“A Topographical and Historical Account of the Town of Kelso, and of the Town and Castle of Roxburgh. With a succinct detail of the occurrences in the History of Scotland connected with these celebrated places. And an Appendix, containing various official documents, &c. By James Haig. Edinburgh: Printed for John Fairbairn, Waterloo Place; and James Duncan, London. 1825. Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Co.” Demy 8vo, and illustrated with several fine steel engravings. * * * * * “The Poems of William Dunbar. Now first Collected. With Notes and a Memoir of his Life. By David Laing. Volume First. Edinburgh: MDCCCXXXIV. Printed for Laing and Forbes, Princes Street, Edinburgh, and William Pickering, London.” This old Scottish poet was born in East Lothian, and after his education at the University of St. Andrews became a Franciscan friar and travelled through France, England, and Scotland as a mendicant preacher. Little was known of his poems till the beginning of the eighteenth century, though several of them had been issued as tracts by the first Scottish printers, Walter Chepman and Andro Myllar, in 1508. Sir Walter Scott said: “Dunbar was unrivalled by any poet that Scotland has yet produced; he excelled in moral and humorous verse, and was peculiarly happy in using allegory in the advocacy of truth.” There is evidence that Dr. Laing had a previous edition of a portion of Dunbar’s poems printed at Paul’s Work in 1827; but just as the volume was completed, with the exception of the Introduction, a disastrous fire occurred in the binder’s premises which destroyed the greater portion of the sheets, and only seventy-six copies (four on vellum) were actually published, not a few bearing evidence of the scorching they had sustained.[50] * * * * *