Accordingly, he lived quietly in the 'goose-pie,' 'faulding his limbs in ease,' and absolutely refusing to concern himself with anything political, social, or ecclesiastical calculated to bring worry and trouble upon him.

During the Rebellion of 1745, tradition states that Prince Charles Edward, after the capture of the city by the Highland army, sent a message to Ramsay, asking him to repair to Holyrood, that some mark of his new sovereign's favour might be bestowed on him. Singular, indeed, it was, that the poet should have selected the day in question to repair to his friend James Clerk's mansion at Penicuik, and that he should there have been seized with so severe an indisposition as to prevent him returning to Edinburgh for nearly five weeks. Though a Tory and a Jacobite, honest Allan knew upon which side his bread was buttered. Such honours as would have been conferred would have been inconvenient. Moreover, the Rebellion had not yet attained dimensions sufficient to transmute it from a rebellion into a revolution. Pawkiness and caution were prominent traits in his character, and they were never used to more salient advantage than in the instance in question.

To the end of life, Ramsay remained the same kindly, genial, honourable man, whose appearance in any of the social circles he frequented, was the signal for 'quips and cranks and wreathèd smiles' to go round, and for the feast of reason and the flow of soul to commence. His squat, podgy figure waddling down the High Street on his way to his shop in the Luckenbooths, his head covered with the quaint three-cornered hat of the period, beneath which peeped his tie-wig, was one of the familiar sights of Edinburgh, to be pointed out to strangers with a pride and an affection that never diminished. In his little villa on the Castlehill he entertained his friends in true Horatian style, and with a hospitality every whit as warm, though it was every whit as simple as that which the great Roman promised Mæcenas, he made them free of what was in his power to give.

Foibles he had,—and who is without them? faults, too,—for what character lacks them? yet his very foibles and his faults leaned to virtue's side. Vain he certainly was, deny the fact who can? his egotism, also, may have jarred on some whose individuality was as strong as his own, but whose liberality in making allowances for human weaknesses was less. Nay, he may even in some respects have been 'near' with regard to certain little things, though this was the result of his humble upbringing, where, in the household economy of the Crichtons, a pound was a fortune. But once break through the crust of his old-fashioned formalism with the thrust of some pressing appeal for aid, and instantly we touch the core of a ready and warm sympathy—a sympathy as catholic in the radius of its beneficence as it was munificent in the measure of its benefactions. To the poor, to the suffering, to the widow and the orphan, to the fatherless and the friendless, Allan Ramsay was ever the readiest to help where help was really needed; and if his vanity liked the fact to be made public property, wherein lay the harm? Do our published subscription-lists to-day not testify to the existence of the same foible in nine-tenths of us? To the improvident, however, to the lazy, to the genteel beggar, and to the thousand and one forms mendicity—supported by mendacity—takes to extort money, Allan was as adamant. 'Gang your wa's,' he would say to such; 'gar your elbuck earn what your mooth eats, and ye'll be a better man.'

Allan has had the misfortune to be rated by what he did not do in the way of charity, rather than by what he did. Because he esteemed charity to begin at home, and that he should provide for his own before participating in any schemes for providing for others, he has been rated as selfish and miserly. The opposite is the case. Prudent, careful, and economical,—into no speculation would he go from which he did not see the probability, at least, of an adequate return. Hence, during the South Sea madness, he kept his head when many a better man went mad with the speculative mania. He was pious, without his piety being black-edged with that gloomy bigotry which characterised much of the Presbyterianism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Scotland. As he put the matter himself in his Epistle to James Arbuckle:

He delighted in sociality and conviviality, but recoiled from aught savouring of licence or excess. To coarseness, it is true, he may at times have stooped in his work; but we must remember the spirit of the times was in favour of calling a spade a spade, and not 'an implement for disintegrating planetary particles.' To no degree greater than did Swift, or Steele, or Arbuthnot, or Gay, can Allan Ramsay be considered to have smirched his pages with references either ribald or indelicate. The spirit of the age was in fault when coarseness was rated as wit; and to be true to life, the painters of the manners around them had to represent these as they were, not as they would have liked them to be.

On the 9th May 1755 Ramsay, when writing to his friend, James Clerk of Penicuik, a rhyming epistle, had said—

Alas! the 'Shadow feared of man' was already sitting waiting for him at no great distance farther on in his life's journey. For some years he had suffered acutely from scurvy in the gums, which in the end attacked his jawbone and affected his speech. To the close, however, he retained his cheerfulness and buoyancy of spirits. When the last great summons at length came to him, he met it with a manly fortitude and Christian resignation.

Amongst his last words, according to his daughter Janet, who survived until 1807, were these: 'I'm no' feared of death; the Bricht and Morning Star has risen and is shining mair and mair unto the perfect day.' And so he passed 'into the unseen' on the 7th January 1758, in the seventy-second year of his age. He was interred two days after in the Greyfriars Churchyard, where his gravestone is still visible, bearing the inscription: 'In this cemetery was interred the mortal part of an immortal poet, Allan Ramsay, author of The Gentle Shepherd and other admirable poems in the Scottish dialect. He was born in 1686 and died in 1758.

Sir John Clerk, one of the Barons of the Exchequer in Scotland, who admired his genius and was one of his most intimate friends, erected at his family seat at Penicuik an obelisk to his memory; while Mr. Alexander Fraser-Tytler, at Woodhouselee, near the Glencorse locale of The Gentle Shepherd, has erected a rustic temple which bears the inscription—

'Allano Ramsay et Genio Loci.

Ramsay was survived by his son Allan, the painter, and by his two daughters, Christian and Janet, who amongst them inherited the poet's fortune. The house on the Castlehill fell to his son, and remained in the possession of the family, as Mr. Logie Robertson records, until 1845, when it changed hands at the death of General John Ramsay, the poet's grandson, and the last of his line. For many years it stood, an object of interest to all admirers of the bard, until 1892, when, just as the building was beginning to show signs of age, the site was bought for the erection of the new students' boarding-house, 'University Hall,' which so imposingly crowns the ridge of the Castlehill. With a reverence for the memory of the poet as rare as it is commendable, the promoters of the scheme resolved to preserve as much as possible of the house, and the greater part of it has been incorporated in the new building.

Of Ramsay we have only two portraits remaining that are of any real value,—that painted by his son Allan, and that by Smibert, the poet's lifelong friend. The latter represents him in youth, the former in age—both being considered, at the time of execution, striking likenesses. But perhaps the best idea of the appearance of the poet may be gathered from Sir John Steele's fine statue of him (designed from his son's portrait) which now stands at the corner of West Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, immediately below the site of his house. There, with his familiar 'nightcap' on his head, he stands, watching the busy crowds passing to and fro in front of him, wearing the while an expression on his face as though he were saying with his Patie—

CHAPTER X

RAMSAY AS A PASTORAL POET AND AN ELEGIST

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—

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

—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—

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

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'—

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

The second scene opens with an exquisite description of

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

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?—

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

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,

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—

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—

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

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—

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—

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

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—

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—

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

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—

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—