The Book of Robert Burns. By the Rev. Charles Rogers,
D.D., LL.D. Vol. I. (Printed for the Grampian Club, Edinburgh.)— It says a good deal for the zeal and industry of any man, that he should be able to publish a book about Robert Burns that has even the appearance of novelty. Dr. Charles Rogers has done some- thing more than this ; he has, at all events in the first of the three volumes which are to constitute his Book of Burns, produced what has not only the appearance but the reality of novelty. It gives short biographies of various persons, both male and female, who, from their connection with the poet, have had secured to them in consequence a sort of secondary immortality,—such as "Peggy" Chalmers, who became Mrs. Lewis Hay, Mary Campbell, Mrs. Dunlop, the blind Dr. Blacklock, Dr. Hugh Blair, " Daddy " Auld, Creech the publisher, Lord Glencairn, Captain Grose, and Gavin Hamilton. Dr. Rogers is a born genealogist, and so has been able to collect a variety of details regarding the men and women, almost of "all sorts and conditions," whose lives he gives. He has his own opinions about certain of these minor heroes and heroines, which are, in 130132.8 instances, diametrically opposed to Burns's. Thus, he takes up the cudgels for William Fisher, whom Burns has held up to ridicule as 'Holy Willie," in a manner which has led to a keen controversy in the Scotch news- papers. But although readers of Dr. Rogers's book are quite as likely as not to differ from him, they must admit that the book itself is an interesting one. The remaining volumes are likely to be quite as interesting as the first, which closes with a notice of Lapraik, the decidedly minor poet so much bepraised by Burns.
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