Manuscript volume, written out by MacKinnell, including apparently unpublished 'Notes from the Lectures of Professor Ramsay, Private Humanity Class 1848 & 1849' and 'Notes on Roman Agriculture Taken from the Lectures of Professor Ramsay 1847 & 1848'.

12mo (leaf dimensions roughly 18 x 11.5 cm): paginated by MacKinnell from 1 to 309. In contemporary half-binding with black leather spine and corners and marbled boards. Internally tight, sound and clean, in worn binding with some loss at head of spine. Closely written in a neat hand, and floridly inscribed on front free endpaper 'William Mac Kinnell | Dumfries | December 7th. | 1849'. Contains: 'Translation of Juvenal, Continued from another Volume, Commencing at line 122' (pp.1-6), dated 9 December 1847; 'Notes on Roman Agriculture, Taken from the Lectures of Professor Ramsay, 1847 & 1848, William MacKinnell, Glasgow University' (pp.7-207), dated 3 April 1848; 'Notes [on & translation of Plautus] from the Lectures of Professor Ramsay, Private Humanity Class, 1848 & 1849. W. MacKinnell' (pp.208-273); 'Translation of Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, by Professor Ramsay, Glasgow University' (pp.275-308), dated 6 Feb. 1849. There does not appear to be any record of the publication by Ramsay of any of these pieces. A significant item: according to C. J. Fordyce (quoted in Ramsay's entry in the Oxford DNB) Ramsay and his colleague E. L. Lushington were ‘a pair of professors who not only outshone all their predecessors but vastly outshone their contemporaries in the other [Scottish] universities’.' The volume appears to consist of notes taken by MacKinnell rather than transcriptions by him, as evidenced by the translation from Lucretius, which is incomplete, and gives an indication of MacKinnell's working methods at the end, with the last three pages (306-308) consisting only of key phrases with spaces between them, perhaps suggesting that he intended to fill in the gaps from memory at a subsequent period. The latter part of the translation also features numerous interpolations and substitutions of phrase. For example, a passage on p.304 reads: 'In fine you will see that very ['sort of' inserted here] fruit [last word deleted and replaced by 'Corn'] not to say all [last four words deleted and replaced by 'but not every grain identical'] a little among themselves, but of each [last three words deleted and replaced by 'so that no'] diversity runs through ['their' inserted here] shapes [...]'. The third part contains a transation, with gaps, of Plautus's Aulularia (pp.239-273). This is signficant, in light of the fact that Ramsay, according to his New DNB entry 'spent some time after his retirement in Rome collating manuscripts of Plautus, and, according to Fordyce, his edition of Mostellaria (1869) ‘laid the foundation of Plautine studies in Britain’.' There is no record on COPAC of any work by MacKinnell.