30 MARCH 1951, Page 16

Mrs. Carswell's Life of Burns

S1R,—Your reviewer, Mr. Hilton Brown, takes exception to my cautious statement in the note I added to the new edition of my mother's Life of Robert Burns, that "it could be said' that documentation which was missing from the book ... ought to be supplied now." I feel I should say that it was Mr. Brown's own reference (in his Burns book, There Was a Lad) to my mother's as a " sadly undocumented" work, which led me to anticipate such a criticism of a second edition. Perhaps such a criticism would be unsound ; but Mr. Brown cannot have it both ways.