Thanks, Jim, for posting the complete Hood poem - I had come across an abridged version and am pleased to get the whole story. Also there is a ghost story circulating in New England Girl Scout camps concerning the ghost of Pompey Lovejoy a freed slave who died "mysteriously" in Andover, Massachusetts about 1826, again too late to be Burns' friend. There is a legend that the Roman Pompeii's ghost had its revenge on Julius Caesar when Caesar was assassinated at the statue of Pompeii in Rome. Haven't found any other clues but I'm woefully ignorant of Roman literature. Also, not to quibble but the biographies I've found give Burns' death 1796 and Hood's dates 1799 to 1845.