Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/13

(　vii　) was made straight and the rough places plain. Every one conversant with Burns's literary methods well knows that the discovery of a ballad or song in his autograph is no conclusive proof, per se, that he is the author of it. He was continually noting down every echo of the elder Scottish Muse that was carried to his ear, and "high-kilted was she," indeed, if her presentment everywhere is anything like an approximate portrait. All was fish that came into the net, to be preserved as suggestions for Johnson and Thomson in the private manuscript referred to, of which more anon. Copies of the more amusing "Cloaciniads," however, were dispatched forthwith (yet not without the precaution of privacy) to the jesters of the Crochallan Club, or hastily jotted down for future reference on odd scraps of paper, as the old version of "Bonie Dundee" on the reverse of the Earl of Buchan's letter in the Poet's Monument, Edinburgh, exemplifies; and these confidences, we do not hesitate to say, in not a few instances, have been since used in a way that is as disgraceful as it is dishonourable to all concerned. Nor can the dictum of any editor, however able and erudite, be accepted as final, unless some more satisfactory evidence is produced than the assumed Burns flavour of the ballad or song itself. Yet, in face of these considerations, many pieces—and these mostly of the objectionable sort—have passed into currency as compositions of Burns, whose claims to that distinction rest solely on evidence of the flimsy character indicated. Even such a strong presumption of authenticity as unchallenged publication during the Poet's lifetime is