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Kirsty and Jean were not his only aids in the criticism of the musical
quality of his songs. From the time of the Edinburgh visit, at least,
he was in the habit of seizing the opportunity afforded by the
possession of a harpsichord or a good voice by the daughters of his
friends, and in several cases he rewarded his accompanist by making
her the heroine of the song. Without drawing on the evidence of
parallel phenomena in other ages and literatures, we can be sure
enough that this persistent consciousness of the airs to which his
songs were to be sung, and this critical observation of their fitness,
had much to do with the extraordinary melodiousness of so many of
them.
We have seen that Burns received an important impulse to
productiveness through his cooperation in the compiling of two
national song collections. James Johnson, the editor of the first of
these, was an all but illiterate engraver, ill-equipped for such an
undertaking; and as the work grew in scale until it reached six
volumes, Burns became virtually the editor--even writing the prefaces
to several of the volumes. George Thomson, the editor of the other, _A
Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs_, was a government clerk,
an amateur in music, of indifferent taste and with a preference for
English to the vernacular. In his collection the airs were harmonized
by Pleyel, Kozeluch, Haydn, and Beethoven; and he had the impudence to
meddle with the contributions both of Burns and of the eminent
composers who arranged the melodies.
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