THREE HUNDRED

Evening Star, Issue 21005, 20 January 1932, Page 9

THREE HUNDRED

FOR BURNS LETTER Burns and Byron have often been honoured at auction, and at Sotheby’s a four-page letter by the Scottish poet, written on July 4, 1796 (less than three weeks before his death), realised £360,and the last three stanzas of Byron’s ‘Ode to Napoleon’ fell to the bid of Mr Gabriel Wells, of New York, for £l5O, says the . London ‘ Daily Telegraph.’ We know that Scott, as a boy, once met Burns. Did Byron ever see him?, The question is more pertinent than would appear at first .sight, because it is often forgotten that Byron was at the Aberdeen Grammar School between 1794 and 1798—that is, between the age of six and ten. His mother had been compelled to live in Aberdeen on*account of straitened means. Byron’s love of mountainous scenery, on his own admission, dates from those early years, and, in a note to “Don Juan,” he refers to a never-forgotten, journey to Ballater. It was stated in the preliminary notice of the sale that the last stanza of Byron’s ‘ Ode ’ was _ a perfervid eulogy of Washington, Did he hear, as a boy of seven, in 1795, that Burns had got into very hot water at Dumfries for toasting Washington “as a greater man than Pitt ” P . The Burns dctter just sold was written to’the engraver of ‘The Musical Museum,’ to which Burns had richly contributed, and the poet states; “I will venture to prophesy that, to future ages, your publication will be the text book and standard of Scottish Song in Music.” . For a set of drawings made in 184345 by General Sir Henry J, Warns, ea route from Capada to the Red River Settlement, Mr Spencer gave £280; and a letter written by George Washington, 1791, on the necessity for providing bounties for encouraging the growth of cotton in America, brought £95. , , The sale included also a very rare Parisian binding, designed in the middle of the sixteenth century for a Prince of the Holy Roman _ Empire, enamelled in colours and encircled by the Order of the Golden Fleece, which fetched as much as £520 (Mr Gabriel Wells).