abandoning the pi'ovincial dialect, is an 
 experiment in English, and not, it must be confessed, by any 
 means a happy one. This poetical epistle, in the style of 
 Pope's Moral Epistles, is addressed to Mr. Robert Graham of 
 Fintry, and has to do with his aspirations to be appointed 
 Excise officer of the division of the district in which he 
 
Dr. JOHN MOORE 
 
 an i >il Painting by Sit T. Lawrence, P.R.A. With the I. in. I perm 
 James I.. Caw, Esq., of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. 
 
Dr. John Moore. 43 
 
 resides ; for, though he has taken a farm, and a wife too, he 
 has about as much reason to be disappointed with the former 
 as he has to be abundantly satisfied with the latter. That, 
 however, it was neither unskillful husbandry, nor the want of 
 personal industry, which was the cause of his dissatisfaction 
 and farm-failure, we have the testimony of his own thrifty 
 and managing Jean, and also that of his man-servant, 
 William Clark, who lived with him in the winter of 1789-90. 
 Indeed, to keep down expenses he for a time did the work of 
 two or three men, riding, on an average, two hundred miles 
 a week as an exciseman, and both ploughing and sowing 
 whenever his excise duties would allow him. The farm, 
 declares Chambers, was really a bad bargain, and something 
 might have been made of it with more capital, but Burns 
 could not brook the idea of recalling his loan to his brother, 
 and found his own prosperity by ruining the Ayrshire house- 
 hold. 
 
 Some three months after unbosoming himself of these, 
 among other, personal confidences, including some rather 
 outspoken observations concerning Mr. Creech, his publisher, 
 from whom he seems to despair of ever getting a settlement, 
 he takes occasion to write the doctor again, March 2.'3rd, 
 1789, introducing a neighbour, the Rev. Mr. Neilson, who is 
 on his way to France, in order that he might instruct his 
 Reverence how best to get thither after crossing the Channel. 
 He encloses an ode, which, he says, " is a compliment to the 
 memory of the late Mrs. Oswald of Auchincruive " (a lady 
 whom he thinks the doctor knew personally, an honour of 
 which lie himself could not boast), whose funeral cortege 
 arriving at the little Sanquhar inn on a wild wintry night, 
 where lie was intending to rest himself and his jaded Pegasus 
 
44 Burns axd the Medical Profession. 
 
 till morn, compelled him to again face the blast and travel 
 twelve miles further on, through the wildest moors and hills 
 of Ayrshire, to New Cumnock, the next inn. Here, after a 
 good fire had so far recovered his frozen sinews, he sat down 
 and wrote his ode. Like his epistle to Graham of Fintry, it 
 is an experiment in English, and a very indifferent experi- 
 ment, it must be admitted, it is. Moreover, it is the pro- 
 duct of a bit of bad temper, which circumstances, doubtless, 
 made excusable ; but there can be no excuse for the worse 
 than bad taste which not only makes him hold up to execra- 
 tion the memory of a lady, whom Chambers considers not 
 fairly liable to any such censure, but circulates the libel 
 among the lady's friends. " I was at Edinburgh lately," he 
 adds in the tail of his letter, " and settled finally with Mr. 
 Creech ; and I must own that, at last, he has been amicable 
 and fair with me." 
 
 In the next epistle he receives from Moore, June 10th, 
 1789, he thanks him for the different communications of his 
 occasional productions in manuscript ; all of which have 
 merit, and some of them merit of a different kind from what 
 appears in published poems ; but he takes no notice of his 
 injudicious lampoon on the late Mrs. Oswald. These occa- 
 sional productions he advises him to carefully preserve, with 
 a view to publication either in Edinburgh or London, and 
 promises him all the assistance in the matter he can. Then, 
 returning to his pet subject, he urges him to abandon his 
 Scottish stanza and dialect, and use the English, as Scottish 
 stanza is fatiguing to English ears, and, he thinks, cannot be 
 very agreeable to Scottish. All fine satire and humour in 
 Holy Fair is lost to the English people, and could so easily 
 be turned into English. He also su<r<rests to him that he 
 
Dr. John Mooke. 45 
 
 should carefully collect and polish his occasional pieces, with 
 a view to publication, a labour which would not interfere 
 with his business as a husbandman, in which he understands 
 he is very learned. And, finally, he presents him with a 
 copy of his novel Zduco, and shall be glad to have his 
 opinion of it, because he knows he is above saving what he 
 docs not think. 
 
 In returning thanks for the present of Zeluco, a year later, 
 14th Julv, 1790, Burns must have whetted the doctor's appe- 
 tite to a tantalising degree by his report of how he had dis- 
 figured its pages with annotations, as " I never take it up," 
 he says, ' ; without at the same time taking my pencil, and 
 marking with asterisms, parentheses, etc., wherever I meet 
 with an original thought, a nervous remark on life and 
 manners, a remarkable, well-turned period, or a character 
 sketched with uncommon precision.'" He has gravely planned, 
 he tells him, a comparative view of himself, Fielding, 
 Richardson, and Smollett, in their different qualities and 
 merits as novelists, but it does not appear that he ever 
 brought the business to bear. 
 
 His eighth and last letter, enclosing copies of his Tarn o' 
 Shanter, Elegy on Captain Henderson, and the ballad on 
 Queen Mary, is dated still from Ellisland, 28th February, 
 1791, some nine or ten months before removing to Bank 
 Street, Dumfries, and discourses, among other things, upon 
 the wisdom of cherishing the memories of our departed 
 friends, the value of which, however problematical to the 
 dead, is of infinite service to the living. He has just read 
 over once more of many times his Zeluco, marking with his 
 pencil, as he went along, every passage that pleased him 
 particularly above the rest, and one or two of which, with 
 
46 BlTllNS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 humble deference, he is disposed to think unequal to the 
 merits of the book ; but, so far, he has not gratified the 
 doctor's curiosity by transcribing them, as he half-promised 
 and intended. As to his private concerns, he is going on as 
 a mighty tax -gatherer before the Lord, and has lately had 
 the interest to get himself ranked on the list of Excise as a 
 supervisor, though not yet employed as such. He laments 
 the death of his kind patron the Earl of Glencairn, not so 
 much because he recognises that his getting forward now in 
 the Excise will be all the more difficult, as on account of the 
 grateful attachment he felt towards him, pervading his very 
 soul and entwining itself with the very thread of his exis- 
 tence. However, he wont despair so long as he can live and 
 rhyme, and provide worthily for the maintenance and the 
 education of his family without parting with any of his in- 
 dependence. 
 
 If Moore's reply, November 29th, 1791, to this letter, 
 criticising Tarn o' Shunter and Matthew Henderson, is not so 
 enthusiastic as might have been expected, his advice on 
 another point is full of good sense : I refer to his warning 
 him against his imprudence in scattering abroad so many 
 copies of his verses. His motive for this caution is, that he 
 wishes him to collect all his fugitive pieces, not already 
 printed, and, after they have been reconsidered and polished 
 to the utmost of his power, to publish them by subscription, 
 in which enterprise he promises to exert himself with 
 pleasure. In his future compositions he again wishes he 
 would use the modern English. " You have," he says, 
 " shown your powers in Scottish sufficiently. Although in 
 certain subjects it gives additional zest to the humour, yet it 
 is lost to the English ; and why should you write only for a 
 
Dr. John Moore. 47 
 
 part of the island, when you can command the admiration of 
 the whole." He reminds him again, too, that he has never 
 yet transmitted those marginal annotations of Zeluco, which 
 he spoke of in a former communication, and begs him to do 
 so now, assuring him, at the same time, that whatever their 
 nature, they will break no squares between them. And, 
 lastly, he asks him, if he chances to write to his friend Mrs. 
 Dunlop, to excuse his silence to her, as he hardly ever pens a 
 line but on business, " which apathy of friendship the devil 
 take ! " exclaimed Burns when he conveyed the doctor's ex- 
 cuse to Mrs. Dunlop the next time he wrote to her. And 
 his business now, he says, in writing to him is to instigate 
 him to a new publication, and to tell him that, when he 
 thinks he has a sufficient number of pieces to make a volume, 
 he should set his friends on getting subscriptions. He has 
 many more things to say, which would be easier spoken than 
 writ ten, and if ever he goes to Scotland, he will let him know, 
 that he may meet him at his own house, or at his friend Mrs. 
 Hamilton's, or both. 
 
 As it turned out, however, neither he nor the doctor ever 
 looked upon each other in the flesh. And if they held no 
 further correspondence with each other, it was not because 
 Burns, at least, had exhausted his interest in, or respect for, 
 his old correspondent, as is manifest from a letter written 
 I luce years afterwards to Mrs. Dunlop, while that lady was 
 on a visit to London. " You will have seen," he says, " our 
 worthy and ingenious friend the Doctor (Dr. Moore) long 
 ere this. I hope he is well, and beg to be remembered to 
 him. I have just been reading over again, I daresay for the 
 hundred and fiftieth time, his View of Society and Manners; 
 ami still I read it with delight." But whether this feat is to be 
 
48 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 credited as a tribute to the reader, or the author, who, I fear, 
 is hardly ever read at all now unless by the curious, it were 
 difficult to say. " His humour, 11 he adds, " is perfectly 
 original — it is neither the humour of Addison, nor Swift, nor 
 Sterne, nor of anybody but Dr. Moore, 11 which is making out 
 a good case for the individuality of his author, if the critic 
 was not known to have the good fault of being more generous 
 than discriminating in the praise of his contemporaries. 
 
 And, as might have been anticipated, considering the 
 Poet's circumstances, and what is still more unrcckonable as 
 a factor of destiny, his characterisation, none of the doctor's 
 advice, so frequently and so earnestly preferred, seems ever 
 to have been acted upon. Burns\s persistence in sticking to 
 the vernacular showed him to be wiser in his day and genera- 
 tion than Moore, whose advice on this point is entirely out 
 of harmony with the best of later-day criticism. He instinc- 
 tively felt that, for him at least, there were infinite possibili- 
 ties of expression in the Scottish which were not in the 
 English. Neither could he, to his latest day, ever be got to 
 look upon literature as a business — its commercial side had 
 no charms for him. There was, moreover, in his mind, per- 
 haps just the fear that a second edition of his poems, similar 
 to the first, might not be received by the critics with the 
 same favour ; and his sensitive spirit shrank from an experi- 
 ence of that kind. Nor is there any wonder that he did not 
 show more confidence in his own powers, when it never 
 occurred to such a high literary authority as Dr. Moore that 
 another edition could be a success on any other terms than 
 those of subscription and a beating up of friends. In the 
 light of all that has transpired since, this timidity seems a 
 little strange. In this respect, however, Moore is not worse 
 
Dit. John Moore. 49 
 
 than his contemporaries. It was as difficult for them, with 
 their education and literary canons, to grasp the full signi- 
 ficance of Burns's appearance in their midst, as it was for 
 Burns, the victim of his surroundings and education, to 
 realise that his star was destined to kill the light of theirs — 
 that he, being nearer Nature, was inaugurating a new era in 
 literature that would not only be alive and healthy when 
 theirs was as dead as last year's leaves, but would be as 
 modern, aye more so, a hundred years hence, than to-day. 
 And yet he was not without an " inkling" of something of 
 this sort either, if we consider his reply to Mr. Kamsay when 
 that gentleman asked him whether the Edinburgh literati 
 had mended his poems by their criticisms. " Sir," said he, 
 "these gentlemen remind me of some spinsters in my country, 
 who spin their thread so fine that it is neither fit for warp 
 nor woof." 
 
 It is not so remarkable, therefore, that, in the highly in- 
 teresting correspondence which we have been summarising, 
 he never seemed able to forget that he was addressing a very 
 lofty literary personage, whose Zeliico and View of Society 
 and Manners were as far above his homespun performances 
 as a highly polished ami cultivated lady is above a plain 
 rustic maiden ; hence he is never familiar, abandoned, or 
 exactly at his case, though always dignified and frank, as he 
 discusses his literary and other affairs, and present and future 
 projects. He does certainly, and that more than once, claim 
 for himself that he has some poetic ability ; and the doctor 
 not only readily admits it, but commends him for his honest 
 avowal and for not exhibiting any mock-modesty. And, as 
 an example of his own saneness in grasping a situation, even 
 in the moment of its most pleasing intoxication, he empha- 
 
50 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 sises, as we saw, over and over again, as if its contemplation 
 were a sore point, the fact that he is not to be taken in by 
 all this Edinburgh homage and applause — that it is as a 
 phenomenon more than as a poet that he is a nine days' 
 wonder ; and that when this vulgar period of marvelling has 
 come to an end, he will have to go his way back to the rural 
 shades he has so lately emerged from, the great literary and 
 society personages and he, for the most part, bidding farewell 
 to one another. 
 
 Dr. Moore, though in the main taking Burns at his own 
 valuation, is not only more than moderately enthusiastic and 
 discriminating in his praise both of the man and the poet, 
 but rejoices at his Edinburgh good fortune ; and, like a true 
 friend, exerts himself to promote his interests. It was 
 through him bringing the merits of Burns, as a poet, before 
 Lord Eglinton that his Lordship sent him a subscription of 
 ten guineas for two copies of his next edition. If he takes 
 Burns at his own valuation, he also takes himself at the 
 Poet's estimate, viz., that he is a very superior person, of a 
 very superior literary set, and is, therefore, as lavish (a shade 
 more so, perhaps) of his advice as his praise. 
 
 In all this correspondence, however, with its presents and 
 acknowledgments of books and poems, its criticisms and 
 advice and exchanging of views, its confidences and gossip, 
 and its discussions of present and future plans, it never seems 
 to have entered the doctor's mind that the young peasant- 
 poet he was praising, patronising, and advising, was the 
 marvellous genius that posterity has claimed him to be — 
 that he and all his literary tribe, whom Burns, in his great 
 veneration, almost spoke of with bated breath, were to be 
 indebted for their immortality more to contact with the Ayr- 
 shire peasant than to their own works. 
 
Dr. WI I.I.I AM MAXWELL 
 
 From an Oil Painting in the pos: 
 Kirlcconn 
 
 :ssion of Colonel J. Ma 
 rll, Newabbey. 
 
IV. 
 
 Dns. MAXWELL, THOMSON, MUNDELL, Etc., 
 DUMFRIES. 
 
 Dumfries, in Burns's time, was a somewhat gay and fashion- 
 able garrison town, whose officers, together with the county 
 gentry, gave an aristocratic tone to its society. It was 
 famous for the entertainments of the hunting, races, balls, 
 assemblies, and theatre, by the Caledonian and Dumfries and 
 Galloway hunts ; and for its convivial dinner and supper 
 parties by the leisured and prosperous burgesses, the well-to- 
 do professional men, and those living in retirement on com- 
 petencies ; the latter, a not inconsiderable class at that 
 period, resident in the pleasant dwelling place by the banks 
 of the Nith. 
 
 In politics it was no longer Whig, but rank Tory, and, 
 therefore, eminently, even ostentatiously, loyal to the govern- 
 ment of the day. Jacobitism was as good as dead, or only 
 lingered passively in the minds of a few, Burns's and his 
 friend Dr. Maxwell's being among the number. There was, 
 doubtless, a good deal in the Poet's characterisation to 
 account for this kindly leaning ; while Maxwell, though 
 possessing similar sympathies to Burns, had a hereditary 
 tendency towards Jacobitism, he being the son of the gallant 
 Kiikcoiiiicll Maxwell who went out with Prince Charles in 
 1745, and became the historian of the expedition. 
 
52 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 As an illustration of this blood taint, it is popularly re- 
 ported of him by Chambers that, while studying at the 
 medical schools in Paris during the heat of the Revolution, 
 he had acted as one of the National Guard round the scaffold 
 of Louis XVI., and had dipped his handkerchief in the royal 
 blood. The truth and falsehood of this romantic little 
 episode are set forth in A Paper on the Subjeet of Burn.is 
 Pistols, read before the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, in 
 April, 1859, by the Right Rev. Bishop Gillis, Roman 
 Catholic Bishop of Edinburgh, into whose possession the 
 pistols came through the daughter of Dr. Maxwell. 
 
 The Bishop, who knew the doctor and his family well, 
 being a member of the household in Edinburgh to which 
 Maxwell removed from Dumfries in 1834, and under the roof 
 of which he died in October of the same year, readily admits 
 his bias towards Revolutionary principles in his youth, and 
 also his being " present in Paris as one of the National Guard 
 around the scaffold of the virtuous and unfortunate Louis 
 XVI. But," he says, " if for no other reason than because he 
 was at the time under arms ; none but he who would cast a 
 general slur on the character of an English gentleman, will 
 believe that ' he then dipped his handkerchief in the royal 
 blood, 1 — no one, especially who ever enjoyed the privilege of 
 Dr. Maxwell's acquaintance, and had an opportunity of 
 appreciating the high breeding of the man, his exquisite 
 sense of propriety, and the deep and noble feelings of his 
 generous and tender heart, can ever for a moment connect 
 his memory with the perpetration of an act so exclusively 
 within the province of savage brutality. 1 ' The Bishop 
 further declares that, in after life, he never spoke " of the 
 awful sublimity of the event without the tears welling up 
 
Dr. Maxwell. 53 
 
 into his eyelids," he having been so close to the scaffold as 
 not only to see the face of the royal martyr, but to hear the 
 words, " Fits de Saint Louis, Montez cat Cicl .'" addressed to 
 him by the Abbe Edgeworth. 
 
 Until I read the good Bishop's defence of his friend I had 
 interpreted the act imputed to him, not as one of savage 
 brutality, but rather as an exhibition of a rare and beautiful 
 sentimental ism, of the same character as Mark Antony in- 
 stances when he says : — 
 
 " They would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds, 
 And dip their napkins in his sacred blood ; 
 Yea, beg a hair of him for memory ; " 
 
 or as Dumas in Twenty Years After relates of Athos at the 
 beheading of Charles, " At last he rose, and taking his hand- 
 kerchief, steeped it in the blood of the martyred king." 
 
 However, be this little story fact or fiction, certainly Max- 
 well, before returning to his own country and commencing in 
 Dumfries to lay the foundations of that medical practice 
 which was by and by to reach a very high professional level, 
 caught the revolutionary spirit which was rampant in Paris 
 in 1793, and ever afterwards retained the impression which it 
 produced OH his anient and youthful mind. 
 
 Accordingly he was considered a kind of head centre of the 
 Liberal party in Dumfries; and both he, and Burns, with 
 Syme, and other Liberals and opponents of the government 
 were in the habit of holding occasional symposia, at which 
 they spoke their minds freely, with locked doors, a circum- 
 stance not unlikely to set the popular imagination to work. 
 These democratic tendencies, therefore, together with his 
 other genial and companionable qualities, and his gift of 
 eloquence, you may be sure, greatly commended his friend- 
 
54 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 ship to Burns, over whom his masculine intellect, it is said, 
 exerted considerable influence. On the contrary they ren- 
 dered both Burns and Maxwell objects of distrust to the 
 ultra-loyal Dumfriessians, who held the French Democracy in 
 horror. Now, Burns did not only not deplore the French 
 Revolution, but, in his heart, sympathised with it ; and his 
 nature was too open and candid and independent in its char- 
 acter to conceal from the world what he felt on the subject. 
 Indeed, it was his very outspokenness, along with his foolish 
 presentation of cannon to the French nation, that got him 
 into trouble. Nor was his friend Maxwell one whit behind 
 him in his imprudent enthusiasm for liberal principles, which, 
 coupled with his residence in Paris during the early days of 
 the Revolution, brought forth the well-known denouncements 
 of him and his presumed designs, by Burke, in the House of 
 Commons, giving him thereby a permanent place in the politi- 
 cal history of the country, as his connection with Burns, as his 
 friend and physician, has conferred upon him a literary one. 
 
 But for all their rash words and indiscreet actions, inspired, 
 doubtless, by a love of freedom, and sympathy with the 
 oppressed and down -trodden of whatever country, they were 
 both loyal enough at heart ; and when the war broke out 
 between Great Britain and France in 1793 they both, witli 
 their friend Syme, joined a volunteer company that was 
 formed in Dumfries for the defence of the fatherland. 
 Burns, indeed, became the laureate of the corps, and by his 
 patriotic verses, 
 
 " Does haughty Gaul invasion threat ? 
 
 Then let the louns beware, sir ! 
 
 There's wooden walls upon our seas, 
 
 And Volunteers on shore, sir : 
 
Dr. Maxwell. 55 
 
 The Nith shall run to Corsinson, 
 
 The Criffel sink in Sohvay 
 Ere we permit a foreign foe 
 On British ground to rally ! 
 
 We'll ne'er permit a foreign foe 
 On British ground to rally ! " 
 
 says Lockhart, " did more good service to the government of 
 the country, at a crisis of the darkest alarm and danger, than 
 perhaps any one person of his rank and station, with the 
 exception of Dibdin, had the power or the inclination to 
 render." 
 
 One of the few poetical compliments Burns ever paid to 
 the medical faculty is in the form of an epigram to Dr. 
 Maxwell on the recovery from a fever of Miss Jessie Staig, 
 daughter of the Provost of Dumfries, the heroine of the song, 
 Lovely Young Jessie, composed about eighteen months be- 
 fore the illness referred to. Writing to Mrs. Dunlop, Sep- 
 tember, 1794, in sympathetic terms of the indescribable 
 nature of the feelings of parents concerning the well-being 
 of their children, he describes the whole circumstance in 
 detail, which I beg to quote entire, as it contains a warm 
 eulogium on the skill and character of his friend Dr. Maxwell. 
 " I sympathised much," he says, " the other day with a 
 father, a man whom I respect highly. He is a Mr. Staig, 
 the leading man in our Borough. A girl of his, a lovely 
 young creature of sixteen, was given over by the Physician, 
 who openly said she had but few hours to live. A gentleman 
 who also lives in town, and who had studied medicine in the 
 first schools — the Dr. Maxwell whom Burke mentioned in 
 the House of Commons about the affair of the daggers — 
 was at last called in ; and his prescriptions, in a few hours, 
 
56 Burks and the Medical Profession. 
 
 altered her situation, and have now cured her. Maxwell is 
 my most intimate friend, and one of the first characters I ever 
 met with ; but on account of his Politics is rather shunned 
 by some high aristocrats, though his Family and Fortune 
 entitle him to the first circles. I addressed the following 
 epigram to him on the occasion : — 
 
 Maxwell, if merit here you crave, 
 
 That merit I deny : 
 Ton save fair Jessie from the grave ! — 
 
 An angel could not die ! " 
 
 Whatever part his skill plaved in the recovery of " Lovely 
 Young Jessie,'" it was of no avail in the case of poor Burns, 
 whom, as all the world knows, he attended in his last illness, 
 with a kindness and assiduity entirely worthy of their warm 
 and close friendship. Nor was Burns unappreciative of his 
 physician's disinterested zeal. "'What business," said he to 
 Maxwell one day in a humorous reference to his poverty, 
 " has a physician to waste his time on me ? I am a poor 
 pigeon not worth plucking. Alas ! I have not feathers 
 enough upon me to carry me to my grave. 11 
 
 As a further memorial of his gratitude he, on his deathbed, 
 presented the doctor with a pair of pistols — the same which 
 we saw came into Bishop Gillis's possession, and which he 
 afterwards presented to the Society of Antiquaries, 2-lth 
 January, 1859; also the Poet's youngest child Maxwell, born 
 July 25th, 1796, the day of his father's funeral, and who died 
 25th April, 1799, was so named as an additional mark of 
 respect for Dr. Maxwell. And, as it turned out, he proved 
 himself quite worthy of so much good feeling. Sharing, as 
 he did, strongly in the interest caused by the death of his 
 illustrious patient, he, with Syme, and Cunninghame of 
 
Dr. Maxwell. 57 
 
 Edinburgh, entered at once, and with the greatest cordiality, 
 into the project for the benefit of the Poet's family. He 
 also corresponded with Gilbert Burns, who entrusted him 
 with the negotiations for procuring from Mrs. Dunlop his 
 brother's letters for publication. The Poet's eldest son, 
 Robert, while employed in the Stamp Office, Somerset House, 
 London, likewise corresponded with his father's old friend and 
 physician, the terms of which show him to have been, in some 
 respects, a chip off the old block. 
 
 It was Maxwell who supplied C'urrie with the particulars, 
 or rather, want of particulars, as Scott Douglas very 
 pertinently puts it, of the Poet's illness and death; and which 
 information the same excellent authority considers far from 
 satisfactory. A patient's diseases, both in the eye of the law 
 and in medical etiquette, are deemed a sacred confidence be- 
 tween him and his physician ; and if this obligation rests 
 with the medical attendant while his patient is still alive, it 
 is surely equally binding upon him after his death. Though 
 Burns's body, as the mere mortal instrument through which 
 mankind could only come to the knowledge of his marvellous 
 lyric music, and even the diseases which silenced it for ever in 
 death, must always have a precious and significant interest 
 for his countrymen, he is surely entitled to the same treat- 
 ment from the medical profession, in this respect, that the 
 law and good taste allow to commoner mortals. 
 
 Now, this is just what Scott Douglas complains that he 
 did not get. There exists evidence to show, lie says, that 
 certain particulars were reluctantly confided by Maxwell to 
 Currie, which proves the latter, in commenting upon the 
 errors of Hums, to have been unworthy of such a sacred 
 trust. At the same time, if Currie sinned, it must, we feel, 
 
58 BuRXS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION - . 
 
 have been with his head, not his heart ; for he was on his 
 guard, he confesses himself, to touch this thing with great 
 tenderness, since touch it he felt it his duty to do. But, it 
 may reasonably be asked, medical man and all as he was, was 
 he qualified to receive Maxwell's confidence at all, or to touch 
 it with the necessary impartiality ; for " it should be borne 
 in mind, 11 says Scott Douglas, " that Dr. Currie, in his 
 medical works, took every opportunity to advocate the duty 
 of abstinence from alcoholic liquors ? " Perhaps not ; 
 generally speaking, such an office, in my experience, would 
 be too great a temptation for the impartiality of any tee- 
 totaler, even, I may admit, the kind, sensible, and able Dr. 
 Currie ; and so he wrote these thirteen words, " He who 
 suffers the pollution of inebriation, how shall he escape other 
 pollution ? " which brought down upon his unfortunate head 
 the righteous censure of Wordsworth and a host of others 
 who saw in them a kind of blasphemy against Burns ; and 
 which even the reverse of squeamish Scott Douglas wishes he 
 had omitted, even although the omission might have rendered 
 his picture incomplete. But enough for the present, I shall 
 have to ask you to look a little closer into this and kindred 
 matters when treating more in detail of Dr. Crime's bene- 
 volent achievement and the attitude of the critics towards it. 
 It would have been strange had the skill of the doctor, and 
 he still comparatively young, attending upon such an illus- 
 trious and universally lamented patient, remained unchal- 
 lenged. Certainly (to leave out of account the taste or the 
 justice of such a proceeding), no useful purpose can be served 
 by opening up such an enquiry at this date, for the very 
 sufficient reason that there is neither clinical nor pathological 
 evidence upon which to found a judgment. Still, if only as 
 
Dr. John Thomson. 59 
 
 an illustration of how doctors (though, in the main, all in 
 agreement on the great question of the Poet's morals,) differ 
 as to the nature of his bodily diseases, it may be worth while 
 glancing for a little at the appendix to a work, written fifty 
 or more years ago, and after Maxwell had been dead some 
 ten years, by 
 
 John Thomson, M.D., 
 
 entitled, Education: Mans Salvation from Crime, Disease, 
 and Starvation. 
 
 He must have been a very singular personage this Dr. 
 Thomson, of whose history a few particulars are to be gleaned 
 from Notes and Queries, Sept. and Oct., 1868, which, by 
 throwing some rays of light on the extraordinary statements 
 in the Vindicator?/ Appendix referred to, help us the better 
 towards a correct estimate of their worth. Dr. C. J. Ramage 
 tells us that, " At the death of Burns in 1796, Mr. John 
 Thomson, about sixteen years of age at that time, was usher 
 to Mr. Gray, the Rector of Dumfries Academy, where the 
 eldest son of the Poet was in attendance. The families of 
 Thomson and Burns are said to have been on intimate terms, 
 so much so was this the case that Dr. Thomson told my in- 
 formant, to whom he was related, that he used to meet Burns 
 between five and six o'clock in summer mornings in Dock 
 Park, rented by Thomson's father, for the purpose of improv- 
 ing his knowledge of the French language, with which 
 Thomson was well acquainted. This intimacy will account 
 for any information he may give regarding the Poet's last 
 moments. Mr. Thomson subsequently became tutor in the 
 familv of the celebrated Dr. Gregory, Professor in the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh, and thereby was able to pursue his medical 
 
60 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 studies. He graduated there in June, 1809, and practised 
 for a short time in Deal, and some years after for a short 
 time in Dumfries. He retired to Edinburgh, however, and 
 died there in November, 1847, at the age of sixty-seven." 
 
 Another correspondent "F. M. S." had apparently informed 
 the public that Dr. Thomson was the author of an account 
 of Burns's death, which that gentleman had special facilities 
 for forming a correct opinion about ; and " C," a third cor- 
 respondent, writes to say that it " would gratify many lovers 
 of literature if F. M. S. were to publish Dr. Thomson's 
 account of Burns's death. From Dr. Ramage's statement it 
 appears that Dr. Thomson attended the poet in his last ill- 
 ness merely as a friend of the family, not as a medical practi- 
 tioner. A Mr. Brown, surgeon, and Dr. Maxwell were the 
 medical attendants. The late Joseph Parkes had a note of 
 Burns's, addressed to Mr. Brown, asking for some more medi- 
 cine, which he irreverently styled ' extreme unction.' Jessie 
 Lewars (Mrs. Thomson) was present at the Poet's death, and 
 she said that Burns, though tortured with rheumatism, was 
 calm and resigned." 
 
 F. M. S. replies to C's. request as follows : — " I hardly like 
 to publish Dr. Thomson's description of the state of Burns's 
 mind at the near approach of death, but I may at least say 
 that it is very, very different from the accounts given by the 
 poet's biographers. The gentleman, in whose MSS. I find it 
 was a clergyman, for whose strict and undeviating truthful- 
 ness I can personally vouch. He states that having met Dr. 
 Thomson when on a voyage to London by sea, and having 
 long resided in the neighbourhood of many of the scenes im- 
 mortalised by Burns, he asked Thomson, ' particularly, with 
 a view to have impartial testimony as to the state of Burns's 
 
Dr. John Thomson. 61 
 
 mind at the near approach of Death. 1 Thomson, he says, 
 'solemnly affirmed 1 the truth of his statement. From Dr. 
 Ramage's obliging note, it appears that although Dr. Thom- 
 son was not Burns's medical attendant, he was at least one 
 who must have known the circumstances well. 11 
 
 Now that the special knowledge here hinted at, of which 
 this undeviating and truthful clergyman was the sacred 
 custodian, was something over and above what the doctor 
 himself has revealed in his Vindicatory Appendix, I take the 
 liberty to doubt, as the Appendix was written some twenty- 
 four years before the transpiration of the correspondence in 
 Notes and Queries, and three years before the doctor's own 
 death. But, granted that all was disclosed in the Appendix 
 that he had to tell, one cannot help asking what wise purpose 
 he intended to serve by writing such a document at all, un- 
 less it was simply to let off steam, an operation he had 
 evidently been performing at intervals for the last fifty years. 
 Nor would I be warranted now in resurrecting his nonsense, 
 but, as I said, by way of a little variety, and as an illustration 
 of the proverb that doctors differ, if not about the Poet's 
 morals, then about his diseases. Moreover, had this difference 
 of medical opinion been about John Smith's liver it would not 
 have mattered to the world a brass farthing, but the fact 
 that it was about Burns's makes a great alteration. 
 
 The doctor's literary style, as shown in his treatise on 
 Education, is somewhat Quixotic, going out to challenge all 
 who differ from him in opinion, much as the knight of La 
 Mancha went forth to combat with wind-mills, or to the 
 championship of distressed damsels. And yet, on second 
 thoughts, his extra vagan/a reminds one more of the Ancient 
 
62 BUBNS AKD THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 Pistol of Boars Head tavern-renown, than the immaculate 
 Spanish gentleman and professor of knight errantry. 
 
 He separates education into two divisions, Primation and 
 Maturation, the first being that which we get from the 
 schoolmaster, and the second that which we give ourselves. 
 In the unfolding of his ideas he, in regular swash-buckler 
 style, tilts against everything and everybody — priestcraft, 
 church establishments, women's usurpation of the functions of 
 the lords of creation, Scottish and American notions of the 
 profanation of the Sabbath by railway trains, medical educa- 
 tion (hospital and other) ; commending finally his own Hclp- 
 me-up doctrine as the only genuine panacea for crime, 
 starvation, etc., etc. 
 
 In his Appendix to this work, which I beg to quote entire 
 on account of its pure Burnsonianism, he, in full view of the 
 approaching festival (held in honour of the sons of Burns at 
 Alloway in 1844), flings down the gauntlet, in true Pistolian 
 terms and spirit, to all in that coming congregation whom it 
 may concern. 
 
 " Before sending forth these fugitive pages, I am anxious 
 to say that the word ' help-me-up ' is no coinage of mine ; — 
 that Scotia's immortal poet, Robert Burns, supplied me with 
 that word. Particular circumstances brought me into very 
 intimate intercourse with him during the closing months of 
 his most eventful life. In youth's ' extatic hour' I enjoyed 
 the ineffable happiness and benefit of his society; — for months 
 I met him almost every morning at five o'clock on the banks 
 of the Nith. My opinion and positive belief that ' man shall 
 progress,' were there and then often discussed, and the 
 channel of progression here briefly described ; he called my 
 Help-me-up. 
 
Dn. John Thomson. 63 
 
 " Reader, permit me to pass from nomenclature to an 
 infinitely more important and holy concern, to vindicate the 
 memory of Robert Burns from the blackest stain which Fame 
 has affixed, diabolically affixed, to his splendid escutcheon. 
 Fame, prompted by priests, yes, countenanced by friends, has 
 promulgated an untruth that Robert Burns died, prematurely 
 died, dissipation's martyr. From personal correct knowledge, 
 I proclaim that Robert Burns died the doctor's martyr ; and, 
 as a very few years must sweep away all living testimony 
 upon that point, I avail myself of the approaching Festival, 
 and challenge the contradiction of all his living co-tempor- 
 aries who may there congregate. 
 
 " The truth stands thus — The physician of Robert Burns 
 believed that his liver was diseased, and placed him under a 
 course of mercury. In those days a mercurial course was 
 indeed a dreadful alternative. I know well that his mercurial 
 course was extremely severe. In addition to this severity, his 
 physician believed that sea-bathing was the best tonic after 
 salivation. Thus he was sent to the Brow for sea-bathing. 
 In the course of, I think, three weeks he returned home from 
 sea-bathing, inflated, black with dropsy, and soon died. 
 Among the last words I ever heard him speak were, ' Well, 
 the doctor has made a finish of it now. 1 
 
 " Such I affirm to be the truth. ' Wha then dares battle 
 wi' me? 1 'Come forth, thou slanderer.'' Robert Burns 
 thus stands forth Maturation's sublimest specimen. Prima- 
 tion had small, very small, claim upon him. I carefully 
 examined his early — I believe the only schoolmaster lie ever 
 had — and found that al the age of thirteen he read imper- 
 fectly, but had never learned to write. He died Scotia's first 
 poet, extensively acquainted with general literature, an 
 
64 BURNS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 excellent French scholar, and, what few know, could relish 
 and appreciate the classic odes of Horace. Maturation may 
 indeed triumphantly claim him as her suhlimest specimen." 
 
 If the belligerent doctor's opinion as to the true condition 
 of Burns's liver is on a par with his statement regarding his 
 proficiency in reading and writing at the age of thirteen, I 
 fear it is of very little value ; for Mr. Murdoch, who was not 
 the only schoolmaster, but the first he ever had, seems from 
 his written testimony to hold an entirely contrary view. 
 Besides, what could the opinion of a mere lad of sixteen, 
 without a particle of medical knowledge or experience, even 
 though present at the poet's death-bed, be worth ? Nothing 
 at all ! He would hear the talk of others at the time, and it 
 was most probably this which got crystallized into a notion of 
 his own when he became possessed of medical knowledge. 
 
 But to leave Dr. Thomson, and turn for a little to another 
 medical man, 
 
 Dr. Mundell, 
 
 a retired navy surgeon practising in Dumfries, whose intimacy 
 with Burns, though not of so close a character as Maxwell's, 
 rests on something more than his own testimony. In a 
 characteristic letter from Ellisland, dated February, 1790, the 
 Poet writes : — " Dear Doctor. — The bearer, Janet Nievison, 
 is a neighbour, and occasionally a labourer of mine. She has 
 got some complaint in her shoulder, and wants me to find her 
 out a Doctor that will cure her, so I have sent her to you. 
 You will remember that she is just in the jaws of matrimony, 
 so for heaven's sake get her ' hale and sound ' as soon as 
 possible. We are all pretty well ; only the little boy's sore 
 
 mouth has again inflamed Mrs. B 's nipples. — I am, yours, 
 
 Robt. Burns." 
 
Dr. Mukdei.i.. 65 
 
 It was he, too, along with Syme and Maxwell, who was 
 invited by the Poet to dine at his house, to meet two honest 
 Midlothian farmers and Jean Lorimer and her father. In 
 writing, January, 1796, to one of these Midlothian friends, 
 Mr. Robert Cleghorn, Saughton Mills, enclosing " The 
 Lassie o' my Heart," just after bare recovery from a rheuma- 
 tic fever, which he (Burns) says kept him bedfast for many 
 weeks, and brought him to the borders of the grave, he 
 reminds his friend that the bearer of the letter, Mr. Mundell, 
 surgeon, is one of the gentlemen he will remember to have 
 seen at his house. And very likely it was this same Dr. 
 Mundell who, on retiring from professional service in the 
 Royal Navy, started, in company with some other gentlemen, 
 a cotton factory, which flourished for a number of years, till it 
 was injured by the war with America, and whose "ox" the Poet 
 refers to in a letter to the lady of Woodley Park — " There is 
 a species of the human genus that I call the gin horse-class ; 
 what enviable dogs they are ! Round and round, and round 
 they go — MundelFs ox that drives his cotton mill is their 
 exact prototype — without an idea or wish beyond their circle ; 
 fat, sleek, stupid, patient, quiet, and contented, while here I 
 sit, altogether Novemberish, a d — mnd melange of fretfulness 
 and melancholy ; not enough of the one to rouse me to 
 passion, nor of the other to repose me in torpor ; my soul 
 flouncing and fluttering round her tenement, like a wild finch 
 caught amid the horrors of winter, and newly thrust into a 
 cage." 
 
 It ought also to be mentioned, in connection with the pro- 
 fession in Dumfries, that it was one of the surgeons of the 
 town, Mr. Archibald Blacklock, who was present at the 
 exhumation of the Poet's remains when the mausoleum was 
 
66 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 opened for the interment of his widow in 1834 ; and that he 
 drew up, in the interest of the science of phrenology, a 
 description of the condition and appearances of the bones of 
 the skull, which were declared to be in a high state of preser- 
 vation, and of which a plaster of Paris cast was accurately 
 taken after every particle of sand or foreign body had been 
 carefully cleaned and washed away. 
 
 Before taking farewell of Burns and the medical profession 
 in and connected with Dumfries, permit me to record a very 
 beautiful reminiscence from Dr. James Finlayson's biography 
 of Dr. Robert Watt, an ex-President of the Faculty of 
 Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow, and author of the Biblio- 
 theca Br'itannka, which, for its charming Burns allusion, 
 deserves a niche all to itself in this collection, though Watt 
 was not a doctor at the time, but a young man barely out of 
 his " teens, 1 ' engaged in making part of the line of i - oad from 
 Sanquhar to Dumfries. On arriving at Dumfries, he was 
 boarded for a few weeks on the farm of Ellisland, in the old 
 house which the Poet and his family had recently occupied. 
 During the summer he spent in Dumfriesshire, he had 
 frequent opportunities of seeing Burns, but cannot recollect 
 of having formed any opinion of him, except a confused idea 
 that he was an extraordinary character. While there, the 
 voracious young book-worm read Burns's poems ; and, from 
 an acquaintance with some of his relations, he occasionally got 
 from the Poet's library a reading of other works of the same 
 kind. With these he used to retire into some of the con- 
 cealed places on the banks of the Nith, and pass his leisure 
 hours in reading, and occasionally in trying his hand in 
 writing rhymes himself. From this period he dates the 
 commencement of his literary pursuits, and who shall say 
 
Dr. Samuel Hughes. 67 
 
 that Burns's generosity to the young road-maker did not play 
 an important part in it ? 
 
 Of equal interest, and worthy to be bracketed in this Dum- 
 fries leave-taking with the passage of romance in the life of 
 young Watt, is an incident in which another medical man, 
 
 Dr. Samuel Hughes, of Hereford, 
 
 has secured immortality through contact with Burns. When 
 or where the doctor first made the acquaintance of the Poet 
 it were difficult to say, but, as he graduated at Edinburgh in 
 1795, it is not improbable that he may have known him while 
 prosecuting his medical studies there, which was also the 
 period when Burns was undergoing his lionising in the Scot- 
 tish capital. Whether or not, however, he had been intimate 
 with him in Edinburgh, we know for a certainty from the 
 doctor's own testimony, written on a blank portion of a 
 manuscript copy of " Bruce's Address to his Troops at Ban- 
 nockburn " presented to him by the author in his own hand- 
 writing, that he met Burns in Dumfries in the autumn of 
 1795. Dr. Hughes 1 own words are, " a beautiful poem given 
 me by the author, Mr. Burns, the celebrated Scottish Poet 
 when at Dumfries, Saty., Augt. 8th, 1795. 
 
 S. H." 
 
 Written again, immediately below this, is the following, 
 in the handwriting of his daughter-in-law : " Given to my 
 father-in-law, Dr. Hughes of Hereford, by Burns. 
 
 Bariiaka Huches." 
 
 This manuscript, which is now the property of the Munici- 
 pal Museum of Edinburgh, having been presented to if by 
 .Mr. John Kennedy of New York, 29th July, 1S90, lias accom- 
 
68 Burks and the Medical Profession. 
 
 panying the poem, on the same sheet of paper, and also in 
 Burns's handwriting, a short prose account of the historic cir- 
 cumstances upon which the song was founded. The Poet's 
 reason, doubtless, for accompanying the verses with an ex- 
 planatory historical sketch, being, that the medical gentleman 
 to whom he was presenting it, was an Englishman, and might, 
 therefore, not be supposed to be too conversant with Scottish 
 history. 
 
 Dr. Hughes subsequently settled in the city of Hereford, 
 where he was a capable and highly respected physician during 
 the greater part of the first half of the present century, and 
 where, as early as 1812, he was chosen to fill the distinguished 
 position of Mayor, when he gave a banquet to one hundred 
 and thirty of the citizens and neighbours, including the 
 Bishop of the Diocese, the Dean of Hereford, and the nobility, 
 gentry, and clergy, at which, it is recorded " mirth, festivity, 
 and good humour, continued to enliven the hospitable board 
 till a late hour." 
 
JAMES CURRIE, M.D., F.R.S. 
 
V. 
 JAMES CURRIE, M.D., F.R.S., LIVERPOOL, 
 
 Whom Carlyle calls Burns's first and kindest biographer, was, 
 like the seer of Chelsea himself, a native of Annandale, Dum- 
 friesshire, and settled in active practice as a physician in the 
 city of Liverpool at the period of the Poet's death. He was, 
 not only a distinguished member of his own profession, being 
 a pioneer in thermometry and the treatment of fever by cold 
 affusion, and the author of numerous papers on medico- 
 philosophical subjects read before the learned societies of 
 Liverpool and Manchester, but he was in the forefront of 
 every good work which had for its object the amelioration of 
 the sick and unfortunate poor, and the social, intellectual, and 
 moral improvement of his adopted fellow-citizens. He was a 
 liberal in politics, of the rational and moderate type, and a 
 staunch advocate for the abolition of slavery. He also enjoyed 
 a somewhat dubious fame as the supposed author of Jasper 
 Wilson's Letter to Mr. Pitt, a pamphlet in which the war, in 
 connection with the French Revolution, was deprecated with 
 an eloquence and energy far from pleasing to the government ; 
 and which produced an extraordinary sensation on its first 
 publication, three editions being sold in London in two 
 months (not to mention others which were published in Scot- 
 land and Ireland), besides being copied into the periodical 
 publications of America, and translated into the languages of 
 Germany and France. He was, moreover, possessed of de- 
 
70 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 cided literary ambition ; his tastes and talents in this direc- 
 tion bringing him into intimacy with the well-known 
 biographer of the Lorenzo dc Medici, Mr. William Roscoe. 
 " Few strangers of eminence,'" says Dr. Clime's son, " arrived 
 at Liverpool without an introduction to Mr. Roscoe and Dr. 
 Currie ; and their houses were the resort of men of learning 
 and ability from all quarters." 
 
 Dr. Currie was, therefore, as may be readily understood, a 
 great admirer of his fellow countryman's poems, a volume of 
 which he had received so long ago as 1787 from Dr. Moore, 
 the well-known author of Zeluco ; and his interest in which 
 was, doubtless, enhanced by the fact that he had a casual in- 
 terview with their author in Dumfries in 1792. Accordingly, 
 on hearing of Burns's death, he opened up a lengthy and pro- 
 tracted correspondence with his old college friend, Mr. John 
 Syme of Ryedale (whom we saw was engaged with Dr. Max- 
 well of Dumfries and Cunninghame of Edinburgh in raising 
 a subscription for the benefit of the widow and family), in- 
 quiring, among other things, what he died of, as a report was 
 going about that it was from the effects of habitual drinking? 
 He also expressed a strong interest in the intended subscrip- 
 tion, and in the preparation of a Life and an edition of the 
 posthumous works of the Poet, in such terms as amounted to 
 an offer of his own literary assistance to any extent that 
 might be desired. Within a month he had himself collected 
 in Liverpool forty or fifty guineas towards the relief fund, but 
 before the list was closed he managed to bring it up to 
 seventy guineas. 
 
 There appears to have been some uncertainty at first as to 
 the selection of an editor and biographer. Professor Dugald 
 Stewart was thought of. So was Mrs. Walter Riddell. Dr. 
 
Dr. James Currie. 71 
 
 Currie, who discountenanced the idea of the lady of Woodley 
 Park engaging in such an enterprise, pressed Syme to take the 
 matter up. Indeed, he gives as one of the chief reasons for 
 offering his own services — that, setting aside the disadvantage 
 of little personal acquaintance, it seemed to him that he was 
 fitter for the task than a lively female, who, though she might 
 feel the brilliancy, might not be able to sustain the force or 
 support the weight, of his character. In the end, however, 
 after much epistolary debating for and against the propriety 
 of Dr. Currie taking the affair in hand ; and in which, it must 
 be confessed, prompted, doubtless, by literary ambition, as 
 well as an honest desire to serve the widow and her family, is 
 revealed on the doctor's part a distinct hankering after the 
 task, it was, at the earnest solicitation of Mrs. Dunlop and 
 other friends of the Poet, finally agreed in September that he 
 should discharge the onerous duty himself. 
 
 Without fee or reward, then, and out of pure love for the 
 theme, if the honourable gratification of literary ambition be 
 excluded, this kind-hearted physician undertook the task, 
 because nobody else among the Poet's many literary friends 
 could be got to do it, " men of established reputation," he 
 tells us in his dedication, "naturally declining an undertaking, 
 to the performance of which it was scarcely to be hoped that 
 general approbation could be obtained, by any exertion of 
 judgment or temper." He undertook it, moreover, at a time 
 when he was over head and ears in a large and lucrative 
 practice, and when he was busy preparing for the press a 
 medical work, embodying his views and researches on the 
 chief professional employment of his life — the treatment of 
 fever by cold affusion, and might, therefore, well have excused 
 himself. Besides, his health was anything but robust, four 
 
72 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 of his seven sisters having died of consumption, inherited 
 from their mother. He knew the fatal family tendency was 
 in his own constitution, and he had not only to be watchful, 
 but to absent himself from his practice for brief periods every 
 now and then, in order to prevent a breakdown, or to recover 
 from the effects of an alarming illness. In spite of all pre- 
 cautions and care, however, the much-dreaded malady ulti- 
 mately developed, and, together with heart disease, carried 
 him off at the early age of forty-nine, his immense labours as 
 the editor and biographer of Burns, it is said, greatly ac- 
 celerating the sad event. 
 
 Some conception of the Herculean nature of the task he 
 undertook may be gathered from his own words, on receiving, 
 in February, 1797, from his friend Syme the mass of materials, 
 letters, fugitive poems, etc., which he had been busy collect- 
 ing for the last two or three months. " I received," he says, 
 " the huge and shapeless mass with astonishment ! Instead 
 of finding, as I expected, a selection of his papers with such 
 annotations as might clear up obscurities— of papers perused 
 and approved of by his friends as fit for publication, or fur- 
 nishing the materials of publication— I received the complete 
 sweepings of his drawers and of his desk (as it appeared to 
 me), even to the copy-book on which his little boy had been 
 practising his writing. No one had given these papers a 
 perusal, or even an inspection : the sheep were not separated 
 from the goats; and— what has, perhaps, not happened before 
 since the beginning of the world— the manuscripts of a man 
 of genius, unarranged by himself, and unexamined by his 
 family or friends, were sent, with all their sins on their heads 
 to meet the eye of an entire stranger." 
 
 Overwhelmed by the hugeness of a task, the materials of 
 
Dr. James Currie. 73 
 
 which were so scattered and peculiar, and depending so much 
 for the success of the enterprise on the taste, the delicacy, 
 and the judgment with which they were handled, there is 
 little wonder if he declares to Syme that, " in this situation 
 you will not be surprised that I feel an anxious wish to de- 
 cline the undertaking, if any other person can be found to 
 engage in it." 
 
 Negotiations, moreover, of a peculiarly delicate character, 
 had to be conducted with various persons in possession of 
 documentary material necessary to satisfactorily complete the 
 publication. Mrs. Dunlop, as the result of these delibera- 
 tions, gave up her letters in exchange for her own to Burns : 
 Clarinda kept hers, but promised to transcribe and transmit 
 passages from them, provided her own to Burns were re- 
 turned : while Thomson readily parted with the sixty songs 
 Burns had sent him for his Melodies of Scotland ; also the 
 valuable and delightfully spontaneous correspondence which 
 passed between them anent the same. 
 
 Currie was engaged in arranging and editing this miscel- 
 laneous mass of materials, and in writing the Life, for over a 
 period of three years ; and the only assistance he received 
 was when, under a threat of Hinging the whole thing up, 
 Gilbert Burns and Syme came down to Liverpool and stayed 
 a fortnight under the doctor's roof. It was in the summer of 
 liSOO that the work, in four volumes, at last appeared. Two 
 thousand copies were printed at .'51s. (id. each, which realised 
 £1,400 — for the benefit of the Poet's family. Its appearance 
 was greeted witli universal favour, for the tact and delicacy, 
 and the skill and discretion with which, under difficult cir- 
 cumstances, he had accomplished Ins task. At least, nothing 
 to the contrary ever reached his ear, and lie died some five 
 
74 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 years after at Sidmouth, whither he had travelled from Bath, 
 under the grateful impression that his benevolent exertions 
 had been crowned with entire success. A year before his 
 death, while searching for health at Moffat, he called at 
 Dumfries to see Mrs. Burns, and, with characteristic unsel- 
 fishness, selected a single volume out of the Poet's library, as 
 a memorial of his exertions on behalf of herself and family. 
 
 Though Currie died in blissful ignorance of any serious 
 adverse criticism of his benevolent achievement, he had pro- 
 bably too much common-sense not to know that posterity 
 might not endorse the same favourable view of his perfor- 
 mance, as his friends and contemporaries had done ; the 
 particular form and extent that such adverse criticism might 
 take he was perhaps not qualified, by virtue of his very limi- 
 tations, to guess. It never entered into his, or any other 
 person's calculations, that in the coming future the most in- 
 significant detail of the Poet's life would be so treasured and 
 criticised as it has been. Nor was it to be expected that that 
 same posterity, in pronouncing judgment upon Currie, would, 
 in a spirit of extenuation, consider the very exceptional cir- 
 cumstances under which he performed his difficult task. In 
 a business of this kind it was perhaps not right that it should. 
 At anyrate, as a matter of fact, it didn't. In the long inter- 
 val that has elapsed since the beginning of the present century 
 numerous indictments have, from time to time, been brought 
 against him. The most serious are his unnecessary candour 
 about the faults of Burns — his apologetic treatment of his 
 character — and his deliberate suppression and alteration of 
 questionable passages and dates in his poems and letters ; 
 though, in this connection, it must be borne in mind that he 
 points out, in one of his communications to Syme, that " not 
 
Dr. James Currie. 75 
 
 one of the copies of his own (Burns's) letters is dated ; and, 
 therefore, a stranger cannot arrange them in the order of 
 time, so as to make them convey a history of his mind.'" 
 But, even before the work was half through the press, there 
 were murmurs from unexpected quarters, unheard, doubtless, 
 by Currie, but destined to reach the ear of the world by and 
 by. Both Lamb and Wordsworth, especially the latter, as I 
 shall have occasion to show a little further on, felt very sore 
 on the point of Clime's over-righteous treatment of his 
 theme. The former, in writing to Coleridge, August or Sep- 
 tember, 1800, asks, " Have you seen the new edition of 
 Burns — his posthumous works and letters ? I have only been 
 able to procure the first volume, which contains his life — very 
 confusedly and badly written, and interspersed with dull 
 pathological and medical discussions. It is written by a Dr. 
 Currie. Do you know the well-meaning doctor ? Alas ! 
 ne .tutor ultra crepidam."" 
 
 There is, it must be confessed, a good deal of truth in the 
 witty Elia\s description of the life, and it is very clever of him 
 to hit the " well-meaning doctor " with a weapon out of the 
 Aesculapian armoury. You have but to run over the different 
 departments, and their arrangement, in the life, to see how 
 pat the words, " dull pathological and medical discussions " 
 are as applied to them. 
 
 1st. It opens with a prefatory essay on the character and 
 condition of the Scottish peasantry, that the reader, and par- 
 ticularly the English, may the better understand the Poet's 
 life, surroundings, and work. 
 
 2nd. The Poet's own autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore. 
 
 :3rd. His brother Gilbert's narrative. 
 
 4th. His teacher, Mr. Murdoch's narrative. 
 
76 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 5th. Comparative examination of these different narratives, 
 with other particulars of his Ayrshire life, by the editor. 
 
 6th. Professor Dugald Stewart's narrative. 
 
 7th. Other particulars of his Edinburgh life, including 
 notes of his tour through the South of Scotland. 
 
 8th. Dr. Adair's account of his tour with Burns to Stirling, 
 Vale of Devon, Clackmannan, and Dunfermline. 
 
 9th. His Highland tour with Mr. Nicol. 
 
 10th. Other incidents of his Edinburgh life previous to 
 going to Ellisland. 
 
 11th. His Dumfries life to his death. 
 
 12th. His character — reflections on. An examination of 
 the poetic temperament — its incompatibilities with the more 
 practical aspect of life. Sensibility — genius, the possessors 
 of them generally strangers to true tranquility and happiness 
 unless kept right by the regular exertion of all the faculties 
 of body and mind ; hence the peculiar temptations and 
 dangers to which the poetic constitution is liable, as opium 
 in the East, and alcohol in Western Europe and Great 
 Britain. 
 
 13th. Memoir respecting Burns, by a lady — Maria Biddell. 
 
 14th. An inquiry into his literary merits, preceded by a 
 survey of the state of letters, particularly Scottish, anterior 
 to Burns — from Dunbar to Bamsay and Fergusson. 
 
 15th. The lyric productions of Burns, prefaced by an in- 
 quiry into the history and philosoj^hy of the song and ballad 
 in general. 
 
 In spite of Elia's strictures and fun, perhaps the dull 
 pathological and medical-discussion method was the only one 
 open to Currie ? At any rate, I am not sure that he did not 
 do the best thing for Burns by this method. And, whatever 
 
Dr. James Currie. 77 
 
 its defects in form and structure, suggesting, it may be, to 
 the reader some feeling of confusion and want of literary 
 unity, it has certainly the merit of fulness and thoroughness ; 
 while the learned culture it displays, the critical discrimina- 
 tion, the wide and varied knowledge of human character, the 
 sound common-sense, the high purpose, and even the exceed- 
 ingly competent literary expression, are a more than sufficient 
 refutation of the fitness of the proverb, ne sutor ultra crcp'i- 
 dam, which Lamb applied to the well-meaning doctor's par- 
 ticular case. 
 
 But let us leave Elia, who is speaking as much in his reputed 
 character of humourist, and, therefore, of exaggeration, as 
 serious critic, and come to the heavier metal of Wordsworth. 
 It would be some nine years after Carrie's death, and fourteen 
 after the publication of his edition of Burns's works, that the 
 publishers, anxious to maintain, on the expiry of the copy- 
 right, a preference in the market for their own impressions, 
 bethought them of an edition with notes and emendations by 
 the Poet's surviving brother, Gilbert. He very willingly fell 
 in with the idea, more particularly, since he had now been 
 convinced by two of his brother's surviving intimates, Mr. 
 Gray of the Dumfries Academy, the teacher of the Poet's 
 children, and Mr. Findlater, his superior officer in the Excise, 
 that Dr. Currie had (lone injustice to his brother's memory. 
 
 It was at this point that Wordsworth took up the cudgels 
 by issuing a pamphlet, in the form of a letter to Mr. Gray, 
 and intended at first for Gilbert's edition, discussing the 
 whole question of the biographer's duty to his subject, 
 especially in regard to the extent to which it was proper to 
 go in laying bare faults and failings. He avowed his indig- 
 nation at the revelation of the " infirmities " of Burns made 
 
78 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 by Dr. Currie, and professed a desire to see this evil corrected. 
 Gilbert, though feeling annoyed at Wordsworth's interfer- 
 ence, resolved to follow his suggestion. This action of his 
 brought forth an indignant protest from Mr. Roscoe against 
 the imputation of faults to his friend, Dr. Currie, whose 
 work had been approved of by none more heartily, at its 
 publication, than by Gilbert Burns. Gilbert defended him- 
 self by declaring that when Currie's book came out (the 
 proof-sheets of which neither he nor Syme ever saw), he 
 supposed that the biographer had spoken of his brother's 
 errors upon good information, he himself having, for the last 
 few years of the Poet's life, lived fifty miles off, had no 
 opportunity of knowing how the case really stood ; he, there- 
 fore, approved of Dr. Currie's memoir at the time, but 
 afterwards, from what he had learned from Mr. Findlater, he 
 became convinced that the statements had been exaggerated. 
 This protest of Mr. Roscoe and defence of Gilbert Burns, 
 led to a most elaborate and protracted correspondence, as is 
 seen from the Earnock MSS. in Annual Burns Chronicle for 
 1898, in which Roscoe, in the interest of his friend Dr. 
 Currie's honour, and that of the Currie family, fights most 
 tenaciously for the propriety of leaving things as the doctor 
 left them in his memoir ; and in which Gilbert Burns con- 
 tends as strenuously as it was possible for a man to do, 
 overweighted as he always was by a sense of the greatness of 
 the obligation the Burns family owed to Currie, for the 
 vindication of his brother's honour. At this date, the 
 solicitude of Currie's friends for his honour at the expense of 
 Burns's, seems neither just nor wise. Messrs. Gray and 
 Findlater's evidence, published by Alexander Peterkin in 
 1814, was already before the world, and the public would 
 
Dr. James Currie. 79 
 
 draw their own conclusions whether Gilbert Burns spoke out 
 boldly, or allowed himself to be gagged, or his statement 
 whittled down to next to nothing. Mr. Roscoe's attitude, 
 moreover, is all the more remarkable since he admits in one 
 of his letters that the evidence of these two gentlemen might 
 have influenced the final opinion of Dr. Currie. 
 
 That the conviction of Gilbert Burns, that Clime's state- 
 ments had been exaggerated, is the reasonable belief of all at 
 the present day who have taken the trouble to examine this 
 matter for themselves, nobody, I think, will deny. And Dr. 
 Currie, had he lived, would have been the first to honourably 
 atone in some of the subsequent editions for his exaggera- 
 tions. Wordsworth himself, in his letter to Mr. Gray, admits 
 as much when he savs that the author of these objectionable 
 passages, " If he were now alive, would probably be happy to 
 efface them." 
 
 But does Dr. Currie deserve the severe censure that has 
 been meted out to him in this affair? It must be borne in 
 mind that he did not belong to that Tennysonian class of 
 biographers who think they have nothing to do with a poet's 
 mildnesses. Neither was he of Wordsworth's way of thinking, 
 who considers that a biographer has nothing to do with the 
 private life of a poet, unless he lias also been a public man 
 and borne a certain part in the affairs of the world, when such 
 knowledge might then be necessary to explain his public 
 actions. " Nothing of this," he says, " applies to authors, 
 considered merely as authors. Our business is with their 
 books, to understand and to enjoy them. And of poets more 
 especially it is true that, if their works be good, they contain 
 within themselves all that is necessary to their being compre- 
 hended and relished. 11 
 
80 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 Burns's wildnesses, however, could not have been ignored, 
 even if his biographer had held similar views to those of 
 Tennyson and Wordsworth ; they were so much a part of the 
 man, and the man was his poems and songs, in a sense 
 altogether different from either of the cases of the two great 
 artists mentioned, or indeed almost any other poet. Besides, 
 Burns was himself continually drawing attention to them, and 
 sometimes in humorous moods and sometimes out of the 
 depths of remorse, colouring them with the hues of exaggera- 
 tion, little thinking that he would be taken absolutely at his 
 word, but expecting rather the usual deduction charitably 
 yielded in cases of self-depreciation, whether of poets or 
 commoner mortals. 
 
 Now, if Gilbert Burns, who surely knew his own brother 
 better than anybody, and living, as he declared in his defence 
 to Mr. Roscoe, during the last few years of the Poet's life 
 only fifty miles away from him, credited Dr. Currie''s state- 
 ment of his errors, there was surely still greater excuse for Dr. 
 Currie, living five times that distance from him, accepting, as 
 he doubtless thought from reliable and respectable sources, 
 that evidence which formed the substance of his accusations 
 against Buras's character. If he erred, and I think he did, it 
 was in not going further afield for his information, more 
 especially as his own personal knowledge of how the case 
 stood was nil. He informs us himself, in a footnote to the 
 Life, that Dr. Maxwell furnished him with the particulars of 
 the Poet's last illness and death, and it is not too much to 
 presume that Syme was the chief informant on the subject of 
 his errors. It is, indeed, recorded in black and white that he, 
 in the beginning of the undertaking, questioned Syme on 
 these very points, and he would, doubtless, receive an answer. 
 
Dr. James Currie. 81 
 
 Later, again, after the publication of the Life, he, in a letter 
 to the same correspondent acknowledging the assistance of his 
 observations in estimating the character of Burns, asks whether 
 he has touched the Bard with a rough or lenient hand, and 
 whether the portrait he has drama resembles the original, two 
 points on which he seems to feel a certain amount of sensi- 
 tiveness, like a man not altogether sure of his own action, 
 and, therefore, for his own peace of mind, standing in need of 
 a certificate. 
 
 It has been argued that Syme knew Burns well — none 
 better, and loved him too sincerely to give his friend away — 
 all which may be conceded, and yet the wisdom of the 
 biographer questioned who would rely on this one man's 
 evidence alone, though it seemed to confirm a report to the 
 same effect which had reached his car in Liverpool prior to 
 the Poet's death. But the truth of such an argument, I 
 should think, would depend not so much on the informant's 
 good intention as on his characterisation. He was certainly 
 not without cleverness, and was named, as we saw, among 
 the Poet's possible biographers ; but his character was not 
 distinguished for seriousness, and we know he was given 
 somewhat to romancing. As an instance of his loose and 
 unreliable style, he is said to have declared that Burns was 
 "burnt to a cinder 11 ere Death took him; and Henley, who 
 is unscrupulous enough to lay hold on anything that will 
 work into his unseemly picture of the defamation of the 
 Poet's memory, has seized upon this phrase to demonstrate 
 "that Burns had damaged himself with drink." Now, this 
 is not a scientific phrase: it is simply a figure of speech; and 
 if it means anything definite at all, il might as well signify 
 that, as a spiritual force, he was burnt out — that he had 
 
82 BURNS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 lived too fast in an intellectual and emotional sense, and so 
 was an extinct force. It would be going out of any unbiased 
 critic's way to interpret the words as conveying, from him, a 
 layman, at least, the idea of atrophy of certain internal 
 organs through the burning effects of alcohol. Besides, 
 Syme was the last man that should have talked as Henley 
 interprets him to have done. I suppose he did as much 
 drinking, if not more, than Burns ; and he was the older 
 man, and should have protected him against excesses, and 
 not encouraged him, as we know he did, if he recognised the 
 value of his life to the nation. 
 
 Perhaps, too, Currie should have known, as a student of 
 human natm - e and as a man of the world, that there is a dis- 
 position, even among well-meaning friends, to exaggerate 
 the drinking propensities of a man of genius, as conferring an 
 additional glorification to the sum of his achievements, just 
 as vulgar people, to whom the marvellous and wonderful 
 appeal strongly, are prone to associate extraordinary clever- 
 ness with excessive drunkenness, thereby giving it the char- 
 acter of a dogma of every-day life. What part the doctor's 
 own bias in the direction of temperance doctrines may have 
 played in the matter it is impossible to say, but, judging 
 from his own words, he seems to have been alive to such 
 temptation in striving to do the right. Wordsworth won- 
 ders how the affecting passage, where the poet himself pleads 
 for those who have transgressed : — 
 
 " One point must still be greatly dark, 
 The moving why they do it, 
 And just as lamely can ye mark 
 How far, perhaps, they rue it. 
 
Dr. James Currie. 83 
 
 Who made the heart, 'tis he alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us ; 
 He knows each chord — its various tone, 
 
 Each spring, its various bias. 
 
 Then at the balance let's be mute, 
 
 We never can adjust it ; 
 What's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what's resisted." 
 
 Wordsworth wonders how the recollection of this affecting 
 passage " did not check so amiable a man as Dr. Currie, 
 while he was revealing to the world the infirmities of its 
 author." He seems, however, to have had just such a guard 
 on himself, from the following words. " It is, indeed, 11 he 
 savs, " a duty we owe to the living, not to allow our admira- 
 tion of great genius, or even our pity for its unhappy destiny, 
 to conceal or disguise its errors. But there are sentiments of 
 respect, and even tenderness, with which this duty should be 
 performed ; there is an awful sanctity which invests the 
 mansions of the dead ; and let those who moralise over the 
 graves of their contemporaries, reflect with humility on their 
 own errors, nor forget how soon they may themselves require 
 the candour and sympathy they are called upon to bestow." 
 It must be conceded, I think, that a biographer, working in 
 the spirit of this solemn ideal, if he trespass against his sub- 
 jects memory, must do it more from mistaken duty than 
 from malice. Besides, Currie felt that if he did not touch 
 this matter, which he believed was of such a clamant char- 
 acter, somebody else would, and not so tenderly or so kindly. 
 Lockhart, in traversing this knotty part of the Burns pro- 
 blem, considers that the truth may probably be found to lie 
 between Currie's statement and those of Messrs. Gray and 
 
84 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 Findlater, as something ought perhaps to be deducted from 
 the latter on the score of personal friendship. But, it might 
 be asked, may there not be another, simpler, and even more 
 reliable way of arriving at an opinion ; and the wonder is that 
 Currie did not think of it, only it was perhaps too soon ? Is 
 it necessary to found a judgment at all on hearsay evidence, 
 however authoritative and respectable, in a grave matter of 
 this kind ? It has always seemed to me that, during the last 
 four years of the Poet's life in Dumfries, against which the 
 charge of excessive indulgence in alcohol is mainly brought, 
 he had no time for excessive drinking, far less for recovering 
 from its effects, which he would have required to have done 
 before being capable of renewed intellectual effort. And we 
 know that he was not a good drinker. He confessed to Pro- 
 fessor Dugald Stewart that there was no merit in his abstin- 
 ence, as he had to pay too dearly for the slightest indulgence. 
 The habitual drunkard is, as a rule, incapable of any serious 
 work, good or bad : even the periodical "boozer" relinquishes 
 all labour till he has done with his "booze" and fairly recovered 
 from its effects. Now Burns, besides performing his Excise 
 duties, which we now know for a fact he did very well, 
 wrote some one hundred and fifty pieces of verse. With the 
 exception of a few odd sonnets, epigrams, monodies, ballads, 
 theatrical addresses, and rhyming epistles, they were nearly all 
 songs — his very best too. " And only the man," says a writer 
 in the Glasgow Herald for Jan. 29, 1898, "who has attempted 
 to follow him through the songs which he read and refined can 
 understand the severity of his labours — labours to which the 
 throwing off of such extraordinary pieces of the nature of a 
 tour deforce as * Tarn O 1 Shanter ' or ' The Jolly Beggars ' 
 was a trifle, because it was really an exquisite pleasure." He 
 
Dr. James Citkrie. 85 
 
 also wrote some one hundred and thirty letters, including the 
 fifty-six to George Thomson in connection with the songs he 
 was sending him for his Musical Melodies — letters too, which, 
 for distinct literary quality, were even more of a marvel to 
 some of the Edinburgh literati than his verse. He corrected, 
 moreover, the proof sheets of two different publications — 
 Johnsons Museum, and a two-volume edition of his poems. 
 And he did all this at his very highest literary water-mark, 
 and with not the remotest hint of the drunkard in a single 
 line, or even word, during the brief space of four years, while 
 struggling with honest poverty, and while discharging the 
 duties of a volunteer, regularly attending masonic meetings, 
 and generally taking part in those festivities and social and 
 public functions which his fame had imposed on his citizen- 
 ship ; and while, like his worthy father before him, superin- 
 tending the education of his children, and building up their 
 character by conversation and selected readings from the 
 English classics. 
 
 This four years record of work, which must surely have 
 swallowed up the greater part of his leisure, and left a very 
 small margin for indulgence in those excesses to which Currie 
 is blamed for giving a too ready credence, is all the more 
 remarkable when his indifferent health, during a considerable 
 part of the time, is taken into account. For upwards of a 
 year before his death — from early summer of 1795 — his health 
 began to give way. This, however, was not the first of his 
 illness; for in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, June 25, 1791', speak- 
 ing of his poor health, he says: — "My medical friends 
 threaten me with a flying gout, bid I trust they are mistaken." 
 In the autumn of that same year, L795, he was so greatly 
 prostrated by the death of his little girl at Mauchline, whose 
 
86 Burns axd the Medical Profession. 
 
 burial he was too unwell to attend, that he was compelled to 
 abandon all literary work for a time. This is also the period 
 of the story of the accidental complaint — from October, 1795, 
 till January following — which Currie states he was confined 
 with, but which Burns himself indignantly denied when his 
 friend Crombie, shortly before his death, inquired of him as 
 to its truth. In commenting on this accidental complaint 
 story, Mr. William Wallace, editor of the new Chambers' 1 
 edition, says : — " Currie undoubtedly deserves censure for 
 having made, in public, chai-ges against the moral character 
 of Burns, which, from their nature, can only be discussed in 
 camera.'''' The same distinguished Burns scholar and trenchant 
 critic considers further that Currie, in virtue of the exagger- 
 ated view he took of the Poet's errors, did not give him 
 sufficient credit for honestly struggling to overcome his faults 
 and do well. In harping, as he did, on the weakness of his 
 will he forgot to make allowance for the strength of his pas- 
 sions. Mr. Wallace inclines rather to hold with Carlyle — 
 that he had an iron resolution, and believes that, had death 
 not cut him off prematurely, or accidentally for that matter, 
 for we have no medical statement of authority, or even at all, 
 as to the possibilities of prolonged life that were in him, the 
 chances were in favour of his resolution, in the very exercise 
 of a continual strife to do well, being ultimately rewarded 
 with victory. 
 
 I am reminded here, in the mention of the name of Carlyle, 
 that his strictures, which proceed on somewhat different lines 
 from those of the others, have still to be considered. They 
 don't deal so much with Dr. Currie's mistakes and errors of 
 judgment in treating of his subject, as with the larger ques- 
 tion of capacity for a great and distinguished treatment of 
 
Dr. James Cuebie. 87 
 
 the subject. While acknowledging that " Currie loved the 
 Poet truly, more perhaps than he avowed to his readers, or 
 even to himself, he objects to his " everywhere introducing 
 him with a certain patronising and apologetic air, as if the 
 polite public might think it strange and half unwarrantable 
 that he, a man of science, a scholar and gentleman, should do 
 such honour to a rustic. In all this, however, we readily 
 admit that his fault was not want of love, but weakness of 
 faith, and regret that the first and kindest of all our Poet's 
 biographers should not have seen further, or believed more 
 boldly what he saw." 
 
 Now, it is all very well for Carlyle to blame Currie for 
 weakness of faith— {ox lack of prophetic vision; in which 
 he was no greater a sinner than his contemporaries ; but he 
 forgets that he performed his task immediately after the 
 Poet's death, which is altogether another matter. Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne, America's greatest man of letters, in Our Old 
 Home, says, and says very truly, in discussing this very sub- 
 ject, " It is far easier to know and honour a poet when his 
 fame has taken shape in spotlessness of marble, than when the 
 actual man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the 
 sordid stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder 
 that his recognition dawned so brightly while he was still liv- 
 ing. There must have been something very grand in his im- 
 mediate presence, some strangely impressive characteristic in 
 his natural behaviour to have caused him to seem like a demi- 
 god so soon." 
 
 It was, however, quite another affair when Carlyle himself 
 came to write his essay, which, for general grasp, keenness of 
 insight, tenderness, generosil y, daringness, and even righteous- 
 ness, is still the greatest treatment of the theme, and could 
 
Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 gauge a truer opinion, and recognise that the peasant bard, in 
 his lifetime, was, not only a true British poet, but " one of 
 the most considerable British men of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury." Moreover, Carlyle and other adverse critics over- 
 look the very important fact that the task Currie, like 
 a shrewd sensible man, set before himself, was to write 
 a life and edit an edition of the Poet's works ostensibly 
 for the benefit of his widow and orphan children. It was the 
 immediate success of the present that perplexed and stimu- 
 lated him more than the verdict (praise or blame) of the 
 future. He, therefore, felt it his duty to publish nothing to 
 the world that would jeopardise in the slightest that project, 
 hence his suppressions and alterations of text and his tamp- 
 erings with dates, which have brought down on his unlucky 
 memory, especially of late years, the heavy censure of the 
 critics. I would even include within the scope of this same 
 category those deliberate alterations of the dates of the letters 
 of his relative, Mrs. Dunlop, to Burns during his latter 
 years, in order to conceal from the public that that lady 
 withdrew from him her friendship for a time ; which, 
 I think, unpardonable action, on Currie's part, might be read 
 as much in the light of a mistaken kindness to Burns as 
 towards his own relative. 
 
 He was also of opinion that more was to be gained from 
 that public, to which he was appealing, than lost by stating, 
 with the utmost kindness and discretion he could command, 
 what he considered to be the truth about the Poet's declen- 
 sions, which, he believed, from the most trustworthy informa- 
 tion supplied to him, were of such a nature that they could 
 not be ignored; and that, if he did not touch them, somebody 
 else would, with a far unkinder hand. 
 
JAMES CURRIE, M.D., I R.S. 
 
Dr. James Currie. 89 
 
 Looked at in this light, then, which, after all, is the only 
 fair one, Dr. Currie did his work very well, like an honest 
 Burns worshipper; and the Burns world owe him a signal 
 debt of gratitude; for, much as has been written on the 
 theme since, it is marvellous how very little past his very 
 thorough performance we have really got, or can get. 
 
 Medical Subscribers to Currte'a First Edition, 1800. 
 
 Adair, J. M., M.D., Harrogate. 
 
 Biddoes, Dr., Bristol. 
 
 Bostock, John, M.D., Liverpool. 
 
 Cairncross, And., Esq., Surgeon, London. 
 
 Caldwell, Robt., Esq., Surgeon, 6th Fencible Regiment. 
 
 Carson, William, M.D., Birmingham. 
 
 Charles, George, Esq., M.D., Ayr. 
 
 Clark, Robt., M.D., Dublin. 
 
 Clark, James, Esq., Surgeon. 
 
 Crompton, Peter, M.D., Eton House, near Liverpool. 
 
 Currie, William, M.D., Chester. 
 
 Currie, James, M.D., F.R.S., Liverpool. 
 
 Elliot, Mr, Thos., Surgeon, London. 
 
 Goldie, Mr. Joseph, Surgeon, Liverpool. 
 
 Graham, Thos., Esq., Surgeon, Royal Navy. 
 
 Home, Dr. James, Professor, Edinburgh. 
 
 McIntosh, Dr. William, late of Jamaica. 
 
 Millar, Dr. Richard, Glasgow. 
 
 Moore, John, M.D., Clifford Street, London. 
 
 Moitius, Dr. Hugh, Glasgow. 
 
 Percivajl, Thos., M.D., F.R.S., Manchester. 
 
 Rattray, Dr., Coventry. 
 
90 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 Saumarez, Mr., Surgeon, Newington Butts. 
 
 Small, Dr., Dundee. 
 
 Tait, Dr. William, Edinburgh. 
 
 Taylor, Dr., Manchester. 
 
 Towers, Mr. James, Surgeon. 
 
 Urie, Mr. Archd., Assistant Surgeon, 58th Regiment. 
 
 Wood, Alexr., Esq., Surgeon. 
 
DAVID MACBETH MOIR, M.D. 
 
 (Delta) 
 By the kind permission of Messrs. Blackie & Son. 
 
VI. 
 DR. DAVID MACBETH MOIR (Delta), 
 
 AND THE GUAND ALLOWAY FESTIVAL. 
 
 In the long interval of forty-four years, between the publi- 
 cation of Currie's edition of the Life and Posthumous Works 
 of Burns, in 1800, and the holding of the Grand Alio way 
 Festival in 1844, there were issued from the press upwards of 
 two hundred different editions, including some French and 
 German translations. During that interval there also ap- 
 peared numerous other collateral publications treating of the 
 Burns theme. Only a few, however — the productions of 
 medical men — require a passing notice in this collection. 
 
 Robert John Thornton, M.D., London, 
 
 (the son of a member of the medical profession, and well- 
 known wit, humourist, and man of letters, who died in 1768, 
 when the subject of the present sketch was quite a child), was 
 also, like his father, possessed of extensive literary acquire- 
 ments. He was the author of a work, notable in its day, on 
 The Philosophy of Medicine, published in 1798, in tour volumes. 
 He also wrote The Philosophy qf Politics, published a year 
 later, in three volumes. And early in his career he ruined him- 
 self in a gigantic literary speculation — the publication in 
 1799-1804 of a work of extraordinary size on Botany (a 
 science to which be was, from his youth, passionately devoted) 
 
92 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 and upon which he wrote voluminously), entitled, TJie Temple 
 of Flora; or, Garden of the Botanist, Poet, Painter, and 
 Philosopher; with plates very splendidly coloured after 
 nature by celebrated artists. 
 
 In addition to all this scientific literary activity, he found 
 time, in his busy practice, and amid that poverty, which 
 his devotion to Botany had brought down upon his luckless 
 head, to tread, for once at least, the flowerier paths of litera- 
 ture. I refer to that little treatise he wrote, which is 
 his justification to a notice in this inquiry, entitled A School 
 Virgil, London, 1813, and Illustrations to the same, London, 
 1814 ; and which is a kindly, sympathetic, and appreciative 
 notice of Burns ; with severe reflections on George Thomson. 
 These reflections, however, especially in the light of Mr. 
 Hadden's recent biography of Thomson, are now understood 
 to be quite unfounded. 
 
 W. Ainslie, M.D., 
 
 is the author of the following lines, written on seeing Mr. 
 Thorn's sculpture of Tarn o 1 Shanter and Souter Johnny, 
 which appeared in the Morning Post, 1829 : — 
 
 " That the great bard — what need to tell the name 1 — 
 In after times, should still more mighty be, 
 At Heaven's command, behold a Garrick came, 
 And both were crowned with immortality ! 
 
 So to the earth, in these our later days, 
 
 Was Thorn, with his soul-breathing chisel, sent ; 
 
 That Burns, enwreath'd in everlasting bays, 
 Might speak again in living adamant." 
 
Dr. R. R. Madden. 93 
 
 R. R. Madden, M.D., 
 
 a native of Ireland, was educated in Dublin, and after study- 
 ing medicine in Paris, Naples, and London, travelled for 
 some years in the East. Returning to England, he practised 
 for a time as a surgeon in Curzon Street, Mayfair. After- 
 wards, in 1833, he went out to Jamaica as one of the special 
 magistrates appointed to administer the statute abolishing 
 slavery in the plantations, but, getting into trouble, he took 
 a tour to America. He also visited Africa and Western 
 Australia in public and official capacities ; and in 1848 he 
 returned to Ireland, where he died in 1886. 
 
 Dr. Madden was a true Irish patriot, a man of affairs, a 
 journalist, a medical practitioner, and a most extensive mis- 
 cellaneous writer ; being, among numberless other publica- 
 tions, the author of Life and Martyrdom of Savonarola, 
 Travels in Turkey, The Musselman (a novel), Literary Li/i' 
 and Correspondence of the Countess Blessington, and The 
 Infirmities of Genius, illustrated by referring the anomalies in 
 the Literary Character to the Habits and Constitutional 
 Peculiarities of Men of Genius, London, Saunders and Otley, 
 1833. This latter work, written when practising medicine in 
 Mayfair, and before going out to Jamaica, contains a chapter, 
 the twenty-first, on Burns. 
 
 As was to be expected, in view of such a title as The 
 Infirmities of Genius, the doctor, in this Burns essay, deals 
 solely with the poet — the man, and not with his poetry ; and 
 if he does so in a more or less scientific spirit, it is neither 
 narrow, unkindly, nor unsympathetic. It is questionable, 
 indeed, how far, if at all, lie knows the poems of Burns; and 
 he appears to have come by Ins knowledge of the man chiefly 
 
94 BuRXS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 from Dr. Currie's biography of the Poet, which he quotes 
 largely and approvingly. He is not of Lamb's opinion, that 
 it is very confusedly and badly written, and interspersed with 
 dull pathological ami medical discussions. He holds rather 
 that it deserves to be considered one of the best specimens of 
 biography in the English language, not only for the philo- 
 sophical spirit in which it is written, but for its noble effort 
 to vindicate the character of genius. 
 
 Dr. Madden is inclined to lay the blame of Burns's errors 
 at the door of his dyspepsia — the literary malady, which he 
 traces as present in his constitution from his earliest days, 
 and which, doubtless, was responsible for his hypochondriacal 
 melancholy, his nervous headaches, his palpitations and sink- 
 ings of the heart, etc., etc. The dejection consequent on 
 this hypochondria, in his early years, he points out, was 
 soothed by the excitement of the tender passion. In later 
 life he employed other means to alleviate it — alcohol, which 
 had the dangerous effect of aggravating the disease. He 
 quotes Currie as to the fatal defects in his character consist- 
 ing in his comparative weakness of volition and in the acute- 
 ness and strength of his sensibility ; while the occupations of 
 a poet are as little calculated, in the one case, to strengthen 
 the governing powers of the mind, as they are, in the other, 
 to weaken that sensibility which requhes perpetual control ; 
 which deliverance he characterises as worth all that has 
 ever been said on " the poetic temperament." " Indolence, 11 
 again, " the baneful attendant of morbid sensibility," he 
 considers, and I cannot help thinking in culpable ignorance 
 of the amount of genuine work Burns did during the very 
 years in question, as I tried to show in the preceding chapter 
 — Idleness he considers the next factor in the production of 
 
Dr. R. R. Madden. 95 
 
 that train of symptoms which heralded a premature death, as 
 it aggravated his hypochondria, for the relief of which he 
 had recourse to the seductive use of stimulants, which had to 
 be increased to meet the failing strength of body, and conse- 
 quently of volition, and the proportionate increase of sensi- 
 bility caused by the soothing and gratification of the diseased 
 sensations. 
 
 Speaking of the Poet's last rheumatic illness, which had so 
 shattered his already enfeebled constitution, the doctor has 
 some significant observations. "In June he was recommended 
 to go into the country ; ' and impatient of advice, 1 says his 
 biographer, ' as well as of every species of control, he deter- 
 mined for himself to try the effects of bathing in the sea.' 
 Burns, however, distinctly says in two of his letters, this ex- 
 traordinary remedy for rheumatism was prescribed by his 
 physician ; ' The medical men,' he wrote to Mr. Cunningham, 
 ' tell me that my last and only chance is bathing and country 
 quarters, and riding.' For the sake of the faculty, I trust 
 that Burns was mistaken in the matter, for no medical man 
 of common-sense could think that a patient sinking under 
 rheumatism, and shattered in constitution, was a fit subject 
 for so violent a remedy as the cold bath. No medical man 
 can consider, without shuddering, the mischief it must have 
 produced in the case of Burns. 11 
 
 In spite of the fact of the remarkable fruitfulness of the 
 press in the multiplication of new editions and other colla- 
 teral Burnsiana matters during these forty-four years, the 
 Scottish nation may, nevertheless, be said, generally, 
 to have regarded its Poet with a feeling of apathy since lay- 
 ing him with so much pompous ceremonial in the churchyard 
 
96 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 of St. Michael. And the Grand Festival held in honour of 
 his sons, at their father's birthplace, may be described as, not 
 only the first symptoms of an awakening from its unworthy 
 attitude of indifference, but the dawn of a new state of 
 things, out of which was to emerge the materials for the 
 building up of a progressive Burns cult, and the founding of 
 a real, salutary hero-worship. 
 
 Lord Eglinton presided on the eventful occasion; and there 
 were present such notabilities as Henry Glassford Bell, Esq., 
 Sheriff Substitute of Lanarkshire, Professor Wilson of Edin- 
 burgh (Christopher North), Archibald Alison, Esq., Sheriff 
 of Lanarkshire, and author of the History of Europe, Colonel 
 Mure of Caldwell, author of Travels in Greece, William 
 Ayton, Esq., Advocate, and a whole host of others, more or 
 less celebrated in war, diplomacy, the senate, public life, and 
 at the bar. There was, however, among the distinguished 
 company, one celebrity, specially invited to attend, though 
 not in evidence. I refer to 
 
 Dr. David Macbeth Moir, of Musselburgh, 
 
 better known by his pen-name A (Delta) of Blackwood, the 
 friend and intimate of that gifted literary brotherhood, which 
 included Wilson, the Blackwoods, Ferrier, Simpson, Dr. 
 Robert Macnish, Christison, Robert Chambers, Dr. John 
 Brown, and Thomas Aird, his biographer. 
 
 Dr. Moir, as is well-known, was a hard-working and most 
 capable medical practitioner all his too brief life, to which 
 his Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine, published in 
 1831, bear excellent testimony ; so also does his heroic 
 attendance, night and day, upon the plague-stricken inhabi- 
 
Dr. David Macbeth Mom. 97 
 
 tants of Musselburgh during that fearful visitation of cholera 
 which swept over Europe at this time ; and his Practical 
 Observations on the same malignant theme, published in 
 1833, which was followed by Proofs of its Contagiousness in 
 1843. But he was, besides, a most distinguished poet and 
 man of letters, finding time, in the midst of his busy practice, 
 for the gratification of his literary passion, mostly when 
 other folks were busy sleeping. He is, indeed, one of the 
 solitary examples, not only of the compatibility of medicine 
 with letters, but of their entirely successful union in his own 
 remarkable person. Out of a very considerable out-put (at 
 least for one of his busy years), of prose and verse, and all of 
 a highly meritorious character for workmanship and polish, 
 the two works possessing the greatest amount of immortality 
 are, doubtless, his Mangle Wauck and Cassa Wappij. And 
 if the former has been provocative of more innocent mirth 
 and healthy laughter than perhaps any other work of a 
 similar kind, the latter has contributed towards the shedding 
 of more medicinal tears, by bereaved fathers and mothers, 
 than any other child's poem in the language. 
 
 Though Dr. Moir did not take any public part in the day's 
 proceedings at the grand Alloway banquet in 1844, he did 
 perhaps a far greater service to the occasion, and, certainly, 
 to posterity, by composing bis Commemorative Burns Poem, 
 published in Blackwood at the time. In writing to his friend 
 Aird of Dumfries, a month or two thereafter, he says, "My 
 (lavs, and sometimes my nights, are absorbed in professional 
 hurry ; and often for a week at a time I cannot answer a 
 single letter — my opportunity for reading at these times being 
 a book in my phaeton. Willi the exception of the lines to 
 Burns, and another piece, I do not remember another product 
 
98 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 of my muse for the last twelve months. Apropos of the lines 
 to Burns, they have been popular probably beyond any other 
 thing that I have ever written, and have been republished in 
 fifty different quarters." 
 
 And they deserved to be, for his stanzas are not only 
 penned in the genuine spirit of hero-worship, but he writes 
 like a man who knows his subject down to the bottom, as 
 well as all round. The following lines are a good example of 
 his exceeding sanity on that portion of the Burns theme 
 which has proved a stumbling-block to so many of the smaller 
 order of minds, and is a pronouncement distinctly in advance 
 of his own day. 
 
 " Judge not ye, whose thoughts are fingers, 
 Of the hands that witch the lyre — 
 Greenland has its mountain icebergs, 
 iEtna has its heart of fire ; 
 Calculation has its plummet ; 
 Self-control its iron rules ; 
 Genius has its sparkling fountains ; 
 Dulness has its stagnant pools ; 
 Like a halcyon on the waters, 
 Burns's chart disdained a plan — 
 In his soarings he was Heavenly, 
 In his sinkings he was man." 
 
 It is a singular and noteworthy coincidence that, with a 
 view to recruit his declining health by rest and change of 
 scene, he should have been on a visit, accompanied by his 
 wife and little son, to the land of Burns where he met the 
 illness which was so soon to prove fatal to him. On his re- 
 turn to the inn after a short drive to the cottage where Burns 
 was born and the other objects of interest in that celebrated 
 locality, which he was desirous of showing his wife and son, 
 
De. David Macbeth Moir. 99 
 
 he was seized with a violent spasm. The next day he was a 
 little better and determined to return home, taking Dumfries 
 on the way. He, however, never reached Musselburgh ; his 
 illness quickly developing into an acute peritonitis after 
 arriving at Dumfries, where he died in a few days, at the age 
 of fifty-three. 
 
VII. 
 DRS. FR. ADAMS, O. W. HOLMES, Etc., 
 
 AND THE 1859 CELEBRATIONS. 
 
 Between the Alloway Festival and the next most important 
 event of the Burns cult — the Centenary Celebration — it falls 
 to me to notice the name of 
 
 James R. McConochie, M.D., Louisville, Ky., 
 
 who was the author of a little work, Leisure Hours, partly 
 poetical and partly prose, written in the spare moments of 
 his busy professional life, and published in 1848. There is a 
 prose sketch in the little volume, called, Recollections of 
 Robert Bums, a subject upon which he considers himself well 
 qualified to speak, being not only a native of Dumfries, where 
 his father was a minister, but educated there, at the same 
 school as Burns's son, both boys sitting on the same form. 
 He remembered the Poet well, and would be some seven or 
 eight years of age when he was first pointed out to him, one 
 evening at the Dock, the general resort of the Dumfriesians 
 at the close of the labours of the day. 
 
 The doctor, however, does not tell us anything new con- 
 cerning Burns. His presentment is the usual stereotyped one, 
 about his great genius, and equally great errors, but apprecia- 
 tive and kindly withal. It could hardly be expected that a 
 
Dr. Alexander M. Walker. 101 
 
 lad of seven years old could have formed any opinion of his 
 own on such a subject. He has, moreover, fallen into a good 
 many mistakes, such as, that Jean Armour's father was a 
 tailor, which render his Recollections, especially from the per- 
 sonal point of view, comparatively worthless. Indeed, the 
 likelihood is that he penned them more from reading and the 
 remembrance of hearsay evidence heard fifty or sixty years 
 ago, than from personal Recollections. 
 
 A tribute of a very different character to the one just 
 recorded is that of a Lecture, published in 1858, by 
 
 Alexander M. Walker, M.A., M.D., 
 
 on the Private and Literary Life of Burns, which he had, by 
 request, delivered a few years previously, before some of the 
 Metropolitan Literary and Scientific Institutions. In the 
 preface to his lecture he solicits the patronage of the nobility 
 and gentry and tradesmen of the town and vicinity, as the 
 proceeds from the sale of the little publication are to be 
 devoted to the purchase of some of the best standard authors 
 for the library of the Useful Knowledge Institution, of which 
 the doctor was honorary secretary. 
 
 Two years later again, in 1SG0, he published a second 
 Lecture on the Poems and Song* of Burns, which had also, he 
 informs us in the preface, been previously delivered before the 
 above mentioned Metropolitan Societies; and, in issuing 
 which, he once more solicits the patronage of his neighbours 
 and fellow-townsmen, the proceeds of the sale in the present 
 case being for the benefit of the Chapel of Ease School. 
 
 The delivery and publication of these two lectures is unique, 
 especially when it is considered that the lecturer was an Irish- 
 
102 BcRNS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 man practising as a physician in a south of England fashion- 
 able watering place — Tunbridge Wells. But had he not 
 disclosed his nationality, it could have been easily discovered 
 from his text that he had never been either in Ayrshire or 
 Dumfriesshire, which he speaks of as though they were the 
 highlands of Perthshire. If, however, he was ignorant of the 
 topographical character of these two counties, which were 
 mainly identified with the life and work of Burns, his ac- 
 quaintanceship with both the spirit and letter of the Poet's 
 Private and Literary Life, and with his Poems and Songs, is 
 thorough and sound. His first lecture is a most eloquent, 
 enthusiastic, and generous tribute to the character of the 
 Scottish Bard, but thoughtful and discriminating withal, being 
 of opinion, considering his circumstances and the time, that 
 he was fairly well equipped, educationally and otherwise, for 
 the work his hand found to do, because he supplemented what 
 he lacked from the teaching of his schoolmaster and his own 
 father, by the most assiduous self-culture, in order that the 
 product of his art might not suffer through poverty of know- 
 ledge, or its expression be unworthy of the theme he was 
 singing through want of cultivation. 
 
 His second lecture is an equally able, warm, and scholarly 
 criticism of the Poems and Songs, showing, by his comparative 
 analysis, not only fine insight into his subject, but wide 
 culture and knowledge of the world's greatest masters in 
 literature. And, like all the performances of medical men, 
 both lectures are conspicuous for the spirit in which they 
 touch upon the Poet's failings — a spirit which he commends 
 as one of the signal merits of Dr. Currie's memoir. 
 
 In the great centennial celebrations of 1859, which pro- 
 duced so many tributes, both at home and abroad, to the 
 
FRANCIS ADAMS, M.D., LL.D. 
 
 From Marble Bust in Aberdeen University, by permission of the Principal, 
 >ir \Y. decides. 
 
Dr. Francis Adams. 103 
 
 beloved memory of Scotland's Bard, the medical profession is 
 worthily represented. On the one hand, as far north as 
 Banchory, Kincardineshire, 
 
 Francis Adams, M.D., LL.D., 
 
 commemorates the event by a Centenary Discourse on the 
 Writings of Burns ; and, on the other, across the wide 
 Atlantic, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes sounds his lyre to the 
 same popular strain ; though these two conspicuous examples 
 do not, by any means, exhaust the list. In every other town 
 and village in Scotland, and in England and Ireland, and in 
 America and the Colonies, medical men were not only present 
 at the celebrations, but, in numerous instances, they presided 
 and proposed the toast of the Immortal Memory, in a man- 
 ner entirely worthy of the best traditions of the profession. 
 
 This circumstance of the veteran Kincardine doctor's essay 
 into the dangerous field of Burns speculation and criticism is 
 all the more remarkable, because, though like Dr. Moir, a 
 notable example of the successful union of medicine and 
 letters, his walk of literature was not in the realms of poesy 
 and humorous fiction, but amid the severer classicism of 
 Grecian lore. Like Delta, too, his literary achievements 
 were the product of hard-earned and scanty leisure, and what 
 he could steal from his sleep, as he was all his life a hard- 
 working " Country Doctor." — " It is a noticeable fact," says a 
 writer in a cutting from the Scotsman, May 1857, with this 
 heading, which I came across the other day in the Mitchell 
 Library, pasted by some loving hand on the title-page of a 
 small volume, in which Dr. Adams's centenary lecture is 
 bound up with Carlyle's celebrated essay and other pamph- 
 lets; and from its style and contents, I should say, is from 
 
104 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 the pen of the author of Rab and His Friends, Dr. John 
 Brown, who writes so charmingly of the Deeside practitioner 
 in his Horae Subsecivae — " It is a noticeable fact, and some- 
 thing to be proud of, that the most learned physician in 
 Britain, and probably in Europe, is at this moment a country 
 surgeon in a small village on Deeside — Dr. Francis Adams, 
 of Upper Banchory, the editor and translator of Hippocrates, 
 Paulus /Egineta, and Aretaeus. We well remember finding 
 this great scholar at his careless jentacidum, diverting himself 
 with doing an ode of Horace into Greek verse ; being then, 
 and we daresay still, at the call of any shepherd's ' crying 
 wife ' up in the solitudes of Clochnabane, and living such a 
 life as we all remember Scott describing in the ' Surgeon's 
 Daughter.' In any other country, such a man would not 
 have been permitted to remain long in such a position — 
 Scotia is assuredly leonum arida matrix. Our lions are very 
 drily nursed — they are perhaps all the more lively and leonine 
 — but small thanks to their mother. " 
 
 After this highly interesting introduction to Dr. John 
 Brown's " Country Doctor," who was familiarly known as 
 Francie Adams in the district, where he was considered the 
 best surgeon and the worst equestrian, and who, while 
 " fighting for a livelihood, educating his family, and in- 
 volved in his multifarious and urgent duties," found time 
 to become the author of upwards of a score of publica- 
 tions — surely " one of the most signal instances of the 
 pursuit and mastery of knowledge under difficulties, to be 
 found even among our Scottish Worthies," the reader may be 
 made acquainted with the fact, that his admiration for the 
 Writings of Burns was both high and enthusiastic. His 
 Discourse, indeed, which shows both fullness and knowledge 
 
Dr. Francis Adams. 105 
 
 of his subject, is a well-reasoned, judicious, and generous 
 tribute to the marvellous genius of Burns as a poet, setting 
 him high above all other lyric singers, of whatever country or 
 clime, either before his day or since. Nor is his treatment of 
 the man a whit less large-minded and charitable, which is 
 saying a good deal, when it is remembered that his discourse 
 was delivered in the Church (the shops in the town being 
 shut that day), and that it required more sincerity of convic- 
 tion and bravery to write as Dr. Adams did forty years ago 
 than now. Speaking of his religion and morality, he says, 
 " Never can it be said of Burns that (to use the solemn language 
 of a great moralist) ' he tortured his fancy and ransacked his 
 memory only that he might leave the world less virtuous than 
 he found it, might intercept the hopes of the rising generation, 
 and spread snares for the soul with greater dexterity. 1 O, 
 no ! Burns was not the man to call right wrong, and wrong 
 right. Those who judge harshly of Burns are generally cold- 
 blooded formalists in religion, and these are not the persons 
 to sit in judgment on him to whom (assuredly for some noble 
 purpose) his Creator had given 
 
 ' The thrilling frame and eagle spirit of a child of song.' " 
 
 Again, " My own estimate of Burns's moral conduct during 
 ' the few and weary days of his sojourn here below 1 may be 
 given in a fvw words. He had his sins and his follies ; alas ! 
 who is amongst us that has not? But it is my deliberate 
 opinion that, to the best of his ability, he always did justice, 
 loved mercy, and walked humbly with God ; that if he saw a 
 fellow-creature an hungered, none could be more prompt to 
 give him food — if athirst, to give him drink — or if in prison, 
 to minister to him. Is not this the true spirit of ( Christianity ? 
 G 
 
106 BuitNS AND THE MeDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 Let us join then in the prayer of Wordsworth, who himself 
 had a deep sympathy with Nature and the poet of Nature — 
 
 ' Sweet Mercy ! to the gates of Heaven 
 This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven ; 
 The rueful conflict, the heart riven 
 
 With vain endeavour, 
 And memory of earth's bitter leaven 
 Effaced for ever. 
 
 But why to him confine the prayer, 
 
 When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear 
 
 On the frail heart the purest share 
 
 With all who live ?— 
 The best of what we do and are, 
 
 Just God, forgive ! ' " 
 
 Talking of the Poet's coarseness in certain of his poems, 
 particularly in his satires, he has also a sensible word. Had 
 Burns lived in our day he would, doubtless, have written 
 differently ; and he readily admits that the usages of the 
 present day in these respects are preferable. But he could 
 hardly help himself; he simply did what every writer in the 
 same line did, viz., copy the example of the great masters of 
 comic satire who had preceded him. And, after all, as Dr. 
 Adams very pertinently reminds us, " Coarseness in speaking 
 or in writing was a thing that concerned the manners rather 
 than the morals, and merely affected the surface of character. 
 In this respect it was akin to filthiness in personal habits. 
 It did not follow because a man had a foul skin or spoke 
 coarsely at times, that he was corrupt to the core. In short, 
 the heart might be clean, although the skin or mouth was 
 foul." 
 
Dr. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 From Vol I. of the Riverside Edil 
 By the kind permission of Messrs 
 
 if " The Writings of O. W. Holmes, 
 npson, Low, Marston, & Company. 
 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 107 
 
 Turning now from the hardy north, where this learned 
 " Country Doctor " thought so kindly and spoke so sanely of 
 Burns, the poet and the man, I would ask you to glance for 
 a little to the other side of the Atlantic, where, from the city 
 of Boston, 
 
 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 
 sent forth his Centennial Poem in honour of the 1859 celebra- 
 tion. 
 
 Dr. Holmes has bulked so largely and so long in the eye 
 of the reading world as a man of letters that it is not gener- 
 ally known how distinguished an ornament he was of his own 
 profession ; though nobody acquainted with medicine can 
 read his works without, as his friend and correspondent, Pro- 
 fessor Sir W. T. Gairdner, of Glasgow, says, being struck 
 " with the large grasp of contemporary thought, combined 
 with medical and physiological illustration, as a quite new 
 phenomenon alike in literature and medicine.''' " I have 
 passed," he humorously remarked himself a few years ago, in 
 a conversation with the late editor of the British Medical 
 Journal, " the best years of my life as a doctor, and I hope 
 they are not ashamed of me, and do not reproach me for 
 choosing to tread the flowery path of very light literature." 
 As a matter of fact Dr. Holmes, like Moir and Adams, was, 
 and had been, a hard-working practitioner in the city of 
 Boston when he wrote his Centennial Poem on Hunts. In 
 1843, when he was only thirty-four years of age, he published 
 
 his great controversial Essay on the Treatment of Puerperal 
 (child-bed) Fever, which, in its splendid prescience, antici- 
 pated the marvellous bacteriological discoveries of our own 
 
108 BuitXS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 day. He was appointed in 1847 to the chair of Anatomy 
 and Physiology at Harvard University, a post he held with 
 great acceptance and distinction for the long period of forty 
 years. While performing his professional duties, he still 
 earned on his practice in Boston ; finding time in the midst 
 of it all to woo the Muse, and even to deliver lectures to 
 " lyceum assemblies." 
 
 It was in the very thick of this busy time, then, 1857 to 
 1859, when his Breakfast Table papers were running in the 
 Atlantic Monthly, and apprising the reading world that a 
 new and original star had arisen on the literary horizon, that 
 he threw his centennial 
 
 " pebble on the cairn 
 Of him, though dead, undying ; 
 Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn 
 Beneath her daisies lying." 
 
 But the whole poem, which is a beautiful tribute to the 
 genius and humanity of Burns, is also distinguished by that 
 wise charity for which, I contend, doctors are proverbial, as 
 the following lines show : — 
 
 " We love him, not for sweetest song, 
 Though never tone so tender ; 
 We love him, even in his wrong, — 
 His wasteful self-surrender. 
 
 We praise him, not for gifts divine, — 
 
 His Bluse was born of woman, — 
 His manhood breathes in every line, — 
 
 Was ever heart more human ? 
 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 109 
 
 We love him, praise him, just for this : 
 
 In every form and feature, 
 Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss, 
 
 He saw his fellow creature ! 
 
 No soul could sink beneath his love, — 
 
 Not even angel blasted ; 
 No mortal power could soar above 
 
 The pride that all outlasted ! 
 
 Ay ! Heaven had set one living man 
 
 Beyond the pedant's tether, — 
 His virtues, frailties, He may scan 
 
 Who weighs them altogether." 
 
 The following charming little incident, recorded thirty 
 years after, shows that this evergreen doctor's heart still 
 remained unchanged to its first love. In replying to my 
 friend, Dr. John Dougall, Glasgow, who had sent him some 
 daisies gathered from the field at Mossgiel, after first pressing 
 them between the leaves of a copy of The Meditations of 
 Marcus Aurelius, and afterwards in the pages of a copy of 
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Tabic, he says, " The daisies 
 from Mossgiel remain as when you sent them, except that I 
 gave one of them to a lady, who, I know, would value it 
 highly. I feel much obliged to you for sending them, and 
 they are not less welcome for the pleasant letter that comes 
 with them. I am proud to think that my book found itself 
 in the company of Marcus Aurelius, and that it should hold 
 between its leaves the modest flower which Burns has in- 
 vested with a tender beauty it never drew from the soil or 
 air in which it grew. You need not be surprised that 
 Americans are frequent pilgrims to the places made dear to 
 
110 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 them, and to all that read his songs, by the poetry of Burns. 
 He ought to have passed ten years of his life — or five at least 
 — in America, for those words of his — 
 
 ' A man's a man for a' that,' 
 
 show that true American feeling belonged to him as much as 
 if he had been born in sight of the hill before me as I write — 
 Bunker Hill." 
 
Dr. JOHN BROWN 
 (Knb and his Friends.) 
 
VIII. 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN AND OTHERS, DOWN TO 
 THE END OF THE EIGHTIES. 
 
 It is a supreme satisfaction to be able to link in the present 
 inquiry the name of Dr. John Brown, the celebrated author 
 of Rab and His Friends and a whole host of other, the 
 most delightful, essays and papers and sketches, comprised in 
 his Horae Subsecivae. The writings in these volumes, 
 exhibiting, as they do, a most captivating and beautiful 
 individualism, wide culture, great purity of style, and 
 elevated thought, have justly become English classics. 
 Their ripe wisdom, moreover, and soundest of common-sense- 
 teaching on medical subjects, on art, and on the great 
 verities of human life and religion, make them a library in 
 themselves, the knowledge alone of which would be an educa- 
 tion in itself to any young man, and, in particular, I often 
 think, to any young medical man ; for, though Dr. Brown 
 was not, in the same sense perhaps as Holmes (whom in other 
 respects he strongly resembles), a medical pioneer himself, he 
 understood, none better, the history and philosophy of 
 medicine and medical teaching, and became, with shrewdest 
 insight, the historian and critic of sonic of the great medical 
 movements and the men chiefly concerned in them. 
 
 While the whole world was ringing with the centennial 
 celebrations of Burns, this sweet-blooded Edinburgh physician 
 
112 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 and most lovable of all men of letters was preparing for the 
 press his Home Subsecivae, which contains some interesting 
 bits of Burnsiana. 
 
 In the heading to that most charming paper, " Oh, I'm 
 wat, wat," he relates a very pretty little incident in the 
 youthful life of Burns, illustrative of his, even then, gift of 
 humour. I give it in the doctor's own words : — 
 
 " The Father of the Rev. Mr. Steven of Largs was the son 
 of a farmer, who lived neost farm to Mossgiel. Wlien a boy 
 of eight, he found 'Robbie,'' who was a great friend of his, 
 and of all the children, engaged digging a large trench in a 
 field, Gilbert, his brother, with him. The boy pausing on the 
 edge of the trench, and looking down upon Burns, said, 
 ' Robbie, what's that ye' re doirC ? ' ' Howkin a mitckle hole, 
 Tammie.'' s What for?'' ' To bury the Deil in, Tammie!'' 
 (one can fancy how those eyes would glow). ' jf but, Robbie,'' 
 said the logical Tammie, i hoo''re ye to get him in?' ' Ay," 1 
 said Burns, ' thafs it, hoo are we to get him in!'' and went off 
 into shoids of laughter ; and every now and then during that 
 summer clay shouts wotdd come from that hole as the idea came 
 over him. If one could only have daguerreotyped his days 
 fancies!'" 
 
 In a finely imagined analysis of the old song, "Aye 
 Waukin 1 , O ! " he contrasts the version of it in Chambers'' 
 Scottish Songs with Burns\s amended reading of the same ; 
 and very much, it must be confessed, provided his view of 
 Burns's version is the correct one, to the disadvantage of the 
 latter. At the same time, he admits that Burns, in almost 
 every instance, not only adorned, but transformed and 
 
Dr. John Brown. 113 
 
 purified whatever of the old he touched, breathing into it his 
 own tenderness and strength. And he describes, as the chief 
 charm of the love songs of Burns, that the Poet is not 
 making love, but in it. " Certainly,™ he says, " of all love 
 songs except those wild snatches left to us by her who flung 
 herself from the Leucadian Rock, those of Burns are the 
 most in earnest, the tenderest, the ' most moving, delicate, 
 and full of life.' Burns makes you feel the reality and the 
 depth, the truth of his passion : it is not her eye-lashes, or 
 her nose, or her dimple, or even 
 
 'A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
 I' the bottom of a cowslip,' 
 
 that are ' winging the fervour of his love ; ' not even her 
 soul ; it is herself. This concentration and earnestness, this 
 pcrfervor of our Scottish love poetry, seems to me to contrast 
 curiously with the light, trifling, philandering of the English; 
 indeed, as far as I remember, we have almost no love songs in 
 English, of the same class as this one, or those of Burns. 
 They are mostly either of the genteel, or of the nautical 
 (some of these capital), or of the comic school. Do you 
 know the most perfect, the finest love-song in our or in any 
 language; the love being affectionate more than passionate, 
 love in possession, not in pursuit ? 
 
 ' Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast 
 
 On yonder lea, on yonder lea, 
 My plaidie to the angry airt, 
 
 I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee : 
 Or did Misfortune's bitter storms 
 
 Around theo blaw, around thee blaw, 
 Thy bield should be my bosom, 
 
 To share it a', to share it a'. 
 
114< BuKNS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 Or were I in the wildest waste, 
 
 Sae black and bare, sae black and bare. 
 The desert were a paradise, 
 
 If thou wert there, if thou wert there : 
 Or were I monarch o' the globe, 
 
 Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, 
 The brightest jewel in my crown 
 
 Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.' " 
 
 The inspiration for this, among the last, if not the very 
 last, of the love-songs the Poet ever wrote, was supplied by 
 Jessy Lewars, she who tended him on his deathbed, playing 
 over and over on the piano the air of that old song, 
 
 " The robin cam' to the wren's nest, 
 And keekit in, and keekit in." 
 
 Dr. Brown, in a passage in that beautiful paper on " Arthur 
 H. Hallam," further emphasises this affectionate character of 
 the love in Burns's songs. " We can," he says, speaking of 
 In Memor'iam, " recall few poems approaching to it in this 
 quality of sustained affection. The only English poems we 
 can think of as of the same order, are Cowper's lines on seeing 
 his mother's portrait : — 
 
 ' O that these lips had language ! ' 
 
 Burns to ' Mary in Heaven ; ' and two pieces of Vaughan — 
 one beginning, 
 
 ' O thou who know'st for whom I mourn ; ' 
 
 and the other, 
 
 ' They are all gone into the world of light.' " 
 
Du. Robert Dick. 115 
 
 Following close upon the recent celebrations, and probably 
 inspired by them, I have also to chronicle the name of 
 
 James Strachan, Subgeon, Blackford, 
 
 author of A Voyage to the Arctic Regions, a gentleman who 
 was in active country medical practice for upwards of thirty- 
 five years, and in the autumn of his days published a little 
 volume of poetry, entitled, Moral Pieces in Rhyme and Blank 
 Verse, Edinburgh, 1860. His treatment of the various sub- 
 jects of his muse, which, as their title indicates, are mostly of 
 a religious and moral character, is slight and short, the 
 execution not being always equal to, or worthy of the theme. 
 In an Acrostic on Burns, an Episode, and Tarn o 1 Shanter, 
 he refers to Burns, and sings his praises, perhaps with more 
 warmth of heart than poetic skill. He is inclined to over- 
 look the debauchery in Tam <? Shanter in consideration of 
 its other merits. 
 
 " Gif you or me find fault, we're unco bauld 
 Wi' him who wrat sac much for our enjoy, 
 An' fley'd sae muckle grief frae our employ." 
 
 And likewise, as appearing very soon after, if not, indeed, 
 actually belonging to the centenary category, I ought to in- 
 clude the name of 
 
 Robert Dick, M.D., CM., 
 
 who graduated at Glasgow University in 1834 ; practised in 
 London and Edinburgh ; and died at the latter city in 1878. 
 He was as prolific with his pen, as be was extravagant in the 
 subjects which it handled, being, among other works, the 
 
116 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 author of, Derangements of the Organs of Digestion, 1810 ; 
 A New and Catholic Liturgy, 184<6 ; Physiology, its Physical, 
 Moral, Political, and Hygienic Teachings ,• an Essay in 
 Blank Verse, 1849 ; The Literary Aurora, 1858; Marriage 
 and Population, their Natural Laws, 1858 ; The Spiritual 
 Dunciad, 1859 ; and the Autobiography and Poetical Com- 
 positions, including Tartarus, Elysium, Elijah, and the Paulo- 
 post of Man ; or, the Land ; Rent, and Food-Free, and 
 Concrete Air — Nitrogen Millenium, 1863 ; which remarkable 
 work contains an Ode on the Centenary of Burns' 's Birthday. 
 
 However insane the company, judging from the foregoing 
 titles, in which this ode finds itself, there is nothing of mad- 
 ness in its matter. It sets out by sketching the character, 
 particularly in its sterner aspects, of our Scottish scenery, 
 amid which the Poet was nurtured ; and describes a snow- 
 storm. 
 
 " But ah ! full soon Toil came to claim the boy ; 
 Leaving too narrow phase 
 Of happy, vacant days, 
 'To paidle i' the burn and rin about the braes,' 
 His frame, while still unknit, the plough, the scythe employ." 
 
 Then it notes how his " manly sire " took careful heed for 
 the education and culture of his mind; how he suddenly 
 awoke to fame ; went to " Edina's regal seat " and received 
 the homage of the learned and the great. " But," it signifi- 
 cantly asks — 
 
 " Was he happier then, 
 Even in the proudest hour, 
 Than when he told his tale of love, 
 In hawthorn-scented bower 1 " 
 
Dr. Robert Dick. 117 
 
 and answers in the negative — 
 
 " No ! for ambition, glory are apart 
 From man's true nature, never fill'd his heart ; 
 But love, pure, holy, homely, 
 Of woman, modest, comely, 
 Is still the heavenliest gift 
 Of which lost Eden's outcast is unreft ; 
 And this. Burns, natheless all his errors, knew, 
 When liuk'd to long-lov'd Jean, at last in wedlock true ! " 
 
 It next conducts his reluctant footsteps from that Edin- 
 burgh, which, it has been wisely said, " took so much out of 
 him and put so little back in its place. 11 
 
 " From dulcet-mingled wiles 
 
 Of man's applause and woman's smiles ; 
 From pleasure, dazzling success, beauty, 
 To humble rustic duty, 
 
 Unmann'd in nought the Bard returns, 
 
 More purely, brightly burns 
 The light of Genius in him ; 
 
 His fancy every theme adorns ; 
 Temptations rarely win him. 
 Then struck his lyre thoso chords, 
 
 Even henceforth to be 
 A nation's deathless 'household words,' 
 His lay of ' Auld lang syne,' 
 
 And other minstrelsy ; 
 Which Scot with Scot will chorus, 
 VVhilo lasts tho land that bore us. 
 
 Drop we tho veil o'er liurns's after-story. 
 
 For us, fur him too soon, 
 
 His sun went down at noon ; 
 Fault and mischance dimming its parting glory. 
 
118 BuilNS AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. 
 
 He left his name 
 Amid his country's constellations, 
 
 In the poetic sky, 
 
 Immortally 
 To sparkle on with brightest corruscations, 
 In comic and pathetic alternations." 
 
 It usually happens after great events, like the 1859 Cele- 
 brations, that enthusiasm exhausts itself and a period of 
 reaction sets in. But the press was as active as ever in 
 issuing new editions. Monuments too, were being erected, 
 one after another, all over the country. There were, besides, 
 other collateral Burnsiana publications constantly making 
 their appearance, as the ever-increasing bibliographies be- 
 wilderingly inform us. And if the adage has any application, 
 it must be to the medical profession ; for there is a gap of 
 thirteen years between the tiny tributes of Strachan and Dick 
 and the delivery of a lecture on, Robert Burns, the Poet, by 
 
 David Sime, M.D., Inellan, 
 
 before the good people of that little Clyde watering place, 
 where he was the resident medical practitioner, and which 
 was afterwards, at the special request of his audience, pub- 
 lished by Maclehose & Sons, Glasgow. Eight years later, 
 April, 1881, the same lecture (if not exactly word for word, 
 at least thought for thought) appeared as an article in the 
 Catholic Presbyterian, under the title of the Poetry of 
 Robert Burns. His point of view here is precisely that 
 of the original lecture, only, if anything, a little more 
 pronounced. He treats his subject from the aspect of the 
 poet rather than the man, as the latter might long since 
 have been, and is, indeed, being, forgotten, but for the mar- 
 
Dr. David Si.me. 119 
 
 vellous genius of the former keeping him alive. And though 
 he adopts this course advisedly, because he is of opinion that 
 the sooner the man, with his struggles and his errors, is 
 forgotten, the better — that, indeed, it is of no consequence 
 he should be remembered since we have his works, he cannot 
 altogether escape glancing at the man, whose frailties he 
 touches with the same generous hand that we have seen 
 characterises his medical brethren generally. 
 
 All the same, Dr. Sime does not appear to have been 
 attracted by the man, Robert Burns, in the same degree that 
 he has been by his poetry ; and the reason probably is (for 
 he holds the usual stereotyped view of his errors), that he has 
 not studied his life as deeply as he seems to have done his 
 works. He is not one of those who feel that we ought to be 
 as grateful for his life as his poetry — that, in fact, we could 
 not have had the special kind and quality of poetry he has 
 given us, without, at the same time, his special characterisa- 
 tion, with all its moral riskiness, which produced it; and that 
 if we esteem the product a good and wholesome thing, then 
 we must loyally accept the other. It does not seem to have 
 occurred to Dr. Sime, as it did to Wordsworth, that " many 
 peculiar beauties which enrich his verses could never have 
 existed, and many accessory influences, which contribute 
 greatly to their effect, would have been wanting, unless it 
 were felt that he was a man who preached from the text of 
 his own errors ; and whose wisdom, beautiful as a Mower that 
 might have risen from seed sown from above, was in fact a 
 scion from the root of personal suffering." Nor does he, like 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 
 " love 1 1 i iii, even in liis wrong — 
 His wasteful sulf-surromlcr." 
 
120 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 This larger and Wordsworthian view — that the Poet's loss 
 is our gain ; that through his sorrows and his errors we are 
 the nearer blessing and wisdom ; and that, therefore, we 
 ought to accept his life, broken as it is, with humble thank- 
 fulness and reverent pityfulness, is quite foreign to Dr. Sime's 
 conception. He has not considered that the enthusiasm of 
 the Scottish people for their Bard has its origin in, and draws 
 its very sustenance from, his personality ; and that to strike 
 it out of the bargain would be to give the death-blow to our 
 Burns worship, which has grown up around the man, even 
 more than his work. If it were possible, which it is not, to 
 view Burns purely as a literary artist, like Shakspere and 
 Scott, there could be no more anniversary celebrations, which 
 the doctor perhaps might not consider an unmixed blessing. 
 
 But if Dr. Sime, in the plan of his paper, deliberately 
 chooses to ignore the man, he devotes himself all the more 
 enthusiastically to a masterly analysis of his poems and songs, 
 which shows him to be possessed of considerable culture, rare 
 insight, and a very distinctive literary gift, which, I under- 
 stand, he is exercising with success at the present day in 
 London, being already the author of In Manbury City, a 
 novel, and The Literary Charm of the Pilgrims Progi-ess. 
 
 There is a further lapse of nine years, as far as I have been 
 able to inform myself, between Dr. Sime's very admirable 
 performance and that of a much less ambitious character, 
 which only merits notice here, as being from the pen of 
 
 John M'Cosh, M.D., Edin., F.R.C.S.E., H.E.I.C.S., and 
 F.R.G.S.L. 
 
Dr. John M'Cosh. 121 
 
 He was a native of Kirkmichael, Ayrshire ; studied at Glas- 
 gow from 1827 to 30, in which latter year he became a 
 Licentiate of the R.C.S.E. ; then probably entered into the 
 Government Service of India, the experience gained in that 
 field forming the subject of his thesis, On the Prospects and 
 Practice of a Bengali Medical Officer, with which he graduated 
 M.D. in Edinburgh in 1841. He also published several 
 other works relating to India and the East, as Topography 
 of' Assam, Calcutta, 1837 ; Medical Advice to the Indian 
 Stranger, London, 1841 ; Advice to Officers in India, London, 
 1856. He was likewise the author of Nuova Italia, and the 
 volume which is the subject of the present notice, published 
 in 1882, and entitled, Sketches in Verse at Home and Abroad, 
 and from the War of the Nile, in Ten Cantos. In the fourth 
 canto of this work, which ranges over a wide field of contem- 
 porary subjects and events, he takes the I'eader a ramble 
 through the Land of Burns, his visit to Auld Ayr, in par- 
 ticular, he tells us, being a case of the scenes of youth 
 revisited. 
 
 " Full fifty years have passed away 
 Since in auld Ayr we had our stay, 
 And now return in sad dismay, 
 
 At change of names and places." 
 
 He pays the most reverent homage at the shrines of the Poet 
 in Alloway and Dumfries, moralises on his chequered career 
 in the latter town, and on the ungrateful neglect of its 
 inhabitants towards their Bard, for the offspring of whose 
 muse he predicts, the world o'er, a never dying fame. 
 
122 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 I shall close this chapter with a contribution of a slightly 
 more noteworthy character, published four years later, 1886 
 — Poems, Songs, and Sonnets, by 
 
 William Stexhouse, M.D., 
 
 who was a Glasgow graduate, and practised in Dunedin, 
 N.Z. (being honorary physician to the hospital there), and in 
 London. Some three years before the publication of his little 
 book of poems he was compelled to have his foot amputated ; 
 and was just contemplating resuming his professional labours 
 with renewed energy when he received a serious injury to his 
 spine through a carriage accident, which entirely laid him 
 aside from active practice. It was, he tells us in his preface, 
 written from Fitzroy Square, London, during the sleepless 
 nights, consequent on his long and serious illness, that he 
 wrote his book of poems, which treat mainly of the social, 
 moral, and political questions of the day, questions which, 
 however much they may be considered by some to be without 
 the range of poetry, are, nevertheless, he assures us, bound up 
 with the welfare of the race. 
 
 His January Tioeniij-Fiflh, however, the poem which 
 entitles him to a notice here, is surely not in that category — 
 beyond that pale, being one of those much berhymed sub- 
 jects, which, if we are to judge by the frequency with which 
 it is chosen, lends itself most admirably to poetical treatment. 
 If Dr. Stenhouse's performance is not one of the very best, it 
 is certainly not one of the worst ; and, particularly in that 
 charity which covereth a multitude of sins, artistic as well as 
 moral, is in harmony with the general pronouncement of his 
 medical brethren. 
 
Dr. William Stenhodse. 123 
 
 1 So good and ill are mixed 
 
 By the Creator's will, 
 With enmity betwixt 
 
 That good may evil kill. 
 But in this contest stern 
 
 The strongest often fail, 
 And through their failure learn 
 
 At last how to prevail. 
 Thus David and his son 
 
 Oft in this contest fell, 
 And were but all undone, 
 
 As sacred writ can tell. 
 Was Shakspere without stain, 
 
 Or Goethe the profound, 
 That some should so complain 
 
 Our Burns was unsound ? 
 He sinned and suffered much, 
 
 And, by experience taught, 
 He warned us that such 
 
 Is with grave perils fraught, 
 As gentle as a maid, 
 
 He was as woman weak — 
 Ere tempted to upbraid 
 
 Let his sweet merit speak." 
 
IX. 
 
 A DECADE OF MEDICAL BURNSITES, INCLUDING 
 DR. JAMES ADAMS, GLASGOW. 
 
 Coming down to still more recent times — the nineties, when 
 Burns-worship, no longer a synonym for Bacchus-worship, 
 is gradually dissociating itself from the unworthy orgies 
 common to the devotees of this jovial god, and becoming 
 crystallised into a sort of ritual of its own — a more or less 
 shapely organisation, with high and worthy purposes, such as 
 the institution among school children of prize competitions 
 in singing and recitation, with the object of encouraging the 
 study of the works of Burns in their native Doric ; the 
 establishment of homes for the indigent, like those at Moss- 
 giel ; exhibitions of the relics, manuscripts, and editions of 
 Burns ; and such like kindred projects. 
 
 The Burnsites, throughout the world, are no longer a 
 heterogeneous mass of atoms, whose enthusiasm is only ap- 
 parent on the twenty-fifth of January, on which night it 
 evaporates even more completely than the steam of the toddy 
 circulating round the table. They are now a coherent and 
 highly influential body of federated clubs, which boasts an 
 organ of its own — The Annual Burns Chronicle, devoted 
 to the interests, aims, and purposes of the Burns cult. Nor 
 can I see any reason why our Burns-worship should not be- 
 come more and more practical every year ; and that too, 
 in spite of the character usually ascribed to our patron saint 
 
[AMJ IDAMS, M.D., F.F.P.S.G 
 
Dr. James Adams. 125 
 
 — that he was not practical, which I hold is a gross libel ; 
 for in every community in which he lived he was among the 
 foremost in starting any good work which had for its object 
 the moral and intellectual improvement of his fellows, notably 
 his passion for founding libraries. 
 
 I don't know whether it was these improved times among 
 Burns's adherents which found out 
 
 Dr. James Adams, 
 
 a veteran Glasgow practitioner, or he who found out them ? 
 I should rather think it was the latter — that he discovered 
 himself at this period ; for there is the fullest evidence in his 
 writings that he has been an ardent and enthusiastic Burns 
 scholar all his life, and is only now, in his aged retire- 
 ment, giving the world of his ripeness. His Burns s 'Chloris,' 
 a Reminiscence, which appeared in August, 1893, is an ex- 
 ceedingly readable little book, being written in a vigorous, 
 direct, and freshly-piquant style ; and is as creditable to his 
 heart as his head. In speaking of his own modest perfoi - - 
 mance he is, he says, "encouraged to think there may be some 
 of the mind of Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who said that he 
 admitted a sheep's head dressed for dinner was not a very 
 bonny dish, ' but, man, there's a heap o' gude, confused 
 feedin' aboot it.' " I admit the heap o 1 feedin 1 , without the 
 confusion ; for, so full is his knowledge, he rather brings 
 order out of confusion. 
 
 Ostensibly, the little book is a vindication of the character 
 of Jean Lorimer (Burns's "Chloris") — " the lassie w? the lint- 
 white locks," from the unworthy slanders and base inuendos 
 of Allan Cunninghame, whom the writer, in certain passages 
 of righteous indignation and trenchant criticism, which are as 
 
126 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 refreshing and invigorating as the norland breezes, does not 
 spare. Though this is his ostensible purpose, he necessarily 
 travels over a great deal of highly-interesting Burns ground, 
 showing a most intimate acquaintance with the entire theme ; 
 and winds up with an earnest and eloquent appeal for a 
 people's (family) edition of Burns — a Burns that might be 
 read by a father to his sons and daughters, and from which 
 every coarse and unworthy word would be eliminated ; and 
 he bases the wisdom, and justice, and generosity of his appeal 
 upon the dying words of Burns himself. 
 
 " Chloris," he tells us, in her later Edinburgh days, was a 
 patient of his worthy father ; and he relates, in a most 
 charmingly-realistic way, how, as a boy, on his way home 
 from school, he went, by his father's instructions, to her house 
 to receive a packet containing some Burns manuscripts, with 
 which the grateful old lady insisted on presenting the doctor, 
 as he would take no fee for his professional attendance upon 
 her. From this " Reminiscence " he proceeds to the trium- 
 phant vindication of the character of " Chloris," whom he 
 proves, up to the hilt, only to have been a " white-flower 
 love Vl of the Poet, and whose only sin was her misfortune. 
 Indeed, he shows, by evidence of the most conclusive char- 
 acter, that there never was, or could have been, anything 
 between the pair but what was entirely honourable to Jean 
 Lorimer either as a young girl or deserted wife, and to Burns 
 as a married man and her lyric artist admirer. He points 
 out, moreover, that " Chloris " was as much a friend of Mrs. 
 Burns as of the Poet himself, all their intercourse being 
 above board, and participated in, and approved of by her. 
 Mrs. Burns, indeed, to her dying day, never entertained 
 any other notion about poor " Chloris," but that she was an 
 
Dr. James Adams. 127 
 
 innocent, though unfortunate woman in her early marriage 
 with a scamp, who immediately thereafter deserted her. 
 Besides, the Lorimers and the Burnses were not only on terms 
 of great intimacy, but were in the habit of visiting at each 
 other's homes, which i.s incredible had the Poet's relationship 
 to his model not been of the worthiest. As illustrating 
 the honourable terms of intimacy existing between the two 
 families, Dr. Adams quotes a letter from Burns, August, 
 1795, inviting Mr. Lorimer and his daughter Jean to dine 
 with him at his house in Dumfries, to meet Mr. Robert 
 Cleghorn and two Midlothian farmers, friends of the Poet. 
 " Mrs. Burns,'" he says in his note to Mr. Lorimer, " desired 
 me yesternight to beg the favour of Jeanie to come and par- 
 take, and she was so obliging to promise that she would." 
 Drs. Maxwell and Mundell, he likewise informs him, are to 
 be of the dinner-party, at which Mrs. Burns, all unconscious 
 of jealousy or like feeling, sang, to the great delight of her 
 guests, one of the " Chloris " songs, " O, That's the Lassie o' 
 My Heart." 
 
 Dr. Adams even further demonstrates, if further demon- 
 stration were necessary, how Burns, after "ChlorisV desertion, 
 with a beautifully-tender consideration on his part, chose his 
 themes in song, with a view to show his sympathy for her, 
 and to help her to retain her self-respect in the midst of her 
 misfortunes, when, doubtless, there were in the little School 
 for Scandal round about her, plenty of askance looks, and 
 .Mrs. Grundy-whisperings and head-shakings. 
 
 Having finally disposed of Allan Cunninghame's worse 
 than base fictions, our author then plunges into the subject of 
 " Chloris " and the thirty songs inspired by, or dedicated to 
 her, and this he does with a fulness of knowledge and insight, 
 
128 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 and a subtlety of criticism, which shows that he knows his 
 subject thoroughly, not only as a literary historian, but as a 
 true critic of lyric art. 
 
 Dr. Adams has published several other valuable contribu- 
 tions to Burnsiana literature — The Pot Boiler — an Impeach- 
 ment and Defence ; Deity and Dirt — a Review of an old 
 Controversy on Robert Burns ; Burns as an Exciseman ; 
 Glimpses of Clarinda in Edinburgh Sixty Years since — 
 all written in the same racy, terse, and piquant style, just, 
 I fancy, as the doctor would talk ; and showing, by his wealth 
 and aptness of quotation, that he knows his Shakspere as well 
 as his Burns, but his " Chloris " is his chef 'd'oeuvre. 
 
 In bringing this inquiry, Robert Burns and the Medical 
 Profession, to a close, I have now briefly to chronicle, as 
 belonging to the same period of Burns Renaissance in which 
 the name of Dr. Adams so worthily figures, the following 
 contributions from members of the medical faculty at home 
 and abroad, and my task is finished. 
 
 Poem on Robert Burns, by 
 
 Dr. John M. Harper, 
 
 written on the Occasion of the Poet's Anniversary, and read 
 before the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, of 
 which the author is Vice-President. 
 
 Robert Burns, a Lecture delivered in Investigator Hall, 
 Paine Memorial, before the Ingersoll Secular Society, by 
 
 Dr. W. Symington Brown. 
 
 In this able, sympathetic, and well-written lecture, the doctor 
 traces the secret of the Poet's popularity ; though, as might 
 
Dr. William Findlay. 129 
 
 be expected, considering the audience before whom it was 
 delivered, he uses his name somewhat unfairly as a text to 
 preach secularistic and agnostic ideas. Nevertheless, as he 
 travels through his life-story, he lays his finger on a good 
 many sensible things, one or two of which are worth quoting. 
 " Burns must have been a very industrious man, who set a 
 proper estimate on the value of time, and worked while it was 
 day with all his might." " It is evident that no habitual 
 drunkard could have produced such an amount of good 
 literary work in so short a time.'" 
 
 In speaking of his intimacies with Highland Mary, Jean 
 Armour, and Mrs. Maclehose, which, however inexplicable, 
 unjustifiable, and even discreditable, were, nevertheless, he 
 affirms, the inspirers of some of his very best songs, which, 
 " it is safe to say would never have been written if Burns had 
 been a model youth, after the Sunday School pattern. You 
 take your choice whether it would have been better to lose 
 the poetry or the passion.' 1 
 
 Lines on the Burns Statue at Albany, N.Y., by 
 1). M. Henderson, M.D., Baltimore. 
 
 The Epistles of Noah (Glasgow, 1883), contains " Burns : 
 from a Showman's Pint o 1 View," by 
 
 William I'indi.av, M.I). (Geo. Umber), Glasgow. 
 
 In Ross's Burnsiana (Paisley, 1894), " Lamb and Burns, 11 by 
 the same author ; in Burns* Highland Man/ (Paisley, 1894), 
 " Highland Mary in Fact and Fiction ; " in In My City 
 Garden (Paisley, 1895), "A Bairns 1 Burns 1 * Anniversary; 11 
 and in Ayrshire Idylls (Paisley, 189G), "A Ride in a Carrier's 
 Cart " through a famous nook in the Land of Burns. 
 
130 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 Anniversary Poem (January 25th, 189^) on Robert Burns, 
 
 by 
 
 Dr. Benjamin F. Leggette, 
 
 Author of A Sheaf of Song, A Tramp through Switzerland, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 Verses on Robert Burns, by 
 
 Dr. A. M. M'Ci.elland, Toronto, Canada. 
 
 The late, much esteemed, and highly popular east-end 
 Glasgow doctor, 
 
 George R. Mather, M.D., 
 
 was a noted lover and collector of the Fine Arts, particularly 
 the examples of Bough and Chalmers, in which his collection 
 was very rich ; and the enthusiastic memorialist of the 
 brothers, Drs. William and John Hunter, under the title of 
 Two Great Scotsmen, published by Maclehose & Sons in 
 1892. He was also the author of a paper on the Genius 
 and Character of Burns, originally delivered as an address 
 before the Dennistoun Burns Club (of which he was President) 
 on January 25th, 1892 ; and sometime after his sudden and 
 startlingly tragic death at a Faculty dinner while replying 
 to the toast of the Army, Navy, and Volunteers (of one of 
 the corps of which latter body he was the popular surgeon), 
 published by his widow, along with other of his literary 
 fragments, in a neat memorial volume, from the press of 
 R. Robertson, Glasgow. 1896. 
 
 If the burly doctor, who was, at all times, distinguished 
 for the geniality and warmth of his feelings, as well as for the 
 
Dr. C. Clark Bukmax. 131 
 
 eloquent and manly expression of what he felt, sheds no 
 fresh light on the well-worn theme, or enriches it with no new 
 or subtle thought, certainly no warmer, heartier, or more 
 generous tribute, than this in the glowing and robust words 
 of Dr. Mather, was ever paid to the " Genius and Character 
 of Burns," whose " poems," he tells us, " are full of the most 
 generous sentiments, the interfusion of which tends to bind 
 men brothers over the world ; they kindle anew feelings of 
 patriotism, which make us proudly revere the great and 
 glorious past, and resolve to guard at sacrifice of heart's 
 blood what our fathers won for us ; they preserve under con- 
 secrating light the memories of home — its duties, its joys, 
 and its sorrows ; they soothe us in the hour of heart-wreck, 
 when all is dark and drear ; and they cheer us as no jovial 
 songs of any time have ever done, in our hours of sociality, 
 when innocent mirth rules high. 11 
 
 An Account of the Art of Typography, as practised in 
 Alnwick from 1781 to 1815, with biographical notes of all the 
 publications during that period, by 
 
 C. Clark Bueman, L.R.C.P. and S., Edin., Alnwick : 
 
 Printed by the Alnwick and County Gazette, and Steam 
 Printing Co., Ltd., 21 Bondgate Within, Alnwick, 1896. 
 
 The above learned and able paper was read by Dr. Burman, 
 a medical practitioner in Alnwick, before the Young Men's 
 Mutual Improvement Association of that town, on February 
 12th, 1896", and afterwards published ; the author's en- 
 thusiastic admiration of the marvellous powers of Thomas 
 Bewick as an engraver on wood, he tells us in his " Foreword," 
 inducing him to illustrate a few special copies with examples 
 
132 Burns and the Medical Profession. 
 
 of wood-cuts executed by the celebrated Newcastle engraver 
 exclusively for Alnwick printers. Among the wood-cuts 
 furnished are eight vignettes from Burns' 8 Poems, and sixteen 
 of the tail-pieces from the same work, all printed, he informs 
 us in interesting detail, from the original blocks which were 
 specially supplied by Mr. Bewick from designs by Mr. 
 Thurston for the famous 1808 Alnwick edition of the Poetical 
 Works of Robert Burns, with his life, in two volumes ; and 
 which blocks are now in the doctor's own collection. 
 
 All about Highland Mary, is the title of an article in Dr. 
 Ross's, All about Burns, 1896, by 
 
 Theodore F. Wolfe, A.M., M.D. 
 
 It was " prepared," he tells us, " during a sojourn in ' The 
 Land of Burns ' — while it adds a little to our meagre know- 
 ledge of Mary Campbell, aims to present consecutively and 
 congruously so much as may now be known of her brief life, 
 her relations to the bard and her sad, heroic death," — which 
 is a very good description of his purpose and achievement. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR THIS INQUIRY. 
 
 Currie (Dr. James), " The Complete Works of Robert 
 Burns ; with an Account of his Life, and a Criticism of his 
 Writings, to which are prefixed some Observations on the 
 Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry." 1 vol. 
 Halifax, 1863. 
 
 Burns (Robert), " Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect." 
 lvol. Edinburgh, 1787. (List of Subscribers consulted). 
 
 Currie (Dr. James), " The Works of Robert Burns ; with 
 an Account of his Life, and a Criticism of his Writings," etc., 
 etc. 4 vols. London, 1800. (List of Subscribers con- 
 sulted). 
 
 Douglas (William Scott), "The Works of Robert Burns," 
 6 vols. London, 1891. 
 
 Ciiamhers (Dr. Robert), " Life and Works of Robert 
 Burns,' 1 Revised by William Wallace. 4 vols. Edinburgh 
 and London, 1896. 
 
 Gibson' (J.), " Bibliography of Robert Burns." Kilmar- 
 nock, 1881. 
 
 M'Kav, (Archibald), " History of Kilmarnock." Kilmar- 
 nock, 1880. P. 184. 
 
136 Appendix. 
 
 Carlyle (Thomas), "Essay on Burns." Edinburgh Revieio, 
 No. 96. 
 
 Marshall (James), "A Winter with Robert Burns." 
 Edinburgh, 1846. 
 
 M'Dowall (William), "History of the Burgh of Dumfries." 
 Edinburgh, 1867. Also " Burns in Dumfriesshire." Edin- 
 burgh, 1870. 
 
 Finlayson (Dr. James), " Biography of Dr. Robert Watt." 
 London, 1897. Pp. 5-7. 
 
 Notes and Queries for September and October, 1868. 
 Gillis (Right Rev. Bishop), " A Paper on the Subject of 
 Burns's Pistols." Edinburgh, 1859. 
 
 Chambers (Robert), "Lives of Illustrious and Distin- 
 guished Scotsmen from the Earliest Period to the Present 
 Time, arranged in alphabetical order." 4 vols. Glasgow, 
 1835. 
 
 Thomson (Dr. John), " Education : Man's Salvation from 
 Crime, Disease, and Starvation ; with Appendix vindicating 
 Robert Burns." Edinburgh, 1844. 
 
 Anderson (Alexander), of Edinburgh University Library, 
 searched Matriculation Album of the Edinburgh University, 
 1795, for date of Dr. Samuel Hughes' graduation. 
 
 "Brace's Address to his Troops at Bannockburn." Ex- 
 amined Manuscript in Edinburgh Municipal Museum. 
 
 Annual Burns Chronicle. No. 1, 1892, till No. 7, 1898. 
 " The Chronological Summary of the Life and Writings of 
 Robert Burns, abridged from ' Kilmarnock Edition '—Life 
 
Appendix. 137 
 
 and Notes — W. Scott Douglas;'" and the "Earnock MSS.," 1 
 by the Editor, D. M' Naught ; also the Bibliographies, chiefly 
 consulted. 
 
 Rogers (Dr. Ciiaki.es), "The Book of Robert Burns." 
 Printed for the Grampian Club. Edinburgh, 1889. 
 
 Kilpatrick (James A.), " Literary Landmarks of Glasgow." 
 Glasgow, 1898. ("Smollett's Back Attic," and "The 
 Bohemia of Burns.") 
 
 Currie (William Wallace), " Memoirs of the Life, Writ- 
 ings, and Correspondence of James Currie, M.D., F.R.S., 
 Liverpool." London, 1831. 
 
 Wordsworth (William), " A Letter to a Friend of Robert 
 Burns : occasioned by an intended Republication of the 
 Account of the Life of Burns by Dr. Currie." London, 1816. 
 
 Henley (W. E.), " Burns's Life, Genius, Achievement." 
 Edinburgh and London, 1898. 
 
 Wallace (William), " Robert Bums and Mrs. Dunlop." 
 London, 1898. 
 
 Ami) (Thomas), " Poetical Works of David Macbeth Moil', 
 M.D. (Delta)." 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1852. 
 
 Adams (Francis, M.D., LL.D.), "Centenary Discourse 
 on I lie Writings of Burns." Aberdeen, 1859. 
 
 Madden (R. R., M.D.), "The Infirmities of Genius, illus- 
 trated by referring the Anomalies in the Literary Character 
 to the Habits ami Constitutional Peculiarities of .Men of 
 Genius." — Chapter XXI., Burns. London, 1883. 
 
 Ross (John D.), " Round Burns's Grave." Paisley, IN!)!.'. 
 
138 Appendix. 
 
 Brown (Dr. John), " Horae Subsecivae." 3 vols. Edin- 
 burgh, 1882. (" Dr. Adams of Banchory," " Oh, I'm wat, 
 wat," and " Arthur H. Hallam.") 
 
 British Medical Journal, October 13th, 1894. ("Dr. 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes.") 
 
 Fullarton (A. & Co.), " Chronicle of the Hundredth 
 Birthday of Robert Burns." London, 1859. 
 
 Walker (A.M., M.A., M.D.), "Lecture on the Private 
 and Literary Life of Robert Burns." Tunbridge Wells, 
 1858 ; and " Lecture on the Poems and Songs of Burns.'" 
 Tunbridge Wells, 1860. 
 
 Sime (Dr. David), " Robert Burns, the Poet : a Lecture," 
 Glasgow, 1873; and "The Poetry of Robert Burns." In 
 Catholic Presbyterian for 1881, vols. V. and VI. 
 
 Munk (William, M.D., F.S.A.), " The Roll of the Royal 
 College of Physicians of London." Vol. III., 1801 to 1825. 
 London, 1827. 
 
 Addison (W. Innes), " Roll of the Graduates of the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow." Glasgow, 1898. 
 
 Adams (Dr. James), " Burns's ' Chloris ' : a Reminiscence." 
 Glasgow, 1893. 
 
 Ross (John D.), " Burnsiana." Parts 1 to 6. Paisley, 
 1892-97. 
 
 Strachan (James, Surgeon, Blackford), " Moral Pieces in 
 Rhyme and Blank Verse." Edinburgh, 1860. (Contains 
 " Acrostic on Burns," P. 99, and " Tarn o' Shanter.") 
 
Appendix. 139 
 
 Dick (Rorert, M.D.,C.M.), " Autobiography and Poetical 
 Compositions, including Tartarus, Elysium, Elijah, and the 
 Paulo-post of Man ; or the Land, Rent, and Food-Free, and 
 Concrete Air-Nitrogen Millennium. 11 London, 18(53. (Con- 
 tains " Ode on the Centenary of Burns's Birthday," — to be 
 seen in Faculty of Advocates Library, Edinburgh.) 
 
 M'Cosh (John, M.D.), " Sketches in Verse at Home and 
 Abroad." London, 1882. 
 
 Stenhouse (William, M.D.), "Poems, Songs, and Sonnets." 
 Glasgow, 1886. (Contains " January 25th.") 
 
 Bueman (C. Clark, L.R.C.P. and S., Edinburgh), " An 
 Account of the Art of Typography, as practised in Alnwick 
 from 1781 to 1815." Alnwick, 1896. 
 
 " Catalogue of the Glasgow Burns Exhibition." Glasgow, 
 1896. 
 
 Mather (George R., M.D.), " In Memoriam." Glasgow, 
 1896. (Contains address on the " Genius and Character of 
 Burns.") 
 
 M'Conachie (James R., M.D., Louisville, Ky.), "Leisure 
 Hours." 1846. (Contains " Recollections of Robert Burns," 
 Pp. 131-156.) 
 
 Boss (John D., LL.D.), " All About Burns." New York, 
 1896 ; and " Burns's Highland Mary." Paisley, 189k 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adair, Dr. James McKittrick, 
 
 B.'s fellow-traveller in vale of 
 
 Devon, 31. 
 Adams, Dr. Francis, Banchory, 
 
 "the most learned physician in 
 
 Europe," 104. 
 
 B.'s religion and morality by, 
 105. 
 
 His coarseness by, 106. 
 Adams, Dr. James, Glasgow, vin- 
 dication of " Chloris " by, 125- 
 
 127. 
 
 Other Bnrnsiana contributions 
 by, 128. 
 Ainslie, Dr. W., 92. 
 Aird, Thomas, Dumfries, friend 
 
 of "Delta," 96, 97. 
 Alison, Sheriff Archibald, 96. 
 Alloway, Grand Festival at, in 
 
 1844, 96. 
 Armour, Jean, 17, 43. 
 
 Her opinion of " Chloris," 126, 
 
 129. 
 Auld-licht party, 10. 
 Ayton, William, advocate, 96. 
 
 Bell, Henry Glassford, 96. 
 Blacklock, Archibald, surgeon, 
 
 Dumfries, 65. 
 Blair, Rev. Dr., Edinburgh, 19, 
 
 22. 
 Brown, Mr., surgeon, Dumfries, 
 
 60. 
 Brown, Dr. John, " Dceside 
 
 Country Doctor" (Fr. Adams) 
 
 by. 104. 
 
 B.'s opinion of by, 
 
 their earnestness and affec- 
 tionate character, LIS, l it. 
 
 General estimate of, as physician 
 and man of letters, 111. 
 
 Brown, Dr. W. Symington, on in- 
 compatibility of habitual drink- 
 ing and good literary work, 129. 
 Burman, Dr. C. Clark, Alnwick, 
 
 131. 
 Burns, Gilbert, 57 
 
 Defence of his brother by, 77-80. 
 Visit to Liverpool of, 73. 
 Burns, Mrs,, 74, 126, 127. 
 Barns, Robert, medical know- 
 ledge of, 11, 12. 
 Critical strictures by Dr. Greg- 
 ory on " Wounded Hare " of, 
 27, 28. 
 Dr. John MacKenzie, Mauch- 
 line, his friendship for, 15-19. 
 " The Calf," circumstances un- 
 der which it was composed, 
 17, 18. 
 Dumfries life of, and record of 
 literary and other work 
 accomplished during that 
 period, 84. 
 Dundas family, their treatment 
 
 of, 'j'.i, 30. ' 
 Ill-health of, in Dumfries, 85. 
 Incident at table of Lord Mon- 
 boddo between Dr. Gregory 
 and, 23. 
 Infirmities and errors of, and 
 Clinic's treatment of the 
 same challenged, 77. 
 Loyal DumfriesianB' distrust of, 
 on account of his Liberal prin- 
 ciples and revolutionary sj m 
 
 pathies, and his friendship 
 
 n iih Maxwi 11 and Syme,53 I. 
 Novelty of character more iban 
 
 ic abilities responsible for 
 
 Edinburgh reception of, 36, 
 37, 38. 
 
144 
 
 Index. 
 
 On the Muses' trade, observa- 
 tions of, 42. 
 
 Relationship to Edinburgh 
 literati of, and general sane- 
 ness of point of view of, 
 regarding the same, 49, 50. 
 
 Wood, Dr. A., friendship for, 
 29, 30. 
 
 Zeluco, criticisms on, by, 45. 
 Burns, Robert, Poet's eldest son, 
 
 correspondence of, with Dr. 
 
 Maxwell, 57. 
 Bnrness, William, Poet's father, 
 
 deathbed of, 15. 
 
 "Calf, The." 17. 69. 
 
 Candlish, Dr. James, B. 's old 
 
 Dalrymple school-fellow, 20, 21. 
 Candlish, Rev. Dr., Edinburgh, 
 
 son of Dr. James, 2 . 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 9, 19, 69, 86, 
 
 87, 88. 
 Clarinda (Mrs. Maclehose), Edin- 
 burgh. 25, 29, 73, 129. 
 Clark, William, B.'s man-servant 
 
 at Ellisland, testimony of, 43. 
 Cleghorn, Robert, Saughtou Mills, 
 
 65, 127. 
 Coleridge, Samuel T., 75. 
 Cowper, the poet, 1 L4. 
 Creech, William, publisher, Edin- 
 burgh, 24, 43, 44. 
 Crombie, Alexander, 86. 
 Cunninghame, Alexander, W.S., 
 
 Edinburgh, 56,70, 95, 
 Cunninghame, Allan, Dr. Adams' 
 
 castigation of, for slandering 
 
 " Chloris," 125. 
 Currie, Dr. James, Liverpool, 28, 
 
 31.. 
 
 Adverse criticism of, for his 
 treatment of Poet's errors, 
 75-79. 
 
 Death and universal approval 
 of biographical achievement 
 of, 74. 
 
 Difficulties of the task of, 72, 73. 
 
 Life and labours of, 69. 
 
 Mistake of, in not going further 
 afield for his information, 80. 
 
 Offer of literary services of, and 
 selection of, to write Life, 
 etc., 70. 
 
 Particulars of B.'s last illness 
 and death supplied by Max- 
 well to, 57, 58. 
 
 Praise of, for his biographical 
 achievement, 94, 102. 
 
 Strictures against, further ex- 
 amined, and character vindi- 
 cated, 81-89. 
 
 Daer, Lord, 18. 
 
 Dick, Robert, M.D., CM., Lon- 
 don and Edinburgh, literary 
 enterprises of, and " Burns 
 Birthday Ode" by, 116-118. 
 
 Doctors, charity and toleration of, 
 14. 
 
 Dougall, Dr. John, Glasgow, 
 Mossgiel daisies sent to O. W. 
 Holmes from, 109. 
 
 Douglas, eighth Duke of Hamil- 
 ton, 35. 
 
 Douglas, William Scott, 10, 57, 58. 
 
 Dumfries, Earl of. 19. 
 
 Dumfries, character and politics 
 of, in B.'s day, 51. 
 Death of "Delta" at, 99. 
 Life and work of Poet in, 84. 
 
 Dundas, Lord President, 29. 30. 
 
 Dunlop, Mrs., 31, 36, 47, 55, 57, 
 71, 73, 85, 88. 
 
 Eglinton, Lord, 50, 96. 
 Erskiue, Hon. Henry, 19. 
 
 Ferguson, Dr. Adam, Edinburgh, 
 
 22. 
 Fergusson, Robert, the poet, 11. 
 Fmdlater, Mr., Poet's superior 
 
 officer in the Excise, 77, 78. 
 
Index. 
 
 145 
 
 Findlay, Dr. William, Glasgow, 
 Bnrnsiana contributions of, 
 129. 
 
 Finlayson, Dr. James, Glasgow, 
 10, 66. 
 
 Gairdner, Sir W. T., Professor of 
 Practice of Medicine in Glasgow 
 University, on O. W. Holmes 
 as scientist and man of letters, 
 107. 
 
 Gillis, Riglit Rev., Roman Catho- 
 lic Bishop of Edinburgh, vin- 
 dication of Maxwell by, 52. 
 
 Glencairn, Earl of, Poet's grateful 
 attachment to, 46. 
 
 Goldie, John, Kilmarnock, 11, 15. 
 
 Gordon, Dr., Glasgow, Moore and 
 Smollett apprentices to, 35. 
 
 Graham, Robert, of Fintry, 42, 
 44. 
 
 Gray, Mr., Dumfries Academy, 
 59, 77-79. 
 
 Greenfield, Rev. Prof., Edin- 
 burgh, 25. 
 
 Gregory, Prof. James, M.D., 
 Edinburgh, B.'s friend, physi- 
 cian and critic, 22-28, 59. 
 
 Hamilton, Mr., of Crai^hlaw, 15. 
 
 Hamilton, Mrs., Harvicston, 31. 
 
 Hamilton, Charlotte, wife of Dr. 
 Adair, 31. 
 
 Hamilton, Gavin, Mauchlino, 17, 
 18,31. 
 
 Hamilton. Dr., Kilmarnock, 15. 
 
 Harper, Dr. John M., Quebec, 
 128. 
 
 Hay, Charles, advocate, Edin- 
 burgh, 29, 30. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 87. 
 
 Henderson, Dr. M., Baltimore, 
 129. 
 
 Benley, W. E., 81, 82. 
 
 Hill, Peter, bookseller, Edin- 
 burgh, 21. 
 
 Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, 125. 
 
 Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, 103. 
 
 As doctor and man of letters, 
 
 107. 
 Burns Centennial Poem by, its 
 
 all-wise charity, 108. 
 Dr. John Brown compared 
 
 with, 111. 
 Mossgiel daisies sent by Dr. 
 
 Dougall to, 109. 
 Poet loveable even in his 
 wrong, 119. 
 Hornbook, Dr., 12, 13. 
 Howden, Mr., jeweller, Edin- 
 burgh, 23. 
 Hughes, Dr. Samuel, Hereford, 
 
 67, 68. 
 Hunter, John, the celebrated sur- 
 geon ; and his wife, authoress 
 of "My mother bids me bind 
 my hair," 26. 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis, reviewer of Mrs. 
 Hunter's poems, 26. 
 
 Kennedy, John, New York, 67. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, strictures on Cur- 
 
 rie by, 75-77. 
 Laud, Donald's, Dr. Monro's 
 
 Trongate residence, 35. 
 Land, Gibson's, Dr. Gordon's 
 
 surgery in, 35. 
 Lawrie, Rev. Mr. Loudoun, 31. 
 Lawyers, 9. 
 
 I liiinan naturoas viewed by, 14. 
 Legijette, Dr. Benjamin F. , 130. 
 Locldea, 15, 16. 
 Lock hart, John Gibson, 55, 83. 
 Lorimer, Jean(Chloris), charactor 
 
 vindicated, 125. 
 
 Jean Armour's opinion of, 126. 
 Lorimer, Mr., 127. 
 
 MacKen/.ie, John, surgeon, 
 Mauchlino, 15-20. 
 
146 
 
 Index. 
 
 MacKenzie, John Whitefoord, 
 
 W.S., Edinburgh, 20. 
 MacKenzie, Henry, Edinburgh, 
 22, 25. 
 
 Macnish, Dr. Robert, Glasgow, 
 friend of "Delta," 96. 
 
 Madden, Dr. R. R., a true Irish 
 patriot, traveller, and miscel- 
 laneous writer. " Infirmities 
 of Genius " by, 93-95. 
 
 Mather, Dr. George R., Glasgow, 
 130, 131. 
 
 Mary, Highland, 129, 132. 
 
 Mauchline. churchyard of, 17. 
 
 Maxwell, Dr. William, Dumfries, 
 Attendance of, in Poet's last 
 
 illness, 56-00, 65, 78, 80. 
 Jacobitism of, 51. 
 Presence of, at dinner in B.'s 
 
 with the Lorimers, 127. 
 Residence in Paris of ; revolu- 
 tionary tendencies of ; de- 
 nouncement of, by Burke in 
 House of Commons for sedi- 
 tious liberalism ; and patriot- 
 ism of, as a volunteer, 53-55. 
 
 McClelland, Dr. A. M., Toronto, 
 Canada, 130. 
 
 McConochie, Dr. James R. , Louis- 
 ville, Ky., Burns recollections 
 of, 100. 
 
 McCosh, Dr. John, Land of B. 
 revisited by, 120, 121. 
 
 Medicine in Shakspere, 10, 13. 
 
 Medicine in Burns, 10. 
 
 Miller, Helen, one of the six 
 Mauchline belles, married to 
 Dr. MacKenzie, 20. 
 
 Miller, John, Millockshill, 20. 
 
 Ministers, short-sightedness of, 
 14. 
 
 Moffat, visit of Dr. Currie to, 74. 
 
 Moir, Dr. David Macbeth (Delta), 
 medical and literary achieve- 
 ments of, and presence of, at 
 Grand Alloway Festival, 96. 
 
 B. Commemoration Poem by, 
 
 97. 
 Visit to Land of B. by, and sud- 
 den illness and death of, 98. 
 Monboddo, Lord, Edinburgh, 22, 
 
 23. 
 Moore, Dr. John, London, 35-40. 
 Advice to B. by, to abandon 
 
 Scottish stanza, 44. 
 Autobiographical letter from B. 
 
 to, 41. 
 Caution to B. by, against giving 
 away too many copies of his 
 verses ; also advising him to 
 collect fugitive pieces for 
 fresh publication, 46-48. 
 Mental attitude to B. of, 49, 
 
 50, 70. 
 Observations by B. on the 
 
 Muses' trade to, 42, 43. 
 Strictures by B. on "Zeluco" 
 of, 45. 
 Moore, Sir John, hero of Cor- 
 
 unna, 35. 
 Moore, Dr. William, Kilmarnock, 
 
 15. 
 Mossgiel, 16. 
 
 Indigent Homes at, 124. 
 Short stay at, before returning 
 to Edinburgh, during which 
 he penned autobiographical 
 letter to Dr. Moore, 41. 
 Moyes, Dr. John, 10. 
 Muir, Robert, Kilmarnock, 15. 
 Mundell, Dr., Dumfries, 64, 65, 
 
 127. 
 Mure, Col., of Caldwell, 96. 
 Musselburgh, Dr. Moir of, 96. 
 
 Neilson, Rev. Mr., introduction 
 
 to Dr. Moore of, 43. 
 Nicol, William, High School, 
 
 Edinburgh, 41. 
 Xievison, Janet, Dumfriesshire, 
 
 64. 
 New-licht ministers, 9. 
 
Index. 
 
 147 
 
 Oswald, Mrs., of Auchincruive, 
 funeral cortege of, 43. 
 Lampoon on, 44. 
 
 Parker, Major, Kilmarnock, 15. 
 
 Partes, Joseph, 60. 
 
 Peebles, Rev. William, minister 
 of Newton-upon-Ayr (" Water- 
 fit "), 19. 
 
 Peterkin, Alexander, publisher, 
 78. 
 
 Ramage, Dr. C. J., 59, 60. 
 
 Ramsay. John, of Ochtertyre, 49. 
 Riddell, Mrs. Walter, 65, 70. 
 Robertson, Rev. Dr., Edinburgh, 
 
 22. 
 Roscoe, Mr. William, Liverpool, 
 
 friend of Dr. Currie, 70, 78-80. 
 
 Samson, Thomas, Kilmarnock, 15. 
 
 Shakspere, medicine in, 10, 13. 
 
 Sidmouth, death of Currie at, 74. 
 
 Sillar, David (" a brither poet "), 
 20. 
 
 Sime, Dr. David, Innellan and 
 London, on the Poet versus the 
 Man, 118-120. 
 
 Smith, Jane, the witty Miss, one 
 of the six Mauchliiu; belles, 
 married to Dr. Candlish, 20. 
 
 Smollett, friend of Dr. Moore, 35. 
 
 Staig, Miss Jessie, Dumfries, cure 
 of, by Dr. Maxwell, 55, 56. 
 
 Steulmusc, Dr. William, Dunedin, 
 N.Z., and London, 122, 123. 
 
 Steven, Rev James, "The Calf," 
 18. 
 
 Stewart, Prof. Dugald, Edin- 
 burgh, 18, 25, 70, 84. 
 
 Strachan, James, surgeon, Black- 
 ford, 115. 
 
 Subscribers (medical), list of, to 
 first Edinburgh edition, 32-34. 
 
 Subscribers (medical), list of, to 
 Currie's first edition, 89, 90. 
 
 Syme, John, Ryedale, 53, 54, 56, 
 65, 70, 73, 80-82. 
 
 Taylor, Dr. John, Paisley, 40. 
 
 Tennyson, 79, 114. 
 
 Thomson, Mrs. (Jessie Lewers), 
 60, 114. 
 
 Thomson, Dr. John, vindication 
 of B.'s character by, 59-64. 
 
 Thomson, George, Edinburgh, 73, 
 85, 92. 
 
 Thornton, Dr. Robert, John, 
 botany and Burns by, 91, 92. 
 
 Tytler, Alexander Frazer, Edin- 
 burgh, 22, 25. 
 
 Vaughan, Dr. Henry, 114. 
 
 Walker, Dr. Alexander M. , Tun- 
 bridge Wells, on the Man and 
 the Poet, 101, 102. 
 
 Walker, Prof. Josiah, 15, 10. 
 
 Wallace, William (editor, Cham- 
 bers Bums), censure of Currie 
 by, 86. 
 
 Watt, Dr. Robert, 66. 
 
 Wilson, Professor (Christopher 
 North), 96. 
 
 Whitefoord, Sir John, 19. 
 
 Wolfe, Dr. Theodore F.. historio- 
 grapher of Highland Mary, 132. 
 
 Wood, Alexander, surgeon, Edin- 
 burgh, 25, 28, 30. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 58, 75. 
 B., a preacher from the text of 
 
 his own errors, by, 119. 
 Defence of B.'s character by, 
 77-79, 82, 106. 
 
SUBSCRIBERS. 
 
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 Fred*. Vasey Adams, F.F.P.S.G., 10 Queen's Crescent, 
 
 Glasgow, W. 
 James A. Adams, M.D., 5 Woodside Place, Glasgow. 
 Alex. Aitken, Church Street, Stranraer. 
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 Airdrie. 
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154 Subscribers. 
 
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 Glasgow. 
 
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 Glasgow. 
 
 David Mackay, Provost, Portland House, Kilmarnock. 
 
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 Glasgow. 
 
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 Place, Dennistoun, Glasgow. 
 
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 andria, N.B. 
 
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Subscribers. 157 
 
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 Drive, Pollokshields. 
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 Glasgow. 
 John C. McVail, M.D., 32 Balshagray Avenue, Partick, 
 
 Glasgow. 
 Walteh M'Vey, 34 Granby Terrace, Hillhead, Glasgow. 
 J. N. Marshall, M.D., 7 Battery Place, Rothesay. 
 Mks. George Mather, 14 Amifield Place, Glasgow. 
 John Melvix, 6 Old Irvine Road, Kilmarnock. 
 Thomas Mexzies, F.E.I.S., Hutcheson's Grammar School, 
 
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 Alex. Miller, L.R.C.P. Edin., L.F.P.S. G., 1 Royal Terrace, 
 
 Crosshill, Glasgow. 
 Andrew Ronald Mitchell, M.B., CM., 15 Monteith Row, 
 
 Glasgow. 
 Mitchell Library, Glasgow. 
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 William Moore, M.B., CM., 1 Eglinton Terrace, Ayr. 
 James Morton, Gowan Bank, Darvel. 
 \\ m. Mcir, M.B, CM., F.F.P.S. G., 16 Monteith Row, 
 
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 VV. L. Mcir, L.R.C.P. E., L.F.P.S. G., 1 Seton Terrace, 
 
 Glasgow, 
 Hermann Muller, Mincing Lane, London. 
 John Falconer Murison, M.I)., 22 Monteith Elow, Glasgow. 
 Hugh Murray, F.R.C.S. E., F.F.P.S. G., 1 Wellesley Place, 
 
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158 SUBSCEIBEKS. 
 
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 Place, Glasgow. 
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 Geo. C. Peachey, L.R.C.P., Bright wal ton, Wantage, Berks. 
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 Robert Pollok, M.D., CM., Laurieston House, Pollokshields, 
 
 Glasgow. 
 John Porter, M.B., CM., 10 Annfield Place, Glasgow. 
 
 Alfred Theodore Rake, M.B., B.S., F.R.C.S., 8 Sheriff 
 
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 A. Maitland Ramsay, M.D., 15 Woodside Place, Glasgow. 
 Alex. Rankin, M.D., CM., 38 Abbotsford Place, SS., 
 
 Glasgow. 
 Alex. Rankin, 30 Hope Street, Glasgow. 
 James Rankin, L.F.P.S. G., L.M., 18 Dundonald Road, 
 
 Kilmarnock. 
 Walter L. Rankin, L.R.C.S. Edin., Old Edenkill, Strath- 
 
 blane. 
 Rev. D. A. Reid, B.D., The Manse, Monkton. 
 Wm. Reed, M.A., 01 Grant Street, Glasgow. 
 
SUBSCRIBERS. 159 
 
 Thomas Rennie, 156 Buccleuch Street, Glasgow. 
 
 Andrew H. Riddell, Melbourne. 
 
 Daniel Riddei.l, Old Manse, Parkhead, Glasgow. 
 
 David Riddell, 9 Roslea Drive, Dennistoun, Glasgow. 
 
 David Riddell, Junr., 9 Roslea Drive, Dennistoun, Glasgow. 
 
 Rev. John Riddell, B.D., Levenside Manse, Renton. 
 
 Alex. Robertsox, M.D., F.F.P.S. G., 11 Woodside Crescent, 
 
 Glasgow. 
 Andrew B. Robertson, Harriet Cottage, Kilmarnock. 
 Johx Robertsox, M.D., Benview, Dumbarton. 
 Tom Robertson, 178 George Street, Glasgow. 
 J. Maxwell Ross, M.A., F.R.C.S. Edin., County Medical 
 
 Officer, Dumfriesshire. 
 William Rowat, St. Margarets, Paisley. 
 James B. Russell, B.A., LL.D., M.D., 23 Montrose Street, 
 
 Glasgow. 
 
 Arthur Sanderson, Edinburgh. 
 
 F. R. Sanderson, Edinburgh. 
 
 John Scott, Governor, II. M. Prison, Ayr. 
 
 Robert Scott, 8 Buchanan Street, Glasgow. 
 
 Robert M'Cowax Service, M.D., 3 Annfield Place, Dennis- 
 toun, Glasgow. 
 
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 Charing Cross, Glasgow. 
 
 Captain David Sneddon, Dean Collage, Kilmarnock. 
 
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 J. Nigel Stark, M.B., F.F.P.S. G, 4 Newton Place, Charing 
 Cross, Glasgow. 
 
160 SUBSCRIBERS. 
 
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 John Findlay Stevenson, L.R.C.P. Edin., 176 Castle Street, 
 
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 Wm. Taylor, L.D.S., F.P.S. G., 290 Duke Street, Glasgow. 
 
 Sir Charles Tennant, Bart., The Glen, Innerleithen. 
 
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 A. B. Todd, Breezyhill, Cumnock. 
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 John Wallace, Factor, Ballochmyle, Mauchline. 
 
 John Veitch Wallace, L.R.C.S. Edin., 290 Langside Road, 
 
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Subscribers. 161 
 
 William Whitelaw, M.D., D.P.H., J.P., Kirkintilloch. 
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 burn, Glasgow. 
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 J. R. Gordon, Banff'. 
 
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162 Subscribers. 
 
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Ayrshire Idylls of Other Days. 
 
 With four Illustrafioiis, Crown 8vo, Cloth Antique, 
 .'//I Pages, price 5/-, pout free. 
 
 "This book does not belong to tbe category of cheap pathos and rather 
 obvious sentiment of the modern Scottish novel. It is frankly original, 
 and contains suitable first impressions of a North-country idealist who has 
 no need to harp on borrowed strings. Let those who still possess their 
 souls in misgiving read 'A Ride in a Carrier's Cart,' or 'Between the 
 Preachings,' and we venture to predict that they will waut to know more 
 about Mr. ' George Umber ' than we are able to tell them." — The Spi ah r. 
 
 " Graceful in diction and kindly in tone, the sketches are studded with 
 passages which show familiarity with English literature, as well as with 
 the humble side of life in Ayrshire half-a-century ago. "— The Scotsman. 
 
 "There is a pleasant vein of retrospection in Ayrshire Idylls of Other 
 Dot/*. . . . Whether the author describes his loiterings at the ' Old 
 Cross Bookstall,' or his journeys 'in a Carrier's Cart,' he has always some 
 pleasant reminiscence to record — a little incident that illustrates the life of 
 the people in his early days, or some quaint character that remains 
 impressed upon his mind." — Daily News. 
 
 " 'George Umber' evideutly has an alert eye for real life and a whole- 
 hearted love of books, as well as a very competent literary gift wherewith 
 to give utterance to his own fancies and impressions." — Glasgow //■ raid. 
 
 " Those Ayrshire Idylls of Other Days are all alive with tenderness and 
 truth. Many as they read will feel themselves young again and moving 
 about the countryside that is so dear to them." — Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 " The personal clement is for us the en a test charm of the book, for from 
 its presence the dozen sketches acquire a real living force that nothing else 
 could give, and is the source of that keen pleasure — whether of spirit, or 
 mind, or intellect, localise it where you may — wliich every reader of these 
 genial sketches must experience." — ,V. /!. Daily Mail. 
 
 "Tbe treatment throughout is characterised by keen insight, observa- 
 tion, and a fine spirit of sympathy," — Glasgow Bvening ' \tiz* n. 
 
 "It is a book worthy of the author of In My City Garden, who has, we 
 feel sure, other good things in store for us. ' — The Daily /.'- '. 
 
 " It is not every day one finds a book so capable of stimulating the better 
 feelings and perceptions as the present, and it may be hoped that as this is 
 not the first, it may not be the last of such genial and artistic writiugs from 
 the pen of so capable an author." — Dundee Courier. 
 
 AIJEXANDER GARDNER, PAISLEY and LONDON. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 In My City Garden. 
 
 With twelve Illustrations, Crown 8vo, Cloth Antique, 
 3/j.O Pages, price (//-, post free. 
 
 "Alongside of Barrie-like touches are delightful transcripts of human 
 life and experience, and tine bits of genial wisdom." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "It is a thoughtful book, beautifully written and illustrated. From its 
 charming pages there exudes a fragrance as from some homely flower. It 
 is almost too good to be popular ; but those who read it once will read it 
 again, and give it an honoured place on their library shelves." — Dundee 
 Advertiser. 
 
 "We were most strongly moved by ' Uncle Vernier's Kemimscence.'and 
 'The Kitchen Meeting,' the latter almost equalling Barrie at his best; 
 while the whimsical humour of ' A Bairn's Burns Anniversary ' is delightful 
 from whatever point of view it is regarded." — Daily Mail. 
 
 "The volume is one that will be treasured by all who know a really 
 good book when they rind it, and it is manifestly from the pen of an author 
 who does not write for mere writing's sake." — Dundee Courier and Dundee 
 Weekly Neies. 
 
 "There is a quiet wisdom about 'George Umber's ' pages which irre- 
 sistibly attracts the reader." — I'he British Weekly. 
 
 " In My City Garden is a book in which fact and fancy are pleasantly 
 blended." — The Speaker. 
 
 "And it is a very pleasant and homely book he writes of his City Garden 
 — surely, in his case, as magic an inspirer of meditation as Thoreau's 
 ' Walck-n,' or the savage solitude of a Crusoe. The illustrations are admir- 
 able." — Glasgow hvening Neirs. 
 
 " In My City Garden may be described as a prose poem. The illustra- 
 tions are clever and original." — The Bailie. 
 
 " On the whole, Dr. Findlay has accomplished his difficult task — that of 
 idealising and giving interest to the commonplace incidents of suburban 
 life- with great success, and at places his style, we think, is equal to that 
 of Barrie or Watson. ' The Kitchen Meeting ' and ' Uncle Vernier's 
 liemiuiscence' are as good as anything of the kind we have read." — The 
 Glasgow Medical Journal (April, 1896). 
 
 "The author, whoever he is, is apparently a physician, and also a man 
 of wide culture and large experience in human ways and human life." — 
 Scottish Review (January, 1896). 
 
 ALEXANDER GARDNER, PAISLEY and LONDON. 
 
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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 
 
 
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