Author: MYLNE (James):
Title: Poems, Consisting of Miscellaneous Pieces, and Two Tragedies.
Description: Edinburgh: Printed for William Creech, and Sold by T. Cadell, London, 1790 FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. Large 8vo (in 4s), pp. 8 , xxiii, [xxiv blank; subscribers], 435 [436 blank], original boards, (stained and soiled) uncut and largely unopened, perhaps by one of the numerous subscribers. The tenant farmer and sometime poet James Mylne of Lochill (1738 /39 - 1788) started his poetical career, so to speak, at his school in Dalkeith, with an awareness, as ODNB notes, "odes, epistles, fables, and songs touch on the sensitive nerve of class..... Mylne's overtures to Burns, like himself a farmer–poet, have brought him a notoriety that his writing might not otherwise have warranted. His poem 'To Mr Burns, On his Poems', an invitation to Burns to visit him on his farm, was a late composition, and was delivered to Burns only after Mylne's death, in January 1789. Burns's response came in March, when he wrote that 'my success has encouraged such a shoal of ill-spawned monsters to crawl into public notice, under the title of Scottish poets' (letter to Mrs Dunlop, 4 March 1789). Burns expressed the wish that Mylne had never desecrated the Scots tongue, but did think that Mylne's English pieces should be published, and not just for 'pity to that family'." The work was noticed in The Monthly Review: "These poems are published by the author's son, who 'to excuse trivial faults,' tells us, in his preface, that the work 'comes into the world with all the disadvantages which can possibly attend posthumous publications; none of these poems having been prepared for the public eye, nor received the last corrections of the author.' Faults in poetry can only be excused when accompanied by beauties: but we can not say that the incorrectness and langour of these compositions are ever compensated by irradiations of genius, by glowing thoughts, or happy expressions. The least exceptionable piece in the collection, is a tragedy, entitled the British Kings; in some scenes of which we find tolerable imitations of the OEpedius Tyrannus of Sophocles." Perhaps some of the several hundred other subscribers dissented from the assessment of Burns. The Walter Scott who subscribed for a copy is possibly the father of the novelist (1771 - 1832), who would have been 19 when the volume was published, while his father (1729 - 1799) would have been 61.

Keywords: poetry agriculture literature


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