Shorter Notices
kite Life of Robert Burns. By Catherine IN his note to this new edition of his mther's much-discussed work, Mr. John rswell suggests that a second edition Which merely reprints requires explana- i tion. True ; yet this is a book which, with *11 its faults, should not disappear ; it can !end will be read by many who would leading at Snyder or even Hecht; if the leading actors on its stage are over-illumi- pated by the light of fancy, the back-cloth pind scenery remain authentic. But Mr. Carswell surely deceives himself when he irgues that " it could be said " that the 'documentation missing in the original !should now be supplied ; how could it be Paid—with any sense—when so much of the original was wildly imaginative and no i'' documentation " for it could possibly 'exist ? One has only to point to the pas- hes re ounum'e'rHouigshlsatnad Mary statements a"reCpbpaumtfoelrl: ward with assurance for which there is and can be no scrap of reliable evidence. The 'excuse for republishing the book is rather excuse
quite sound one that it is an outstand- ing work in itself—audacious, sincere,
fhorough and individual. But it must be issessed at its own face value ; the reader who begins to pencil queries in the margin will find himself doing nothing else. To call Mrs. Carswell's Life the best work of fiction ever written about Burns would be flippant and unfair to much real scholar- ship ; but one may perhaps allow oneself the thought: If only she had written it *holly and frankly as a novel, what a novel it would have been ! HILTON BROWN. The Gardener's Companion. Edited by
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