Carlyle’s Essay on Burns

Thomas Carlyle was born in 1795 about twenty miles from where Robert Burns was to die seven months later. Carlyle’s Essay on Burns, making no reference to these facts, was first published in 1828 in The Edinburgh Review under the title “Burns” — a review ostensibly of J. G. Lockhart’s The Life of Robert Burns, which was published that same year, though precious little time is spent considering that work in the Essay. The edition I just read was published in 1896 as part of The Students’ Series of English Classics. The publisher was Leach, Shewell, & Sanborn. It’s a nice-looking little book, 4⅝” x 6½” with a good bit of cloth for the case. It’s a short book, 118 pages (of which Carlyle fills 80). This is an odd page count: 120pp would be the even working. Can they really have cancelled 2 pages of blanks? There’s some odd tipping going on about the final two sigs, but I’m unable to reconstruct what went on without destroying the book. It would have been way cheaper to leave the leaf…