Yet my interest in the verse epistle originated in a concern with the theory of internal audience in poetry ... “‘But the City whose foundation we have been describing,’ protests Glaucon in the ninth ...

Mayor and even so advanced a scholar as James Moffatt have held, in the first verse of the second ... ethical teaching of an Epistle like this. James, revealed in the Book of Acts as a person ...

The elderly bard, John Lapraik (1727-1807) of Dalfram, Muirkirk, was married to Margaret, sister of another of Burns's poetic friends, John Rankine (to whom Burns' dedicated a verse epistle).

These are recognisable elements within the verse epistle tradition and Burns makes the setting personal by referring to the business of farming in which he was engaged. The poem is also famous for ...