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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.
This is the last page of his second Common-place Book in which Burns made any entry. The remaining two thirds of the Book is blank which is surprising in view of the initial cost and that he made use of it for little more than three years. Possibly with his large volume of correspondence and the undertaking of his excise duties at this period he simply did not have the time.
Page 40 - Burns copies the last verses of his Epitaph on Captain Matthew Henderson (Poem no 239). It is a poem which he says he wrote at about the time of Henderson's death in 1788 but did not complete and came across it 'among some old waste papers' in July 1790 when he finished it. He then copied it with letters to at least four of his friends at that time. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | Burns Monument Trust | Temporal: | 1790-01-01 - 1790-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | The Second Commonplace Book of Robert Bu | Go to resource |
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