Thomas White

Life and character He was born at Hexham in Northumberland and settled in Dumfries in 1782, where he became a teacher of mathematics and later the Rector of Dumfries Academy, spending a total of forty-three years working at the school. John M'Diarmid, a contemporary, recalled that White was appointed "after a comparative trial, in which he foiled every competitor, and secured by the early display of his talents the friendship and esteem of those great ornaments of letters - Dugald Stewart and Professor Robinson." He was buried close to Burns in the St Michael's churchyard, lying together in the lair with his wife and daughters. In the second edition White explained that "except at intervals of necessary relaxation, his professional duties permit not the bewitching intrusion of fancy or of imagination"; and of the poem he says that "as it is unaided by either literary friendship or the influence of a veteran name, it must either hasten at once to oblivion or steal into notice by the favourable and slow but unerring judgment of the public."

"If he had a fault at all, it consisted in a certain decision of character which never suffered him to conceal his sentiments, and particularly on political topics, even where silence could not possibly have implied acquiesence. Among strangers a feeling of this kind may have lent a case of sterness to his manner, but his friends, who knew his sterling integrity, overlooked a failing which 'lent to virtue's side' and even where they differed from him, uniformly acknowledged that his heart was as warm as his head was clear." in the Royal Dumfries Volunteers

Burns is said to have regularly breakfasted with the White family on Saturday mornings. "His manly form and penetrating eye strikingly indicated extraordinary mental vigour. For original wit, for condenensed ridicule, rapidity of conception, and fluency of nervous phraseology he was unrivall'd. Animated by the fire of nature, he uttered sentiments which melted the heart to tenderness by their pathos or expanded the mind by their sublimity; as a luminary emerging from behind a cloud, he arose at once into notice; and his works and his name can never die while divine poesy shall agitate the chords of the human heart." John Syme wrote an accompanying letter saying that White was ".. an intimate of the late Bard and has testified his regard to his memory."

Literary work He also composed the epistle "A Tribute to the Memory of Robert Burns" which was printed as a broadside. The tribute was positive, however the final lines have been open to interpretation, namely "Upon his frailties gathering clouds descend, To veil all, save the POET and the FRIEND!"

Presentations Burns gave White a copy of his 1793 edition of his poems Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Second Edinburgh Edition) and inscribed within it the words "Mr White will accept of this book as a mark of the most sincere Friendship, from a man who has ever had too much respect for his Friends, and too much contempt for his enemies, to flatter the one or the other - The Author." The volume is held by the Widener Library at Harvard University.

Burns also presented White with his personal copy of Voltaire's rare La Pucelle (Paris, 1775) which is still extant. Inscribed on the reverse of the title page is: "To Mr. White, un petit gage d'amitié, Robt. Burns." This volume was sold at a 1928 auction in London for £80. A signature on the other side of the same leaf is "Wm. White" who could William have been a son or grandson of Thomas, adding his signature some years later.