When Burns’s health was failing in the spring of 1796 Thomson sought to frighten him by a report that a pirated edition of the songs was being planned, and enclosed for the poet’s signature a legal document assigning him the whole copyright. Burns, ill though he was, and careless as he had always been of his literary property, refused to sign, and sent instead ‘a Certificate, which, though a little different from Mr McKnight’s model, I suppose will amply answer the purpose,’ adding that ‘when your Publication is finished, I intend publishing a Collection, on a cheap plan, of all the songs I have written for you, the Museum, &c.--at least of all the songs of which I wish to be called the Author.’ This was tantamount to telling Thomson that he had a claim on the first serial rights only, and though Thomson later published two different texts of what he alleged was Burns’s deed of assignment, he never produced the original holograph, and it was not preserved among his papers. In after years Thomson tried the same trick on Sir Walter Scott and Sir Alexander Boswell. He had succeeded in making Burns’s executors believe that he owned the copyrights and was generously waiving them for the benefit of the subscription edition, but Scott and Boswell were lawyers and saw to it that where their own work was concerned he got no more than the serial rights. Burns ought to have treated Thomson as Beethoven did in 1813, when the editor demanded changes in the airs which the great musician had undertaken to harmonize: ‘I regret that I am unable to oblige you. I am not accustomed to tinker my compositions. I have never done so, being convinced that every partial modification alters the whole character of the composition. I am grieved that you are out of pocket through this, but you cannot lay the blame on me, for it was your business to make me more fully acquainted with the taste of your country and the meagre abilities of your performers.’ But such blunt truth-telling was more than Burns was ever capable of to a man who claimed taste and education. He said what he thought about his songs, but said it gently and deferentially, and left them in Thomson’s hand to be mangled or misapplied. To go into such detail of Thomson’s misdoings would be pointless had he been merely a thick-headed and thick-skinned editor who failed to appreciate what Burns was doing for him. But Thomson was much more than that. He represented the whole Anglicizing tendency of the Scottish gentry and bourgeoisie who were seeking to destroy the language and individuality of their country. ‘Now let me declare off from your taste.--“Toddlin hame” is a song that to my taste is an exquisite production of genius.--That very Stanza you dislike “My kimmer & I lay down to sleep”