ROBERT BURNS’S LAST POEM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19205, 23 June 1924, Page 11

ROBERT BURNS’S LAST POEM.

TO TUB EDITOE. Sie, —I can quite understand Mr .T. Riddell Kelly’s scepticism regarding the authenticity of the poem published in your issue of tho 4th inst., for it is almost unbelievable that, if genuine, it should have remained unknown for well over a century, and have come to light in Now Zealand, but while 1 sympathise with his doubts, I do not concur in the reasons ho gives for believing it to be a forgery. He says “the opening four linos were apparently written by some one who thought Dumfries is situated on or near tho seashore,” but evidently the forger, if it be a forgery, had a better knowledge of the last clays of Bunne’s life tha,n ATr Kelly. 1 do not possess a “Lite of Burns," but from tho biographical sketch prefixed to an edition of his poems. I find that, when his health broke down, he went to Brow, on the Solway, where he remainded for some time. The sketch rays “he know' his end was at hand; and he looked death calmly in tho face. He was oven cheerful in Ids intercourse with some female friends who saw him there.” He returned to Dumfries from Browon July IS. and died cn the morning of July 21, 1796. Jessie Dewars is referred to as “kind Jessie Dewars, who tended him with'filial devotion,” and, though there is no mention of her having been with him when resident at the sea,, it does not seem improbable that she was cnc of the “female friends who saw him there.” I need not refer to Mr Kelly’s other presumptions though something might bo said about them, but I may point out that he ascribes fo you the statement that tho verses ara “worthy of Bums at his best, nnd ; n«>t unfit tt> ho classed along with ‘The Cottar’s Saturday Night,’ ” while a more careful perusal of the extract von published from tho Pecbmsshiro Advertiser, would have shown him that the comment was part of tho extract. I join Mr Kelly in th' hope that the “old Scotchman living near Dunedin” may come fa the front and give us the history of the manuscript."— I am, etc., A. Bathgate.