Burns & Geddes: Bishop John Geddes to unknown correspondent, BL3/522/13 (2)
BL3/522/13
14th October 1788
Bishop John Geddes to unknown correspondent (Bishop Hay?)
'Burns, with whom I am intimately acquainted, though he was only Hireman to
his elder Brother until August 1786 and never before that time master of ten
pounds: yet read a great deal having been for many years a subscriber to a
circulating library at Kilmarnock; had a little chest for holding books at
the fireside, and on the Sundays, if the weather was good, instead of going
to the Kirk, went to a wood with some Poet[ry]. Amendments were offered to
him by Dr Gregory and others; but he would not adopt one of them; because he
said; he was to publish his own Poetry. The excuses he made to me for the
Irreligion and some Licentiousness in his
Book were that he only attacked the wild Notions of the Religionists in the
west, and that he had done good; that when he published his Poems he was not
acquainted with that, I am not a competent [aquitable crossed out] judge &c
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