THE REAL ROBERT BURNS. By J. L. Hughes. (Chambers. 6s.)
The author begins with a chapter on the nature and value of biography. He writes : "Only the good in the lives of great men should be recorded in biographies. To relate the evil men do, or describe their weaknesses, is not only objec- tionable, it is in every way execrable," an opinion to which we cannot subscribe, holding as we do the opposite opinion, that the first duty of a biographer is to give his readers the facts. In any case, Mr. Hughes would have us believe that the sum of a man's actions is like a Neapolitan ice, with all the good and bad separated in bright layers. It follows naturally that the author has given us a spirited apologia of Burns and not a Life at all. We like his enthusiasm, but he seems to us to have erred very much on the other side idolatry. The very religious, philosophical, chaste and sober person who emerges from Mr. Hughes's pages is by no means without interest, but he is hardly recognizable as Robert Burns. Thus, the author frankly tells us that in eight years Burns "had just four deep and serious loves, not counting the two deep and transforming affections of his adolescent period " ; and elsewhere insists on the fact that his hero was not un- faithful nor even inconstant. This is to make words mean nothing, and only the author's hero-worship and his obvious and rather disarming desire to clear his man at all costs can free him from the charge of writing sheer nonsense. .
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