Burns Chronicle and Club Directory Author:Robert Burns Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE EDITING OF BURNS'S LETTERS. THE first attempt to form a collection of Burns's letters was made by Dr. Currie in 1800, and the following passage from his p... more »reface shows clearly the principles which guided him in his task:—" Of the following letters, a considerable number were transmitted for publication by the individuals to whom they are addressed; but very few of them have been printed entire. It will easily be believed, that in a series of letters, written without the least view to publication, various passages were found unfit for the press, from different considerations. It will also be readily supposed that our poet, writing nearly at the same time, and under the same feelings to different individuals, would sometimes fall into the same train of sentiment and form of expression. To avoid, therefore, the tediousness of such repetitions, it has been found necessary to mutilate many of the individual letters, and sometimes to exscind parts of great delicacy. In printing this volume, the editor has found some corrections of grammar necessary ; but these have been very few, and such as may be supposed to occur in the careless effusions, even of literary characters, who have not been in the habit of carrying their compositions to the press. Those corrections have never been extended to any habitual words of expression of the poet, even where his phraseology may seem to violate the delicacies of taste, or the idiom of our language, which he wrote in general with great accuracy." This frank statement illustrates the view generally held a century ago as to the duties and liberty of an editor. Bishop Hurd, who edited Addison's works, devoted most of his notes to the indication of how the great essayist might, in the view of a self-sufficient clergyman, have written with greate...« less