My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, til they got vent in rhyme, & then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet
Robert Burns
Burns’s Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect — The ‘Kilmarnock Edition’ — was published by John Wilson of Kilmarnock on 31st July 1786, at the cost of three shillings per copy. 612 copies were printed and the edition was sold out in just over a month after publication. The following two reviews of the volume were published not long after the book came out
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Dr Robert Anderson, The Edinburgh Magazine
October 1786
When an author we know nothing of solicits our attention, we are but too solicits our attention, we are but too apt to treat him with the same reluctant civility we show a person who has come unbidden into company. Yet talents and address will gradually diminish the distance of our behaviour, and when the first unfavourable impression has worn off, the author may become a favourite, and the stranger a friend. The poems we have just announced may probably have to struggle with the pride of learning and the partiaity of refinement; yet they are entitled t particular of refinement; yet they are entitled to particular indulgence. Who are you, Mr Burns? Will some surly critic say; at what university have you been educated? What languages do you understand? What authors have you particularly studied? Whether has Aristotle or Horace directed your taste? Who has praised your poems, and under whose patronage are they published? In short, what qualifications entitle you to instruct or entertain us? To the questions of such a catechism, perhaps, honest Robert Burns would make no satisfactory answer. My good sir, he might say, I am a poor country man. I was bred up at the School of Kilmarnock, I understand no languages but my own.i have studied Allan Ramsay and Fergusson. My poems have been praised at many a fireside, and I ask no patronage for them if they deserve none. I have not looked at mankind through the spectacles of books! “An ounce of mother with you know is worth a pound of clergy”, and Homer and Ossian, for anything that I have heard, could neither read nor write. The author is indeed a striking example of native genius bursting throughh the obscurity of poverty and the obstructions of laborious life, and when we consider him in this light, we cannot help regretting that wayward fate has not placed him in a more favoured situation. Those who view him with the severity of lettered criticism, and judge him by the fastidious rules of art, will discover that he has not the doric simplicity of Ramsay, or the brilliant imgination of Fergusson, but those who admire the exertions of untutored fancy, and are blind to many faults for the sake of numberless beauties, his poems will afford singular gratification. His observations on human characters are acute and sagacious, and his descriptions are lively and just. Of rustic peasantry he has a rich fund, and some of his softer scenes are touched with inimitable delicacy. He seems to be a boon companion, and often startles us with a dash of libertinism which will keep some readers at a distance. Some of his subjects are serious, but those of the humorous kind are the best. It is not meant, however, to enter into a minute investigation of his merits, as the copious extracts we have subjoined will enable our readers to judge for themselves. The character Horace gives to Ofellus is particularly applicable to him: ‘Rusticus abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva”.
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The New London Magazine (December 1786)
We do not recollect to have ever met with a more signal instance of true and uncultivated genius than in the author of these poems. His occupation is that of a common ploughman, and his life has hitherto been spent in struggling with poverty. But all the rigours of fortune have not been able to repress the frequent efforts of his lively and vigorous imagination. Some of these poems are of a serious cast, but the strain which seems most natural to the author is the sportive and humorous. It is to be regretted that the Scottish Dialect, in which these poems are written, must obscure the native beauties with which they appear to abound and renders the same unintelligible to an English reader. Should it, however, prove true that the author has been taken under the patronage of a great lady in Scotland, and that a celebrated Professor has interested himself in the cultivation of his talents, there is reason to hope that his distinguished genius may yet be exerted in such a manner as to afford more generous delight. In the meantime we must admire the genuine enthusiasm of his untutored muse, and bestow the tribute of just applause on one whose name will be transmitted to posterity with honour.
The Scotiad 