Excerpt from In Defence of Robert Burns Burns, a Scotch peasant, "with a soul like an aeolian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind as it passed through changed itself into articulate melody," may with justice, as a singer, be said to need no defence. Nor does he - from those who know him. With most Australians, however, he is little more than a tradition, while the Bulletin is a living force whose most reckless assertions are usually accepted as gospel truths. It was necessary, therefore, that the sludge should be removed which was locally deposited on his name and fame by the overflow of that journal. No one intervening, I felt impelled to see what personally could be done. Loath to engage in controversy, it could not longer be evaded. Condensed, the Bulletins arguments were these: (1) That Burns, for his own uses, stole the ideas, and even words, of preceding writers; (2) That his countrymen, or the bulk of them, are wholly unaware of this alleged fact. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.

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