Autograph Letter Signed ('W Edmondstoun de Aytoun') to James Simpson.

12mo, 3 pp. Bifolium. Twenty-eight lines. Text clear and complete. Good, on lightly-aged paper, with evidence of previous mount on reverse of second leaf. Certainly genuine, and of interest as bearing a variant spelling of Aytoun's name in a signature written from his home a few months before his death. (The spelling 'Edmondstoun de Aytoun' is not noted in Aytoun's entry in the Oxford DNB.) In the latter part of the letter Aytoun comments on his poetic practice. He is 'much flattered' by Simpson's 'selection of my poem for a public reading', and is 'glad to hear that it was appreciated'. As most of the poems in Aytoun's 'volume' were 'expressly composed with a view to recitation', 'the compliment is the more gratifying'. The letter starts with a discussion of the derivation of the name Edinburgh. While 'some have held' that it 'was given by Aidan, an early Scottish King', Aytoun believes that it is named after 'Edwin, Prince of Northumberland who lived about the year 626'. ('David I in his foundation charter of Holyrood, dated 1128, styles Edinburgh Burgo neo de Edwinesburg, which I think is conclusive of the question.') 'Dunedin is simply the poetical name, [...] I cannot discover any old authority for its use, but Sir Walter Scott has employed the term more than once in his Lay of the last Minstrel'.