17 APRIL 1926, Page 25

THIS is a heart-searching little book, written by a man

who loves the noble Burns devotedly. It gathers up with great care all contemporary evidence—letters, tradition, medical reports, &c.—which tends to prove that Burns was not the victim of a weak self-indulgence in drink and sexual excess. We must admit that we are only too ready to be persuaded that the dour Currie, the first biographer of Burns, was misled in his portrait of the poet. A handful of Burns' poems and letters gives the lie direct to this theory of the inspired yokel ruined by con- tamination with his betters. To quote Sir James :—" The most maligned of poets, he has been held up to obloquy as a confirmed drunkard, when all the time he was truly a painful example of the neglect of rheumatism in early life."