The early MacDiarmid writes pure poetry. Later he will wish, unfairly, to say poor poetry. So much misleading talk has been heard about Sangschaw and Pennywheep restoring ideas to Scots poetry. Ideas were precisely at this stage, what it avoided. One can only say that he successfully brought it into line with a European fashion of sensibility that was luckily sympathetic to its traditional genius.

But if MacDiarmid's early poetry is not quite so significant of revolution as has been claimed, it has at least, in the lyrics, freed the Scots poet from his folk persona. And in his next volume, A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle, a further degree of freedom is achieved, in his discursive writing. I say 'degree', because the manner of pure poetry is continued in much of it, and a style that un-self-consciously presents his individual, modern, intellectual personality is never fully...