Robert Burns by David Daiches

SHORTER NOTICES 437 Kantian rationalism. His essays should, therefore, be of interest to all those who hold that traditional metaphysics is a pseudo-science, that "only in experience is there truth," and that man's rational powers are his supreme possession. SHORTER NOTICES Robert Burns. By DAVID DAICHES. New York: Rinehart & Company. Rinehart Critical Studies. 1950. Pp. viii, 376. $2.00, college ed.; $3.50, trade ed. Of late years Scotsmen have been wrangling with each other over the reassessment of their literature; and one loud cry has been to get beyond Bums and back to the older Scottish "makars." Professor Daiches, himseU Scottish-bred, is well aware of this; and perhaps the most valuable aspect of his examination of Bums's achievement is the convincing argument, not new but in need of emphatic reassertion, that Burns's best poetry is essentially aligned to the healthy native traditions, both folk and literary. Only when he was lured to imitate the English neo-classic manner and to please the genteel taste of the time did Burns fall to the commonplace. Yet, despite this insistence on the link between Bums and his Scottish predecessors, Professor Daiches' book is not primarily an historical study. After an opening survey of "The Scottish Literary Tradition" he has a biographical chapter entitled "Growth of a Poet"; and it is of the poet he writes, not of the supposed personal failings which, because Bums was a peasant and not a man of fashion, have been so often and so needlessly paraded or smugly decried by his biographers. There is a brief account of the Edinburgh visit in 1786; and the remaining chapters, the core of the book, deal in detail with the poetry: the Kilmarnock volume, the pieces omitted from that edition, the later poems, and the songs which Bums gave or adapted without recompense for the collections of Johnson and Thomson. This detailed commentary on the poems varies in kind and value from a revealing analysis of the subtleties of Bums's art to a rather pedestrian method of paraphrase. The finest of the songs, as Professor Daiches acknowledges, yield little to the analytic technique; one has only to hear them sung to realize their uniqueness. It is interesting that the best recent books on Bums have come from the American universities. With this volume, written during his stay in the United States, Professor Daiches has added another to the list. R.S.KNox SHORTER NOTICES 437 Kantian rationalism. His essays should, therefore, be of interest to all those who hold that traditional metaphysics is a pseudo-science, that "only in experience is there truth," and that man's rational powers are his supreme possession. SHORTER NOTICES Robert Burns. By DAVID DAICHES. New York: Rinehart & Company. Rinehart Critical Studies. 1950. Pp. viii, 376. $2.00, college ed.; $3.50, trade ed. Of late years Scotsmen have been wrangling with each other over the reassessment of their literature; and one loud cry has been to get beyond Burns and back to the older Scottish "makars." Professor Daiches, himself Scottish-bred, is well aware of this; and perhaps the most valuable aspect of his examination of Burns's achievement is the convincing argument, not new but in need of emphatic reassertion, that Bums's best poetry is essentially aligned to the healthy native traditions, both folk and literary. Only when he was lured to imitate the English neo-classic manner and to please the genteel taste of the time did Burns fall to the commonplace. Yet, despite this insistence on the link between Burns and his Scottish predecessors, Professor Daiches' book is not primarily an historical study. After an opening survey of "The Scottish Literary Tradition" he has a biographical chapter entitled "Growth of a Poet"; and it is of the poet he writes, not of the supposed personal failings which, because Burns was a peasant and not a man of fashion, have been so often and so needlessly paraded or smugly decried by his biographers. There is a brief account of the Edinburgh visit in 1786; and the remaining chapters, the core of the book, deal in detail with the poetry: the Kilmarnock volume, the pieces omitted...