SIR,-1 thought Mr. David Craig's review of Honour'd Shade somewhat
precious and supercilious, but surely Mr. Tom Scott's suggestion that no one is competent to review Scottish poetry unless he has a knowledge of the Gaelic is ridiculous. Bah! Cannot a reviewer criticise, say, Chaucer's 'Miller's Tale' unless he is a member of the Old English Text Society? Is there any evidence that Ferguson, Dunbar, or even Burns (if one dare mention him) had any Gaelic?
So far as I know Mr. Sydney Goodsir Smith has no Gaelic, yet he is acclaimed as our premier Scottish
poet of today. He is obviously acquainted with the Doric, Lallans, and that peculiar Aberdeen-Angus dialect which turns 'go' and 'wh' into 'f.' To accuse him, however obliquely, of plagiarism from Yeats is to make a nonsense of plagiarism charges—which like- the poor are always with us. 'When Homer twanged his blooming lyre' such charges were ever floating around.—Yours faithfully,
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