Part 6

"Whether the dialect of Scotland be more favourable to attempts of this nature, or whether we are to seek for the fact in the character of the people, or the peculiar talents of the writers, certain it is, that the idiom of that country has been much more successfully employed in poetical composition, than that of any other part of these kingdoms, and that this practice may here be traced to a very early period. In later times the beautiful _dramatic poem_ of The Gentle Shepherd has exhibited rusticity without vulgarity, and elegant sentiment without affectation. Like the heroes of Homer, the characters of this piece can engage in the humblest occupations without degradation."[51]

[Footnote 51: Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, vol. i. p. 296.]

THOMAS CAMPBELL. 1819.

"The admirers of the Gentle Shepherd, must perhaps be contented to share some suspicion of national partiality, while they do justice to their own feeling of its merit. Yet as this drama is a picture of rustic Scotland, it would perhaps be saying little for its fidelity, if it yielded no more agreeableness to the breast of a native than he could expound to a stranger by the strict letter of criticism. We should think the painter had finished the likeness of a mother very indifferently, if it did not bring home to her children traits of undefinable expression which had escaped every eye but that of familiar affection. Ramsay had not the force of Burns; but, neither, in just proportion to his merits, is he likely to be felt by an English reader. The fire of Burns' wit and passion glows through an obscure dialect by its confinement to short and concentrated bursts. The interest which Ramsay excites is spread over a long poem, delineating manners more than passions; and the mind must be at home both in the language and manners, to appreciate the skill and comic archness with which he has heightened the display of rustic character without giving it vulgarity, and refined the view of peasant life by situations of sweetness and tenderness, without departing in the least degree from its simplicity. The Gentle Shepherd stands quite apart from the general pastoral poetry of modern Europe. It has no satyrs, nor featureless simpletons, nor drowsy and still landscapes of nature, but distinct characters and amusing incidents. The principal shepherd never speaks out of consistency with the habits of a peasant, but he moves in that sphere with such a manly spirit, with so much cheerful sensibility to its humble joys, with maxims of life so rational and independent, and with an ascendency over his fellow swains so well maintained by his force of character, that if we could suppose the pacific scenes of the drama to be suddenly changed into situations of trouble and danger, we should, in exact consistency with our former idea of him, expect him to become the leader of the peasants, and the Tell of his native hamlet. Nor is the character of his mistress less beautifully conceived. She is represented, like himself, as elevated, by a fortunate discovery, from obscure to opulent life, yet as equally capable of being the ornament of either. A Richardson or a D'Arblay, had they continued her history, might have heightened the portrait, but they would not have altered its outline. Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, that of the Gentle Shepherd is engraven on the memory of its native country. Its verses have passed into proverbs and it continues to be the delight and solace of the peasantry whom it describes."[52]

[Footnote 52: Campbell's British Poetry, vol. v. pp. 344-346.]

LEIGH HUNT. 1848.

"Poetical expression in humble life is to be found all over the south. In the instances of Burns, Ramsay, and others, the north also has seen it. Indeed, it is not a little remarkable, that Scotland, which is more northern than England, and possesses not even a nightingale, has had more of it than its southern neighbour."

"Allan Ramsay is the prince of the homely pastoral drama. He and Burns have helped Scotland for ever to take pride in its heather, and its braes, and its bonny rivers, and be ashamed of no honest truth in high estate or in low; an incalculable blessing. Ramsay is entitled not only to the designation we have given him, but in some respects is the best pastoral writer in the world. There are, in truth, two sorts of genuine pastoral--the high ideal of Fletcher and Milton, which is justly to be considered the more poetical,--and the homely ideal, as set forth by Allan Ramsay and some of the Idyls of Theocritus, and which gives us such feelings of nature and passion as poetical rustics not only can, but have entertained and eloquently described. And we think the Gentle Shepherd, 'in some respects,' the best pastoral that ever was written, not because it has anything, in a poetical point of view, to compare with Fletcher and Milton, but because there is, upon the whole, more faith and more love in it, and because the kind of idealized truth which it undertakes to represent, is delivered in a more corresponding and satisfactory form than in any other entire pastoral drama. In fact, the Gentle Shepherd has no alloy whatsoever to its pretensions, _such as they are_--no failure in plot, language, or character--nothing answering to the coldness and irrelevances of 'Comus,' nor to the offensive and untrue violations of decorum in the 'Wanton Shepherdess' of Fletcher's pastoral, and the pedantic and ostentatious chastity of his Faithful one. It is a pure, healthy, natural, and (of its kind) perfect plant, sprung out of an unluxuriant but not ungenial soil; not hung with the beauty and fragrance of the productions of the higher regions of Parnassus; not waited upon by spirits and enchanted music; a dog-rose, if you will; say rather, a rose in a cottage-garden, dabbled with the morning dew, and plucked by an honest lover to give to his mistress.

"Allan Ramsay's poem is not only a probable and pleasing story, containing charming pictures, much knowledge of life, and a good deal of quiet humour, but in some respects it may be called classical, if by classical is meant ease, precision, and unsuperfluousness of style. Ramsay's diction is singularly straightforward, seldom needing the assistance of inversions; and he rarely says anything for the purpose of 'filling up;'--two freedoms from defect the reverse of vulgar and commonplace; nay, the reverse of a great deal of what pretends to be fine writing, and is received as such. We confess we never tire of dipping into it, 'on and off,' any more than into Fletcher or Milton, or into Theocritus himself, who, for the union of something higher with true pastoral, is unrivalled in short pieces. The Gentle Shepherd is not a forest, nor a mountain-side, nor Arcady; but it is a field full of daisies, with a brook in it, and a cottage 'at the sunny end;' and this we take to be no mean thing, either in the real or the ideal world. Our Jar of Honey may well lie for a few moments among its heather, albeit filled with Hybla. There are bees, 'look you,' in Habbie's How. Theocritus and Allan shake hands over a shepherd's pipe. Take the beginning of Scene ii., Act i., both for description and dialogue:--

'A flowrie howm between twa verdant braes, Where lasses use to wash and spread their claiths, _A trotting burnie wimpling thro' the ground, Its channel peebles, shining, smooth, and round_; Here view _twa barefoot beauties_ clean and clear; First please your eye, next gratify your ear, While Jenny _what she wishes discommends_, And Meg, with better sense true love defends.

JENNY.

Come, Meg, let's fa' to wark upon this green, The shining day will bleech our linen clean; The water's clear, the lift unclouded blew, Will make them _like a lilly wet with dew_.

PEGGY.

Go farer up the burn to Habby's How, Where a' the sweets of spring and summer grow; _Between twa birks, out o'er a little lin The water fa's, and makes a singand din; A pool breast-deep beneath, as clear as glass, Kisses with easy whirles the bordring grass_: We'll end our washing while the morning's cool, And when the day grows het, we'll to the pool, There wash our sells--'tis healthfu' now in May, And sweetly cauler on sae warm a day.'

"This is an out-door picture. Here is an in-door one quite as good--nay, better.

'_While Peggy laces up her bosom fair, With a blew snood Jenny binds up her hair_; Glaud by his morning ingle takes a beek, _The rising sun shines motty thro' the reek, A pipe his mouth; the lasses please his een, And now and than his joke maun interveen._'

"We would quote, if we could--only it might not look so proper, when isolated--the whole song at the close of Act the Second. The first line of it alone is worth all Pope's pastorals put together, and (we were going to add) half of those of Virgil; but we reverence too much the great follower of the Greeks, and true lover of the country. There is more sentiment, and equal nature, in the song at the end of Act the Fourth. Peggy is taking leave of her lover, who is going abroad:--

At setting day, and rising morn, With soul that still shall love thee, I'll ask of Heaven thy safe return, With all that can improve thee. I'll visit aft the Birken Bush, Where first thou kindly told me Sweet tales of love, _and hid my blush, Whilst round thou didst enfold me_. 'To all our haunts I will repair, By Greenwood-shaw or fountain; Or where the summer-day I'd share With thee upon yon mountain. There will I tell the trees and flowers, From thoughts unfeign'd and tender, _By vows_ you're mine, _by love_ is yours A heart which cannot wander.'

"The charming and so (to speak) natural flattery of the loving delicacy of this distinction--

'_By vows_ you're mine, _by love_ is yours,'

was never surpassed by a passion the most refined. It reminds us of a like passage in the anonymous words (Shakspeare might have written them) of the fine old English madrigal by Ford, 'Since first I saw your face.' Perhaps Ford himself wrote them; for the author of that music had sentiment enough in him for anything. The passage we allude to is--

'What, I that _loved_, and you that _liked_, Shall _we_ begin to wrangle?'

The highest refinement of the heart, though too rare in most classes, is luckily to be found in all; and hence it is, that certain meetings of extremes in lovers of different ranks in life are not always to be attributed either to a failure of taste on the one side, or unsuitable pretensions on the other. Scotish dukes have been known to meet with real Gentle-Shepherd heroines; and everybody knows the story of a lowly Countess of Exeter, who was too sensitive to survive the disclosure of the rank to which her lover had raised her."[53]

[Footnote 53: A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, by L. Hunt, p. 106. London, 1848.]

ANECDOTE OF LADY STRANGE.

During nearly twenty years of the latter part of Ramsay's life, "he continued occasionally to write epistles in verse, and other short pieces, as he had done before, for the entertainment of his private friends. When urged by some of them to give some more of his works to the press, he said that he was more inclined, if it were in his power, to recall much of what he had already written, and that if half his printed books were burnt, the other half, like the Sybil's books, would become more valuable by it."[54] Still more deeply was this feeling entertained by his son, who hesitated not to express it in a manner more emphatic than respectful to his father's memory. On one occasion, in London, and in the house of Lady Strange, widow of the celebrated engraver of that name--a lady whose kindness to her countrymen and predilection for Scotland will long be remembered--he is said to have declared that if he could purchase every copy of his father's writings, even at the cost of a thousand pounds, he would commit them to the flames. "Indeed, sir," replied the lady, misunderstanding his meaning, "then let me tell you that if you could, and should do so, your labour would be lost, for I can," says she, "repeat from memory _every word_ of the Gentle Shepherd, and were you to consume every copy of it, I would write out that matchless poem with my own hand, and cause it to be printed at my own charges."[55]

[Footnote 54: Lives of Eminent Scotsmen. London, 1821.]

[Footnote 55: We are indebted for this anecdote to the venerable George Thomson, Esq., the correspondent of Burns and publisher of his finest songs, now living and in the 93d year of his age, who had it from--Macgowan, Esq., a gentleman formerly well known in this city, as having been told him by Lady Strange herself.

[Ramsay's Poems. Ed. 1850]

LIST OF ALLAN RAMSAY'S WORKS.

POEMS.--Edinburgh, 1721-28. 4to. 2 vols. First collective edition. Many other editions. _See Preface, page_ ix.

THE EVERGREEN, being a Collection of Scots Poems, wrote by the Ingenious before 1600. Edinburgh, 1724. 16mo. 2 vols. Reprinted, 1761 and 1824.

THE TEA-TABLE MISCELLANY. Edinburgh, 1724, &c.--4 vols. 12mo. A well-known collection of Songs, English as well as Scotish, by several hands. Many other editions.

TEA-TABLE MISCELLANY--circa 1726. "Music for Allan Ramsay's collection of Scots Songs: Set by Alexander Stuart, and engraved by R. Cooper, vol. First. Edinburgh; printed and sold by Allan Ramsay."

This is a small oblong volume of 156 pages, divided into six parts, and contains the music of seventy-one Songs, selected from the first volume of the Tea-Table Miscellany, printed in 1724. It is very scarce, and no second volume ever appeared.

THE GENTLE SHEPHERD, a Scots Pastoral Comedy. Edinburgh, 1725. First edition. Numerous other editions. _See Preface, page_ x. Included in all the collective editions of the Poems.

_Translations._--By Cornelius Vanderstop. London, 1777. 8vo.--By W. Ward. London, 1785. 8vo.--By Margaret Turner. London, 1790. 8vo.

FABLES.--A Collection of thirty Fables. Edinburgh, 1730. First collective edition. The greater part of these were included in the quarto of 1728, and are to be found in all the more recent editions of the Poems.

PROVERBS.--A Collection of Scots Proverbs. Edinburgh, 1737. 12mo. Numerous editions.

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

SUSANNA,

_COUNTESS OF EGLINTOUN_.[56]

MADAM,

The love of approbation, and a desire to please the best, have ever encouraged the Poets to finish their designs with chearfulness. But, conscious of their own inability to oppose a storm of spleen and haughty ill-nature, it is generally an ingenious custom amongst them to chuse some honourable shade.

Wherefore, I beg leave to put my Pastoral under your Ladyship's protection. If my Patroness says, the Shepherds speak as they ought, and that there are several natural flowers that beautify the rural wild, I shall have good reason to think myself safe from the awkward censure of some pretending judges that condemn before examination.

[Footnote 56: "This is the same dignified lady, to whom, at the age of eighty-five, Johnson, and Boswell, offered their homage; whose powers of pleasing continued so resplendent as to charm the fastidious sage into a declaration that, in visiting such a woman, he had spent his day well. This celebrated patroness of poets was the accomplished daughter of the noble house of Kennedy, who having married, in 1708, Alexander the Earl of Eglinton, by whom she had three sons, two of whom succeeded to the earldom, and seven daughters who married into honourable families, died on the 18th of March, 1780, at the patriarchal age of ninety-one."--_Geo. Chalmers' Life of Ramsay, page xxxiv., edition of 1800._]

I am sure of vast numbers that will crowd into your Ladyship's opinion, and think it their honour to agree in their sentiments with the Countess of EGLINTOUN, whose penetration, superior wit, and sound judgment, shines with an uncommon lustre, while accompanied with the diviner charms of goodness and equality of mind.

If it were not for offending only your Ladyship, here, Madam, I might give the fullest liberty to my muse to delineate the finest of women, by drawing your Ladyship's character, and be in no hazard of being deemed a flatterer; since flattery lyes not in paying what's due to merit, but in praises misplaced.

Were I to begin with your Ladyship's honourable birth and alliance, the field's ample, and presents us with numberless great and good Patriots that have dignified the names of KENNEDY and MONTGOMERY: Be that the care of the herauld and historian. 'Tis personal merit, and the heavenly sweetness of the fair, that inspire the tuneful lays. Here every Lesbia must be excepted, whose tongues give liberty to the slaves, which their eyes had made captives. Such may be flatter'd; but your Ladyship justly claims our admiration and profoundest respect: for, whilst you are possest of every outward charm in the most perfect degree, the never-fading beauties of wisdom and piety, which adorn your Ladyship's mind, command devotion.

"All this is very true," cries one of better sense than good nature, "but what occasion have you to tell us the sun shines, when we have the use of our eyes, and feel his influence?"--Very true; but I have the liberty to use the Poet's privilege, which is, "To speak what every body thinks." Indeed, there might be some strength in the reflection, if the Idalian registers were of as short duration as life: but the bard, who fondly hopes immortality, has a certain praise-worthy pleasure in communicating to posterity the fame of distinguished characters.----I write this last sentence with a hand that trembles between hope and fear: But if I shall prove so happy as to please your Ladyship in the following attempt, then all my doubts shall vanish like a morning vapour:--I shall hope to be classed with Tasso and Guarini, and sing with Ovid,

"If 'tis allowed to Poets to divine, One half of round eternity is mine."

MADAM,

Your Ladyship's most obedient,

and most devoted servant,

ALLAN RAMSAY.

EDINBURGH, _June_, 1725.

TO THE

COUNTESS OF EGLINTOUN,

WITH THE FOLLOWING PASTORAL.