CHAPTER X

RAMSAY AS A PASTORAL POET AND AN ELEGIST

In attempting a critical estimate of the value of Ramsay's works, for the purpose of analysis it will be most convenient to consider the great body of his writings under certain classified headings--(1) Ramsay as a Pastoral Poet and an Elegist; (2) Ramsay as a Satirist and a Song-writer; (3) Ramsay's Miscellaneous Works.

In the chapter on _The Gentle Shepherd_, we noted the distinctive constituents of pastoral poetry, as currently defined, and also wherein Ramsay's principles, as exemplified in practice, differ from those of other writers of pastoral. To furnish examples illustrative of our contention is now all that remains to be done. Early in his poetical career, as soon, in fact, as he had completed his first tentative efforts, Ramsay seems to have become conscious, with that rare gift of prevision always distinguishing him, that his strength lay in a picturesque yet truthful delineation of rural life. His earliest pieces, although termed elegies, exhibit, rather, many of the characteristics of pastorals, in the broad humour and in the graphic and vivid colouring wherewith he depicts the scenes at Maggy Johnston's tavern at Morningside, or the incidents in the life of Luckie Wood or of Patie Birnie. But, as he has termed them _elegies_, under that heading let them be considered, though a humorous or mock elegy is somewhat of a contradiction in terms.

Roughly classified, Ramsay's pastorals may be stated as follows:--the dialogues between _Richy_ (Sir Rich. Steele) _and Sandy_ (Alex. Pope), on the death of Mr. Addison; between _Robert, Richy, and Sandy_, on the death of Matthew Prior; _Keitha_, on the death of the Countess of Wigton; an _Ode with a Pastoral Recitative_, on the marriage of James Earl of Wemyss to Miss Janet Charteris; _A Masque_, performed at the celebration of the nuptials of James Duke of Hamilton and Lady Ann Cochrane; _A Pastoral Epithalamium_, on the marriage of George Lord Ramsay and Lady Jean Maule; _Betty and Kate_, a pastoral farewell to Mr. Aikman; and finally, _The Gentle Shepherd_.

Of Ramsay's less important pastorals, the distinguishing characteristics are their simplicity, their tenderness, and their freedom from aught didactic. In conforming to the conventional idea of pastoral,--the idea, that is, of the shepherd state being a condition of perfect peace and Arcadian felicity and propriety,--in place of copying direct from nature, they one and all differ from _The Gentle Shepherd_. The picture of burly Sir Richard Steele and of crooked little Alexander Pope, clad in shepherd's weeds, and masquerading with dogs and pipes and what not, savours somewhat of the ludicrous. Then, in _Richy and Sandy_, he makes Pope bewail the death of Addison, with whom he had been on anything but friendly terms for years previous; while the following picture of the deceased grave-visaged Secretary of State, in such a position as described in the following lines, tends to induce us profane Philistines of these latter days, to smile, if not to sneer--

'A better lad ne'er leaned out o'er a kent, Nor hounded collie o'er the mossy bent: Blythe at the bughts how oft hae we three been, Heartsome on hills, and gay upon the green.'

This, however, was the fashion in vogue, and to it our poet had to conform. In _Richy and Sandy_, in _Robert, Richy, and Sandy_, and in his earlier pastorals generally, we seem to see the poet struggling to rid himself of the conventional prejudices against painting rural nature in the real, and in favour of 'a golden-age rusticity' purely imaginary. Not by this is it implied that I claim for our poet the credit of first insisting on reverting to nature for the study of scenes and character. The same conviction, according to Lowell, was entertained by Spenser, and his _Shepherds' Calendar_ was a manifestation, however imperfect and unsatisfactory, of his desire to hark back to nature for inspiration. In _Keitha_ the same incongruity, as noted above, is visible. The poem in question, with that on the _Marriage of the Earl of Wemyss_, can neither be ranked as conventional pastoral nor as pure pastoral, according to Ramsay's later style. We note the 'Colins' and 'Ringans,' the 'shepherd's reeds' and 'shepherd's weeds,' and the picture of

----'the singing shepherd on the green Armyas hight, wha used wi' tunefu' lay To please the ear when he began to play,'

--an imitation of Milton's immortal lines in _Comus_, which are too well known to need quotation. All of a piece this with the 'golden-age pastoral.' In the same poems, however, occur intimations that the incongruity was perceived by the author, but that, as yet, he did not see any means of remedying the uniform monotony of the conventional form. The leaven was at work in Ramsay's mind, but so far it only succeeded in influencing but the smallest moiety of the lump.

In the _Masque_, written in celebration of the marriage of the Duke of Hamilton, the sentiments expressed are wholly different. Written subsequently to _The Gentle Shepherd_, Ramsay exhibited in it his increased technical deftness, and how much he had profitted by the experience gained in producing his great pastoral. The _Masque_, albeit professedly a dramatic pastoral, entirely abjures the lackadaisical shepherds and shepherdesses of conventional pastoral, and, as a poem of pure imagination, reverts to the ancient mythology for the _dramatis personæ_.

All these pieces, however, though they exhibit a facility in composition, a fecundity of imagination, a skilful adaptation of theme to specific metrical form, a rare human sympathy, and a depth of pathos as natural in expression as it was genuine in its essence, are only, so to speak, the preludes to _The Gentle Shepherd_. In the latter, Ramsay's matured principles of pastoral composition are to be viewed where best their relative importance can be estimated, namely, when put into practice.

By competent critics, _The Gentle Shepherd_ is generally conceded to be the noblest pastoral in the English language. Dr. Hugh Blair, in his lectures on _Rhetoric and Belles Lettres_, styled it 'a pastoral drama which will bear being brought into comparison with any composition of this kind in any language.... It is full of so much natural description and tender sentiment as would do honour to any poet. The characters are well drawn, the incidents affecting, the scenery and manners lively and just.' And one of Dr. Blair's successors in the Chair of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh,--a man and a Scotsman who, in his day, has done more than any other to foster amongst our youth a love of all that is great and good and beautiful in our literature; a teacher, too, whose students, whom he has imbued with his own noble spirit, are scattered over the world, from China to Peru,--Emeritus-Professor David Masson, has observed in his charming _Edinburgh Sketches_: 'The poem was received with enthusiastic admiration. There had been nothing like it before in Scottish literature, or in any other: nothing so good of any kind that could be voted even similar; and this was at once the critical verdict.'

To anyone who will carefully compare the _Idylls_ of Theocritus, the _Eclogues_ of Virgil, and the _Aminta_ of Tasso, with Ramsay's great poem, the conviction will be driven home,--in the face, it may be, of many deeply-rooted prejudices,--that the same inspiration which, like a fiery rivulet, runs through the three former masterpieces, is present also in the latter--that inspiration being the perfect and unbroken homogeneity existing between the local atmosphere of the poem and the characteristics of the _dramatis personæ_. This fact it is which renders the _Aminta_ so imperishable a memorial of Tasso's genus; for it is Italian pastoral, redolent of the air, and smacking of the very soil of sunny Italy. The symmetrical perfection of _The Gentle Shepherd_, in like manner, is due to the fact that the feelings and desires and impulses of the characters in the pastoral are those distinctively native and proper to persons in their sphere of life. There is no dissidence visible between what may imperfectly be termed the _motif_ of the poem and the sentiments of even the most subordinate characters in it. Therein lies the true essence of literary symmetry--the symmetry not alone of mere form, though that also was present, but the symmetry resulting from the harmony of thought with its expression, of scene and its characters, of situation and its incidents. Such the symmetry exhibited by Homer's _Iliad_, by Dante's _Inferno_, by Milton's _Paradise Lost_, by Cervantes' _Don Quixote_, by Camoens' _Lusiad_, by Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, by Tennyson's _Idylls_.

Frankly, it must be admitted that only in his _Gentle Shepherd_ does Ramsay attain this outstanding excellence. His other pieces are meritorious,--highly so; but they could have been produced by many a writer of the age with equal, perhaps superior, felicity, and they shine only in the reflected light of _The Gentle Shepherd_; even as Scott's _Lord of the Isles_ and _Harold the Dauntless_ were saved from being 'damned as mediocrity' only by the excellence of the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ and _Marmion_.

The great charm of _The Gentle Shepherd_ lies in the skilfully-balanced antithesis of its contrasts, in the reflected interest each type casts on its opposite. As in Molière's _Tartuffe_, it is the vivid contrast created between the hypocrisy of the title-character and the easy good-nature of Orgon, that begets a reciprocal interest in the fortunes of both; as in Balzac's _Pere Goriot_, it is the pitiless selfishness of his three daughters on the one hand, and the doting self-denial of the poor old father on the other, that throws both sets of characters into relief so strong: so, in _The Gentle Shepherd_, it is the subtle force of the contrast between Patie's well-balanced manliness and justifiable pride, and Roger's _gauche_ bashfulness and depression in the face of Jenny's coldness; between Peggy's piquant lovableness and maidenly joy in the knowledge of Patie's love, and Jenny's affected dislike to the opposite sex to conceal the real state of her feelings towards Roger in particular, that impart to the poem the vivid interest wherewith its scenes are perused. Minor contrasts are present too, in the faithfulness of Patie to Peggy, as compared with the faithlessness of Bauldy to Neps. The whole drama, in fact, might be styled a beautiful panegyric on fidelity in love. Such passages as the following are frequent--

'I'd hate my rising fortune, should it move The fair foundation of our faithfu' love. If at my feet were crowns and sceptres laid To bribe my soul frae thee, delightful maid, For thee I'd soon leave these inferior things To sic as have the patience to be kings.'

As a pastoral poet, Ramsay excels in painting all those homely virtues that befit the station to which most of his characters belonged. A fault, and a serious one, it was among the writers of conventional pastoral, to make their shepherds and shepherdesses talk like philosophers, and reason upon all the mysteries of life, death, and futurity. What reader of Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_, but must have smiled over the shepherds in that delicious romance discussing love, and treating of its metaphysical causes and effects, as profoundly as any

----'clerke of Oxenforde also Who unto logik hadde long y-go.'

The extravagances of conventional pastoral had been keenly satirised by Gay, who made his Lobbin Clouts and Cloddipoles, his Blowzalinds and Bowzabees and Bumkinets, in the _Shepherd's Week_, 'talk the language that is spoken neither by country maiden nor courtly dame; nay, not only such as in the present time is not uttered, but never was in times past, and, if I judge aright, will never be uttered in times future.' But by Ramsay the silliness of the prevailing mode, both of British and French pastoral, was more aptly satirised, by presenting, as a contrast, a picture of rural life absolutely truthful in all its details, and thus slaying falsehood by the sword of truth.

Of _The Gentle Shepherd_, the plot is simplicity itself. It describes the love of a young Pentland shepherd named Patie for a country maiden named Peggy. The pastoral drama, the time of whose action is all embraced within four-and-twenty hours, thus preserving one, at least, of the Greek dramatic unities as defined by the French critics, opens at early morning with the two young shepherds, Patie and Roger, feeding their flocks on the hills, and discussing the progress of their love-suits. The scene is charmingly realistic and natural. Patie is happy in his love for Peggy who reciprocates it; Roger, in despair over his ill-success with 'dorty Jenny.' His friend, however, raises his spirits by telling him how he once served Peggy when she had a fit of tantrums, by feigning indifference to her, a course which soon brought the fair one to reason. He exhorts Roger to adopt the same line, conveying his counsel in the following terms, that contain excellent advice to young lovers, and might have given a hint to Burns for his song, 'Duncan Gray'--

'Dear Roger, when your jo puts on her gloom, Do ye sae too, and never fash your thumb; Seem to forsake her, soon she'll change her mood; Gae woo anither, and she'll gang clean wood.'

Roger agrees to take the advice, and the scene concludes with a delightful picture of a shepherd's meal--

'But first we'll tak a turn up to the height, And see gif all our flocks be feeding right; By that time, bannocks and a shave of cheese Will make a breakfast that a laird might please,-- Might please the daintiest gabs, were they sae wise To season meat with health instead of spice. When we have ta'en the grace-drink at this well, I'll whistle syne'--

The second scene opens with an exquisite description of

'A flowrie howm between twa verdant braes, Where lasses use to wash and spread their claes; A trottin' burnie wimpling through the ground, Its channel, pebbles, shining, smooth and round. Here view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear.'

These are Peggy and Jenny. The latter proposes to begin their work on the 'howm' or green in question, but Peggy entreats her to

Gae farer up the burn to Habbie's How, Where a' that's sweet in spring and simmer grow; Between twa birks out o'er a little linn The water fa's, and makes a singin' din; A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass, Kisses wi' easy whirles the bordering grass. We'll end our washing while the morning's cool, And when the day grows het we'll to the pool, There wash oursels; 'tis healthfu' now in May, And sweetly cauler on sae warm a day.'

The girls then enter on a discussion regarding Jenny's cruel indifference to Roger. The maiden, who by the way is a bit of a prude, affects to despise love and marriage, but in the end, overcome by Peggy's beautiful description of conjugal happiness, is obliged to confess her love for Roger. What more delightful picture of maternal yearning over the young have we in all English literature, than Peggy's splendid defence of motherhood?--

'Yes, it's a heartsome thing to be a wife, When round the ingle-edge young sprouts are rife. Gif I'm sae happy, I shall have delight To hear their little plaints, and keep them right. Wow, Jenny! can there greater pleasure be, Than see sic wee tots toolying at your knee; When a' they ettle at,--their greatest wish, Is to be made of and obtain a kiss? Can there be toil in tenting day and night The like of them, when love makes care delight?'

The first scene of the Second Act opens with a picture of a peasant farmer's 'onstead'; to wit, his dwelling and outhouses--

'A snug thack-house; before the door a green; Hens on the midden, ducks in dubs are seen; On this side stands a barn, on that a byre: A peat stack joins, and forms a rural square.'

Here the neighbours, Glaud and Symon, meet. The latter has been into Edinburgh to sell his 'crummock and her bassened quey,' and over their pipes he informs his friend that their landlord, Sir William Worthy, who, as a Royalist, had been compelled to go into exile during the Commonwealth, would now, owing to the Restoration, be able to return home again, when all would be well. Symon has heard the news from the laird's servant, 'Habbie,' after whom the 'How' or _house_ is named. Glaud is so overjoyed at the news that he seeks to persuade Symon to remain and dine with him, offering, for it was before the age of good roads and carts,

'To yoke my sled, and send to the neist town And bring a draught o' ale baith stout and brown.'

But Symon wishes to exercise hospitality himself, and insists upon Glaud, his sister Madge, his daughter Jenny, and his niece Peggy, all dining with him, in honour of the day. This they are to do. We have here presented a graphic picture of rural fare on fête-days--

'For here yestreen I brewed a bow of maut, Yestreen I slew twa wethers prime and fat. A furlet of good cakes, my Elspa beuk, And a large ham hangs reesting in the neuk. I saw mysel', or I cam o'er the loan, Our muckle pot that scads the whey, put on, A mutton-bouk to boil, and ane we'll roast; And on the haggies Elspa spares nae cost. Small are they shorn, and she can mix fu' nice The gusty ingans wi' a curn of spice; Fat are the puddings,--heads and feet weel sung.'

The second scene introduces a new element into the drama. Another shepherd, Bauldy (Archibald) by name, has also been smitten with Peggy's charms--and it affords an excellent idea of the simplicity of these rural districts in Scotland, when he repairs to a poor old woman named Mause, whom the district reputes to be a witch, to entreat her aid in turning Peggy's heart towards himself. Bauldy's picture of Peggy, in his soliloquy, is beautiful in its very simplicity--

'O Peggy! sweeter than the dawning day, Sweeter than gowany glens or new-mawn hay; Blyther than lambs that frisk out o'er the knowes, Straighter than aught that in the forest grows. Her een the clearest blob of dew out-shines, The lily in her breast its beauty tines; Her legs, her arms, her cheeks, her mouth, her een, Will be my deid'--

The existence of superstition among the Scottish peasantry, a state of things lasting until well on into last century, is also well brought out in Bauldy's soliloquy, when he refers to Mausy, 'a witch that for sma' price, can cast her cantrips, and gie me advice.' Mause, meaning to read the faithless lover of Neps a lesson, consents to help him. The fourth scene of the Second Act is undoubtedly one of the finest in the drama--the meeting of the lovers, Patie and Peggy. The two great constituents of a successful piece, strength and pathos, are both present in rich measure. To test her lover's fidelity, the maiden, with coy coquetry, affects to think that he might alter his mind and deceive her if she trusted him too implicitly. To this Patie replies that she deeply wrongs him in doubting his fidelity, and that he would be dull and blind

'Gif I could fancy aught's sae sweet and fair As my sweet Meg, or worthy of my care. Thy breath is sweeter than the sweetest brier, Thy cheek and breast the finest flowers appear, Thy words excel the maist delightfu' notes That warble through the merle or mavis' throats; With thee I tent nae flowers that busk the field, Or ripest berries that our mountains yield; The sweetest fruits that hing upon the tree Are far inferior to a kiss frae thee.'

With all a loving woman's sweet perversity, however, Peggy still affects to doubt, only to be indulged in the delicious bliss of hearing her lover's vows anew--

'Sooner a mother shall her fondness drap, And wrang the bairn sits smiling in her lap; The sun shall change, the moon to change shall cease; The gaits to climb, the sheep to yield the fleece; Ere aught by me be either said or done Shall do thee wrang;--I swear by all aboon.'

In no scene does Ramsay exhibit his wonderful knowledge of the human heart to such advantage as in the one before us. Peggy and Patie then sing a duet, taking alternate verses, into which are introduced many of the old Scots songs,--'The Broom o' Cowdenknowes,' 'Milking the Ewes,' 'Jenny Nettles,' 'Thro' the Wood, Laddie,' 'The Boatman,' 'Maggie Lauder,' 'The Lass o' Patie's Mill,' and the curtain falls over one of the most delightful scenes illustrative of pure affection, in modern drama.

The Third Act sees the return of Sir William Worthy, who, in the disguise of a wizard, introduces himself into the company, merry-making at Symon's. Here he tells Patie's fortune, and the surprising discovery is ere long made that the youth is Sir William's only son, placed under Symon's care when the knight had to go into exile on the execution of Charles I. The description of the little festivity at Symon's is well wrought out. The third scene contains the love-making of Jenny and Roger, where the faithful swain's happiness is rendered complete. With great gusto Ramsay paints this episode, as well as with consummate fidelity to nature,--a fact becoming increasingly apparent when one notes the marked difference between the love-scene wherein Patie and Peggy take part, and that wherein Jenny declares her love for Roger. The latter scene is more decidedly tinged with rusticity than the former. In the fourth scene Sir William reveals himself to Symon, and inquires eagerly about the progress made by his son during his years of absence. Symon praises the youth's devotion to letters, and then hints at his love for Peggy, which Sir William declares must be forgotten.

The first scene of the Fourth Act relieves, by the introduction of humorous episodes, the sentimentality whereinto the drama at this stage shows signs of lapsing. Mause, Madge, and Bauldy have an interview, at which the two last named come to blows; and when Bauldy has taken himself off, the two women perfect their plans for playing on the foolish fellow's superstitious fears. The remainder of the Fourth Act deals with Patie's sorrow and Peggy's anguish when Sir William's decision is made known. Of course, they vow everlasting fidelity to each other. The scene between the lovers is a very powerful one, wherein Ramsay evinced his sway over the subtler emotions. Yet here, as elsewhere, his simplicity constitutes his strength. He never attempts to depict any complex interaction of human passions. Like Æschylus, he contents himself with the representation of one elemental emotion at a time, and he thoroughly exhausts the one '_moment_' before he passes on to another. Few passages are there in literature more genuinely pathetic, yet keeping more rigidly within the modesty of nature, than that wherein poor Peggy, after dwelling on the golden past, tries to picture the dull grey round of duty in the future when Patie shall have been taken from her--

'Speak on, speak ever thus, and still my grief; But short, I dare to hope the fond relief. New thoughts a gentler face will soon inspire, That with nice airs swims round in silk attire; Then I, poor me! with sighs may ban my fate, When the young laird's nae mair my heartsome Pate. Nae mair again to hear sweet tales expresst By the blyth shepherd that excelled the rest,-- Nae mair be envied by the tattling gang When Patie kissed me when I danced or sang; Nae mair, alake! we'll on the meadows play, And rin half-breathless round the rucks of hay, As aft-times I have fled from thee right fain, And fa'n on purpose, that I might be tane.'--

But Patie reiterates his vows to her, and Peggy, comforted, declares she will set herself to learn 'gentler charms, through ilka school where I may manners learn.' Patie applauds her resolution, but declares that

----'without a' the little helps of art Thy native sweets might gain a prince's heart, Yet now, lest in our station we offend, We must learn modes to innocence unken'd.'

The scene closes with Peggy's vows of fidelity. In this scene Ramsay touched the high-water mark of his genius, and for the elements of simplicity, strength, and propriety of the sentiments expressed by each character with the root-idea of that character, it is rivalled by very few scenes of its kind in the literature of our land.

The first scene of the last Act opens with Bauldy's fright. He had gone to fulfil his engagement to meet Mause, the pretended witch, who was to turn Peggy's heart to him. But as he had insulted Madge, Peggy's aunt, in the fore part of the day, the latter, to punish him by taking advantage of his dread of ghosts, meets him at the dead hour of the night when he is repairing to Mause's cottage. She is draped in a white sheet, and utters ghastly groans. Bauldy, having sunk terror-stricken to the ground, is soundly cuffed and trounced by the two women. As soon, therefore, as daylight breaks, he seeks an interview with Sir William to entreat redress. The latter, who had been passing the night in Symon's house, enters fully into the spirit of the joke, and orders Mause to be brought before him.

The second scene exhibits Glaud's 'onstead' again, and the family preparing to go down to Symon's to take their leave of Patie. Peggy is very sad,--so much so that her sharp-tongued aunt cannot refrain from jeering at it--

'Poor Meg!--Look, Jenny, was the like e'er seen? How bleared and red wi' greetin' look her een! This day her brankan wooer taks his horse To strut a gentle spark at Edinburgh Cross. But Meg, poor Meg! maun wi' the shepherds stay, And tak what God will send in hodden gray.'

To this ill-timed speech Peggy makes a pathetic reply, that must have caused a pang of remorse to her aunt. But when Glaud ventures to warn her against being too free with Patie, seeing he could not marry her now, she replies with gentle reproach--

'Sir William's virtuous, and of gentle blood; And may not Patrick too, like him, be good?'

Glaud's answer exhibits the simple faith of the rural inhabitants of the district in a striking light--

'That's true and mony gentry mae than he, As they are wiser, better are than we; But thinner sawn: they're sae pufft up wi' pride, There's mony o' them mocks ilk haly guide That shows the gate to heav'n. I've heard mysel Some of them laugh at doomsday, sin, and hell.'

The last scene of the pastoral contains the _dénouement_. With great artistic skill, so as to avoid wearying the reader, Ramsay only represents the delivering of the verdict upon Bauldy's appeal against Mause, the result being that the former was informed he only got what he deserved. At this moment, however, Madge, Peggy, and Jenny enter the room where Sir William was sitting. On Peggy Sir Williams gazes with interest, but presently starts with surprise. Her features are those of his long-dead sister. Eagerly he inquires from Glaud if she be his daughter. Glaud, after some hesitation, declares her to be a foundling. At this juncture, however, old Mause steps forward and unravels the tangled skein. She first calls on Sir William to say if he does not recall her features as his own old nurse. Sir William joyfully recognises her, and then she relates how she had brought Peggy as a babe thither, to save its life from those who had usurped its rights after his sister's death. She declares that Peggy is indeed his own niece, and Patie's full cousin.

Patie's joy is now complete, and the two lovers, their prospective union blessed by Sir William, fall into one another's arms; while the happiness of the shepherds and rustics is consummated when Sir William, restored to his possessions, announces his intention never more to leave them. To Symon and Glaud he assigns their _mailings_ (farms) in perpetual feu, while Roger is made his chamberlain. As the curtain then descends over general happiness, Sir William pronounces the usual moral admonition, without which no pastoral of the time was complete--

'My friends, I'm satisfied you'll all behave, Each in his station as I'd wish and crave. Be ever virtuous, soon or late ye'll find Reward and satisfaction to your mind. The maze of life sometimes looks dark and wild, And oft when hopes are highest we're beguiled; Oft when we stand on brinks of dark despair Some happy turn with joy dispels our care.'

The relative proportions of the various characters have been preserved with rare skill, and the individuality of each is as firmly and clearly differentiated in a few rapid incisive strokes, as though he had expended pages of description on each, like Pope and Gay. Patie's cheery _bonhomie_ and vivacious nature, his love of learning and his wise views of life and its duties, find an excellent foil in the slow, bashful, phlegmatic Roger, whose very 'blateness' denies him the bliss he covets in Jenny's love. Peggy is altogether charming,--a lovely, pure-souled, healthful, sport-loving maiden, with enough of her sex's foibles in her to leave her a very woman, yet with as few faults as it is possible for faulty human nature to be without. One of the most delightful heroines in pastoral poetry is Peggy. Jenny's prudish airs and affected dislike to the sterner sex are delicately yet incisively portrayed, while the staunch fidelity of Symon, the cheery chirpiness of Glaud, the bucolic ignorance and superstition of Bauldy, the cankered impatience of Madge--a spinster against her will, and the pathetic, age-worn weariness of Mause, are depicted with the assured hand of a master. Many of the lyrics interspersed throughout the pastoral are gems of rustic song; not high-class poetry, otherwise they would have been as out of place as would the Johnsonian minnows, talking, as Goldsmith said, like whales.

Only to one other production of Ramsay's genius will attention be called under this head, namely, his continuation of James the First's poem, _Christ's Kirk on the Green_. Of this, the first canto only was written by its royal author. Ramsay, therefore, conceived the design of completing it, as was remarked before. The king had painted with great spirit the squabble that arose at a rustic wedding at Christ's Kirk, in the parish of Kinnethmont, in that part of the county of Aberdeen near Leslie called the Garioch. Ramsay seems to have mistaken it for Leslie in Fife. Two cantos were added by our poet to the piece, in the one of which he exhibited the company, their differences ended, as engaging in feasting and good cheer; in the other, their appearance the following morning, after they had slept off the effects of the orgies, and when they proceed to the bridegroom's house to offer gifts. The skill wherewith Ramsay dovetailed his work into that of his royal predecessor, and developed the king's characters along lines fully in accord with their inception, is very remarkable. There is a Rabelaisian element in the headlong fun and broad rough-and-tumble humour Ramsay introduces into his portion of the poem, but it is not discordant with the king's ideas. The whole piece is almost photographic in the vividness of the several portraits; the 'moment' of delineation selected for each being that best calculated to afford a clue to the type of character. The following picture of the 'reader,' or church precentor in Roman Catholic times, has often been admired, as almost Chaucerian, for its force and truth--

'The latter-gae of haly rhime, Sat up at the boord head, And a' he said 'twas thought a crime To contradict indeed. For in clerk lear he was right prime, And could baith write and read, And drank sae firm till ne'er a styme He could keek on a bead Or book that day.'

The coarseness of the pieces cannot be denied. Still, withal, there is a robust, manly strength in the ideas and a picturesque force in the vocabulary that covers a multitude of sins. His picture of morning has often been compared with that of Butler in _Hudibras_, but the advantage undoubtedly lies with Ramsay. Butler describes the dawn as follows--

'The sun had long since in the lap Of Thetis taken out his nap, And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn From black to red began to turn.'

Ramsay, in his description, says--

'Now frae th' east neuk o' Fife the dawn Speel'd westlines up the lift; Carles wha heard the cock had crawn, Begoud to rax and rift; And greedy wives, wi' girning thrawn, Cry'd "Lasses, up to thrift"; Dogs barkèd, and the lads frae hand Bang'd to their breeks like drift, Be break o' day.'

It must be remembered, the poem was addressed to rustics, who would neither have understood nor appreciated anything of a higher or less broadly Hogarthian nature. In _Christ's Kirk on the Green_ we have stereotyped to all time a picture of manners unsurpassed for vigour and accuracy of detail, to which antiquarians have gone, and will go, for information that is furnished in no other quarter.

In his elegies pure and simple, namely, those divested of any humorous element, Ramsay has done good work; but it is not by any means on a par with what is expected from the poet who could write _The Gentle Shepherd_. A painter of low life in its aspects both humorous and farcical was Ramsay's distinctive _métier_. Pity it was his vanity and ambition ever induced him to turn aside from the path wherein he was supreme. His 'Ode to the Memory of Lady Mary Anstruther,' that to 'the Memory of Lady Garlies,' the one to Sir John Clerk on the death of his son James Clerk, and the 'Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Forbes of Newhall,' are his best elegies. The versification is correct, the ideas expressed are sympathetically tender, poetic propriety and the modesty of nature are not infringed by any exaggerated expressions of grief, but the glow of genius is lacking, and the subtle union of sentiment and expression that are so prominent features in his greater poem.

His two finest efforts as an elegist were his _Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Forbes_, beginning--

'Ah, life! thou short uncertain blaze, Scarce worthy to be wished or loved, Why by strict death so many ways, So soon, the sweetest are removed!

If outward charms and temper sweet, The cheerful smile, the thought sublime, Could have preserved, she ne'er had met A change till death had sunk with time;'

also the one on the _Death of Sir Isaac Newton_, wherein occur two memorable stanzas--

'Great Newton's dead!--full ripe his fame; Cease vulgar grief, to cloud our song: We thank the Author of our frame, Who lent him to the earth so long.

For none with greater strength of soul Could rise to more divine a height, Or range the orbs from pole to pole, And more improve the human sight.'

His 'humorous elegies,' written in a mock heroic strain, and sometimes upon persons still living, though, for the purposes of his art, he represented them as dead, as in the case of John Cowper, are instinct with broad, rollicking, Rabelaisian fun. Their vivid portrayal of the manners and customs of the time renders them invaluable. What better description of the convivial habits of Edinburgh society early last century could be desired, than the graphic pictures in _Luckie Wood's Elegy_, particularly the stanza--

'To the sma' hours we aft sat still, Nick'd round our toasts and sneeshin'-mill; Good cakes we wanted ne'er at will, The best of bread; Which aften cost us mony a gill To Aitkenhead.'

Than his elegies on Luckie Spence, John Cowper, and Patie Birnie, no more realistic presentation of low-life manners could be desired. They are pictures such as Hogarth would have revelled in, and to which he alone could have done justice in reproduction.