| Description | Manuscript of Book I of James Beattie's poem The Minstrel or the progress of genius, 17 pages. Fair copy, written in a neat copy hand. Unsigned. Dated on first page Octr. 22nd, 1776.
Its provenance is unclear; Beattie scholar, Roger Robinson, in his critical edition of the poetic works of James Beattie states (p. 512) 'There are no major or substantial manuscripts of the poem [The Minstrel]'. So this item might possibly be a copy made by Beattie himself as the letter forms of the handwriting appear very similar to those used by him elsewhere, although the hand is more careful and less cursive. The copy has the blank (possibly erased) dedication of the 1771 edition in the final stanza, and the dedicatee is referred to as "he". The 1777 edition is dedicated to Mrs Montague and has "she". It The manuscript also has the sidenote references to Percy's English Minstrels and to Scheffer's History of Lapland. At the place quoted above, Robinson argues that the original dedication was probably to Arbuthnot. The dedication in the final stanza may originally have started A and finished t (subsequently erased and replaced with a line of omission). |