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Description: | Burns when he was in Edinburgh decided to create his second Commonplace Book where he could record his thoughts and compositions as they occurred to him. Commenced on April 9th 1787, its pages are numbered from 1 to 40 with pages 23-26 missing. The bulk of the pages contain copies of poems, which he saved for later use, and his personal reflections are confined to the first dozen or so pages.
At the end of the page he starts to copy a letter (letter no 82) he wrote to Lord Buchan in reply to what Burns calls 'a bombast Epistle' in which Buchan had critically directed Burns to concentrate his future work on larger and wider subjects. He had also suggested that Burns should visit the literary sites in the Borders as a source of inspiration.
Page 12 finds Burns continuing to ponder on his situation, turning now to the condition of 'Wedlock', he explains in elegant prose the forces which prevailed upon him to get married to Jean Armour some two months earlier. He then bucks himself up by quoting his favorite motto 'On Reason build Resolve'. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | Burns Monument Trust | Temporal: | 1788-01-01 - 1788-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | The Second Commonplace Book of Robert Bu | Go to resource |
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