Burns in His Time

London: Nelson. Very Good/Very Good. 1966. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo Dust jacket price clipped. Brown cloth with bright gilt lettering on spine. 162 pages clean and tight. Alan Dent's portrait of Robert Burns is set against a landscape of Ayrshire as it was in the second half of the eighteenth century-the harsh unfertile soil out of which the poet struggled hard to make a living as a farmer. This writer clearly regards his central subject with a measure of disesteem as well as the usual esteem, and from the very start he shows no inclination whatever to join in the chorus of praise sung by Scots the wide world over on the theme of the national bard. At the same time he contemns the sloth of the English reader, as distinct from the Scottish, who persistently declines any attempt to understand the dialect in which so many-and indeed the best- of the poems are written. Only the undiscerning reader of Mr. Dent's study will construe it as an attack on the poet and his tremendous reputation The author would prefer to have it regarded as an attack on the poet's uncritical idolaters. In support of his theories he quotes copiously and points out that many of his citations-in verse as well as prose- come from not easily accessible sources. These are not the kind of things that are ever heard at Burns Suppers. But Alan Dent does not expect his own views ever to be quoted at these same assemblies of unquestioning worshippers. .