Dirt and Deity: A Life of Robert Burns

A marginally educated seducer and drunk who died at 37 in 1796 remains Scotland's premier poet and songsmith. McIntyre's bicentenary biography (his last was a life of BBC founder John Reith, The Expense of Glory) is unsparing about Burns and his uneven output, from haunting lyrics to bawdy songs. Carlyle, so McIntyre writes, saw Burns's career as ""a tragedy of potential unfulfilled and opportunity squandered."" Rather, McIntyre contends, there was scant opportunity in hardscrabble Ayrshire in Burns's time, and the flavor of that bleak life as it was actually lived is vividly evoked, as are the poet's self-defeating imprudences of every sort. Having little schooling, Burns pragmatically described his working methods as ""Untill I am compleat master of a tune, in my own singing... I can never compose for it."" His practice was not that of the university, but it produced ""Flow gently, sweet Afton"" and ""The Cotter's Saturday Night."" He also produced more children, illegitimate and legal, than he could afford, and left his plough for a meager salary as excise tax inspector that kept him on horseback and away from home, from the contemplative time for writing and from exploiting usefully his flair for friendship with admiring men and adoring women in circles above his class. His lyrical gift had pushed him out of the milieu that moved him to verse. As McIntyre observes, Burns's local literary reputation, once spread, ""had both made and undone him."" He had ""an extraordinary blindness to where his own interest lay."" Although he was ""never the slave of time,"" that became another of his many failings. McIntyre's careful scrutiny of Burns is exemplified by his quoting an exculpatory letter ostensibly done in haste. ""Pardon this confused scrawl,"" Burns explains. ""--Indeed I know not well what I have written."" But, McIntyre notes, ""That was not strictly true--he had taken time to try his hand at a draft."" Illustrated. (June)