Allan Ramsay Part 5

'Sic as against the a.s.sembly speak, The rudest sauls betray, Where matrons, n.o.ble, wise, and meek, Conduct the healthfu' play.

Where they appear, nae vice dare keek, But to what's good gives way; Like night, soon as the morning creek Has ushered in the day.

Dear Em'brugh! shaw thy grat.i.tude, And of sic friends make sure, Wha strive to make our minds less rude, And help our wants to cure; Acting a generous part and good, In bounty to the poor; Sic virtues, if right understood, Should ev'ry heart allure.'

But we must hasten on. In 1724 Ramsay published his poem on _Health_, inscribed to the Earl of Stair, and written at the request of that n.o.bleman. In it Ramsay exhibits his full powers as a satirist, and inculcates the pursuit of health by the avoidance of such vices as sloth, effeminacy, gluttony, ebriety, and debauchery, which he personifies under the fict.i.tious characters of Cosmelius, Monta.n.u.s, Grumaldo, Phimos, Macro, etc. These were said to be drawn from well-known Edinburgh _roues_ of the time, and certainly the various types are limned and contrasted with a masterly hand. To the cultured reader, this is the poem of all Ramsay's minor works best calculated to please and to convey an idea of his style, though at times his genius seems to move under constraint.

But in 1724 our poet showed himself ambitious of winning distinction in a new field. In 1718, as was stated previously, he had published a volume of _Scots Songs_, some of them original, but a large number of them adapted from older and imperfect copies. So successful had the venture been, that a second edition had been called for in 1719, and a third in 1722. To attempt something of a cognate character, yet upon a larger scale, Ramsay now felt encouraged. In January 1724 appeared the first volume of the _Tea-table Miscellany: a Collection of Scots Sangs_.

The second volume was published in 1725, with the note by Ramsay: 'Being a.s.sured how acceptable new words to known good tunes would prove, I engaged to make verses for above sixty of them in these two volumes; about thirty were done by some ingenious young gentlemen, who were so pleased with my undertaking that they generously lent me their a.s.sistance.' 'Among those young gentlemen,' as Professor Ma.s.son says in his excellent monograph on Ramsay in his _Edinburgh Sketches and Memories_, 'we can identify Hamilton of Bangour, young David Malloch (afterwards Mallet), William Crawford, William Walkinshaw,' to which we would add James Preston. A third volume of the _Miscellany_ appeared in 1727 and a fourth in 1732, though, as regards the last, grave doubts exist whether Ramsay were really its editor or collector. Few compilations have ever been more popular. In twenty-five years twelve large editions were exhausted, and since Ramsay's death several others have seen the light, some better, some worse, than the original. All cla.s.ses in the community were appealed to by the songs contained in the _Miscellany_. That he intended such to be the case is evident from the first four lines of his dedication, in which he offers the contents--

'To ilka lovely British la.s.s, Frae ladies Charlotte, Anne, and Jean, Down to ilk bonny singing Bess, Wha dances barefoot on the green.'

In the collection each stratum of society finds the songs wherewith it had been familiar from infancy to age. Tunes that were old as the days of James V. were wedded to words that caught the cadences of the music with admirable felicity; words, too, had tunes a.s.signed them which enabled them to be sung in castle and cot, in hall and hut, throughout 'braid Scotland.' The denizens of fashionable drawing-rooms found their favourites--'Ye powers! was Damon then so blest?' 'Gilderoy,' 'Tell me, Hamilla; tell me why'--in these fascinating volumes, even as the Peggies and the Jennies of the ewe-bughts and the corn-rigs rejoiced to note that 'Katy's Answer,' 'Polwart on the Green,' 'My Daddy forbad, my Minny forbad,' and 'The Auld Gudeman,' had not been lost sight of. For many a long day, at each tea-party in town, or rustic gathering in the country, the _Tea-Table Miscellany_ was in demand, or the songs taken from it, for the entertainment of those a.s.sembled.

The widespread delight evoked by the _Miscellany_ allured Ramsay to essay next a task for which, it must be confessed, his qualifications were scanty. Nine months after the publication of the first volume of the _Miscellany_--to wit, in October 1724--appeared another compilation, _The Evergrene: being ane Collection of Scots Poems, wrote by the Ingenious before 1600_. It was dedicated to the Duke of Hamilton, and in the dedicatory epistle he informs his Grace that 'the following old bards present you with an entertainment that can never be disagreeable to any Scotsman.... They now make a demand for that immortal fame that tuned their souls some hundred years ago. They do not address you with an indigent face and a thousand pitiful apologies to bribe the goodwill of the critics. No; 'tis long since they were superior to the spleen of these sour gentlemen.' He had been granted access to the 'Bannatyne MSS.'--the literary remains of George Bannatyne, poet, antiquarian, and collector of ancient ma.n.u.scripts of Scottish poetry. This valuable repository of much that otherwise would have perished was lent to Ramsay by the Hon. William Carmichael of Skirling, advocate (brother to the Earl of Hyndford), with permission to extract what he required. From this priceless treasure-trove he drew specimens of Dunbar, Henryson, Alexander Scott, Lyndsay, Kennedy, Montgomery, Sempill, Gavin Douglas, and others. A similar favour was in 1770 granted to Lord Hailes when preparing his volume, _Ancient Scottish Poems_. Interesting, therefore, it is, to compare the manner in which the two editors respectively fulfilled their tasks.

In Ramsay's case the poems he selected from the Bannatyne MSS. were pa.s.sed through the alembic of his own brain. Everything was sacrificed to popularity and intelligibility. Lord Hailes, on the other hand, was the most scrupulous of editors, refusing to alter a single letter; for, as he said, the value of the poems lies in the insight they afford us into the state of the language at the periods when the various pieces were written. Alter them in any degree, even the slightest, and you destroy the intrinsic character of the composition. 'In making his compilation from the Bannatyne MSS.,' continued Lord Hailes, 'Ramsay has omitted some stanzas and added others, has modernised the versification and varied the ancient mode of spelling.' To offend thus was to render himself liable to the severest censure from all literary antiquarians.

The fault was as inexcusable as would be a trader's in palming off shoddy goods as those of the best materials. As an example of the ruthless liberties our poet took with the text, it may be well to follow Chalmers' example, and print side by side a stanza of Ramsay's 'paraphrase' and Lord Hailes' severely accurate rendering of the opening of Dunbar's 'Thistle and the Rose'--

_Ramsay._

'Quhen Merch with variand winds was overpast, And sweet Apryle had with his silver showers Tane leif of Nature with an orient blast, And l.u.s.ty May, that mudder is of flowrs, Had maid the birds begin the tymous hours; Amang the tendir odours reid and quhyt, Quhois harmony to heir was grit delyt.'

_Hailes._

'Quhen Merche wes with variand windis past, And Appryll had with her silver shouris Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast, And l.u.s.ty May, that mudder is of flouris, Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt, Quhois harmony to heir it wis delyt.'

In Dunbar's 'Lament for the Deth of the Makkaris' he not only varied but added several lines, and these in the silliest manner possible. For example, at the conclusion of Dunbar's n.o.ble elegy, Ramsay must needs tack on three stanzas, as a prophecy by Dunbar himself, wherein the vanity-full poet is introduced as 'a lad frae Hethermuirs.' What censure could be too strong for inappropriate fooling like the following, coming in to mar the solemn close of Dunbar's almost inspired lines?--

'Suthe I forsie, if spaecraft had, Frae Hether-muirs sall rise a lad, Aftir two centries pas, sall he Revive our fame and memorie:

Then sal we flourish _evirgrene_; All thanks to careful Bannatyne, And to the patron kind and frie Wha lends the lad baith them and me.

Far sall we fare baith eist and west, Owre ilka clime by Scots possest; Then sen our warks sall never dee, _Timor mortis non turbat me_.'

In the _Evergreen_ Ramsay published two of his own poems, _The Vision_ (in which the author bewails the Union and the banishment of the Stuarts) and _The Eagle and the Robin Reid-breist_ (likewise a Jacobite poem), wilfully altering the spelling in both, and introducing archaicisms into the thought, so as to pa.s.s them off as 'written by the ingenious before 1600.' He also inserted _Hardyknute_, a fragment, which subsequent research has proved to have been written by Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw, a contemporary of Ramsay's. Although the _Evergreen_ did much to revive popular interest in early Scottish poetry, and thus prepare the way for Lord Hailes and Bishop Percy, from a critical point of view it was worse than worthless, inasmuch as many of the errors and alterations appearing in Ramsay's specimens of our early Scots literary remains, have not been corrected even to this day.

But though Ramsay, in the estimation of stern literary antiquarians, has been guilty of an offence so heinous,--an offence vitiating both the _Tea-Table Miscellany_ and the _Evergreen_,--on the other hand, from the point of view of the popular reader, his action in modernising the language, at least, was not only meritorious but necessary, if the pieces were to be intelligible to the great ma.s.s of the people.

Remembered, too, it must be, that Ramsay lived before the development of what may be styled the antiquarian 'conscience,' in whose code of literary morality one of the cardinal commandments is, 'Thou shalt in no wise alter an ancient MS., that thy reputation and good faith may be unimpugned in the land wherein thou livest, and that thou mayest not bring a nest of critical hornets about thine ears.'

In his _Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh_, Dr. Daniel Wilson thus succinctly states the case: 'Ramsay had much more of the poet than the antiquary in his composition; and had, moreover, a poet's idea of valuing verse less on account of its age than its merit. He lived in an era of literary masquerading and spurious antiques, and had little compunction in patching and eking an old poem to suit the taste of his Edinburgh customers.' He was no Ritson,--and, after all, even Plautus had, for three hundred years after the revival of learning, to await his Ritschl!

CHAPTER VII

'THE GENTLE SHEPHERD'; SCOTTISH IDYLLIC POETRY; RAMSAY'S PASTORALS--1725-30

In the quarto of 1721, not the least remarkable of its contents had been two Pastoral Dialogues, the one between Richy (Sir Richard Steele) and Sandy (Alexander Pope), and based on the death of Addison: the other between Patie and Roger, and concerning itself solely with a representation of rural life. Amongst the best pieces in the volume both undoubtedly ranked. In 1723 appeared another metrical dialogue, _Jenny and Meggy_, betraying obvious kinship with _Patie and Roger_. So delighted were his friends, the Clerks and the Bennets, Professors Drummond and Maclaurin, and many others, with the _vraisemblance_ to Scottish rural life, and with the true rustic flavour present in the two dialogues, that they entreated him to add some connecting links, and to expand them into a pastoral drama. Doubtful of his ability to execute a task demanding powers so varied, and so supreme, Ramsay for a time hesitated. But at length, induced by their advice, he threw himself into the undertaking with enthusiasm. In a letter to his kinsman William Ramsay of Templehall, dated April 8, 1724, he writes: "I am this vacation going through with a Dramatick Pastoral, whilk I design to carry the length of five acts, in verse a' the gate, and, if I succeed according to my plan, I hope to tope [rival] with the authors of _Pastor Fido_ and _Aminta_."

On the scenes wherewith he had become acquainted during his manifold rambles over the hills and the vales, the glens and glades, of fair Midlothian, he now drew, as well as from the quaint and curious types of character--the Symons, the Glauds, the Bauldies, the Rogers, the Madges, and the Mauses--wherewith he had come into contact during such seasons.

That he stinted either time or trouble in making the drama as perfect as possible is evident from the prolonged period over which its composition was spread, and the number of drafts he made of it. Some of the songs, he informed Sir David Forbes, had been written no fewer than six times.

At length, early in July 1725, prefaced by a dedication in prose from himself to the Right Hon. Susannah, Countess of Eglinton, and by a poetical address to the same beautiful patroness, from the pen of William Hamilton of Bangour, the poet, _The Gentle Shepherd_ made its appearance.

Its success from the very outset was unparalleled in Scottish literature up to that date. It seemed literally to take the country by storm. By all ranks and cla.s.ses, by t.i.tled ladies in their boudoirs, as well as by milkmaids tripping it to the bughts with leglins and pails, the poem was admiringly read, and its songs sung. Its performance on the stage in 1726, only served to whet the public appet.i.te. By the leading poets of the day, Pope, Swift, Gay, Tickell, Ambrose Philips, and Lord Lansdowne, as well as by the most influential critics, Dennis, Theobald, and Dr.

Ruddiman, the work was hailed as one of the most perfect examples of the pastoral that had appeared since the _Idylls_ of Theocritus. No less eminent a judge of poetry than Alexander Pope considered it in many respects superior to the _Shepherds' Calendar_; while Gay was so enthusiastic in his admiration that he sent the work over to Swift, with the remark, 'At last we have a dramatic pastoral, though it _is_ by a Scot.'

The first edition of _The Gentle Shepherd_ was exhausted in a few months, and in January 1726 Ruddiman printed the second, while the third and a cheaper one was called for towards the close of the same year. The enormous sale of the poem may be estimated by the fact that the tenth edition was printed in 1750 by R. & A. Foulis of Glasgow. So great was the accession of popularity accruing to Ramsay through the publication of _The Gentle Shepherd_, and so rapid the increase in his bookselling business, that he found it absolutely necessary to shift his place of business, or _Scotice dictu_, to 'flit' to larger premises, in the first storey of the eastern gable-end of the Luckenbooths, a block of towering _lands_ or tenements which, until 1817, stood in the very centre of the High Street, obstructing the thoroughfare, and affording a curious commentary on the expedients to which the burgesses of Edinburgh were compelled to resort, to eke out to the utmost the s.p.a.ce enclosed within the charmed circle of the Flodden Wall.

At his 'flitting,' also, he changed his sign, and, thinking the 'Flying Mercury' no longer applicable to his new pursuits, he adopted the heads of Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden, a sign which in local parlance gradually grew to bear the t.i.tle of 'The Twa Heids.' In his new premises also, Ramsay extended the scope of his business, adding to the other attractions of his establishment a circulating library, the first of its kind in Scotland. He entered his new shop in May 1726. Sixty years after, the ground-floor of the same _land_, together with the flat where formerly Ramsay was located, were in the occupancy of William Creech, the first of the great Edinburgh Sosii that were yet to include the Constables, the Blackwoods, the Chambers, the Blacks, and others of renown in their day. With the Luckenbooths' premises it is that _The Gentle Shepherd_ is always a.s.sociated. From them Ramsay dated all his editions subsequent to the first two, and there he reaped all the gratifying results of its success.

The poem, which takes its name from the 12th eclogue of Spenser's _Shepherds' Calendar_, whose opening runs as follows--

'The Gentle Shepherd satte beside a spring, All in the shadow of a bushy brere,'--

may certainly be ranked in the same category with the _Idylls_ of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, the _Aminta_ of Ta.s.so, the _Pastor Fido_ (faithful shepherd) of Guarini, and Spenser's great poem referred to above. In _The Gentle Shepherd_ Ramsay rises to a level of poetic strength, united to a harmony between conception and execution, so immeasurably superior to anything else he accomplished, that it has furnished matter for speculation to his rivals and his enemies, whether in reality the poem were his own handiwork, or had been merely fathered by him. Lord Hailes, however, p.r.i.c.ks this bubble, when dealing with the ill-natured hypothesis raised by Alexander Pennecuik--the doggerel poet, not the doctor--that Sir John Clerk and Sir William Bennet had written _The Gentle Shepherd_, when he remarks, 'that they who attempt to depreciate Ramsay's fame, by insinuating that his friends and patrons composed the works which pa.s.s under his name, ought first to prove that his friends and patrons were capable of composing _The Gentle Shepherd_.' Not for a moment can the argument be esteemed to possess logical cogency that, because he never equalled the poem in question in any of his other writings, he was therefore intellectually incapable of composing that masterpiece which will be read after his other productions are forgotten, as long, in fact, as Scots poetry has a niche in the great temple of English literature.

To define pastoral poetry, as Ramsay understood it, without at the same time citing examples lying to hand in the works of our author, is a somewhat difficult task. But as reasons of s.p.a.ce will not permit us to duplicate extracts, and as it is proposed to relegate all criticism to the closing chapters of the book, we shall, at present, only glance in pa.s.sing at the great principles of composition Ramsay kept in view while writing his pastoral.

In the _Guardian_, Addison has stated, with his wonted lucidity and perspicuity, those mechanical rules to which, in his idea, the type of poetry termed 'pastoral' should conform. He maintained it should be a reflection, more or less faithful, of the manners of men 'before they were formed into large societies, cities built, or communities established, where plenty begot pleasure.' In other words, that 'an imaginary Golden Age should be evolved by each poet out of his inner consciousness.' Then the Ursa Major of criticism, Dr. Johnson, after growling at all preceding critics on the subject, and remarking that 'the rustic poems of Theocritus and the eclogues of Virgil precluded in antiquity all imitation, until the weak productions of Nemesian and Calphurnius, in the Brazen Age of Latin literature,' proceeds to say: 'At the revival of learning in Italy it was soon discovered that a dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with little difficulty, because the conversation of shepherds excludes profound or refined sentiment.' Rapin, in his _De Carmine Pastorali_, observes: ''Tis hard to give rules for that in which there have been none already given. Yet in this difficulty I will follow Aristotle's example, who, being to lay down rules concerning epics, proposed Homer as a pattern, from whom he deduced the whole art. So will I gather from Theocritus and Virgil, those fathers of pastoral, what I deliver on this account, their practice being rules in itself.' And Pope, in his _Discourse on Pastoral Poetry_, says: 'Since the instructions given for any art are to be delivered as that art is in perfection, they must of necessity be derived from those in whom it is acknowledged so to be. It is therefore from the practice of Theocritus and Virgil (the only undisputed authors of pastoral) that the critics have drawn the foregoing notions concerning it.' And Boileau, in his _Art Poetique_, after cautioning writers of pastoral against the introduction of bombast splendour or pomp on the one hand, and the use of low and mean language on the other, making shepherds converse _comme on parle au village_, observes that 'the path between the two extremes is very difficult'; while Dryden, in his preface to Virgil's _Pastorals_, defines pastoral to be 'the imitation of a shepherd considered under that character.' Finally, to quote Dr. Johnson once more, he remarks, in his _Lives of the Poets_, 'truth and exactness of imitation, to show the beauties without the grossness of country life, should be the aim of pastoral poetry.'

By all these critics pastoral poetry is considered in its abstract or ideal form. They never dreamed of bidding poets descend to the concrete, or to actual rural life, as Beattie puts it, 'there to study that life as they found it.' Dr. Pennecuik justly remarks, in his essay on _Ramsay and Pastoral Poetry_: 'Of the ancient fanciful division of the ages of the world into the _golden_, _silver_, _brazen_, and _iron_, the first, introduced by Saturn into Italy, has been appropriated to the shepherd state. Virgil added this conceit to his polished plagiarisms from Theocritus; and thus, as he advanced in elegance and majesty, receded from simplicity, nature, reality, and truth.'

To Ramsay's credit be it ascribed, that he broke away from these rank absurdities and false ideas of pastoral poetry, and dared to paint nature and rural life as he found it. His principles are thus stated by himself: 'The Scottish poet must paint his own country's scenes and his own country's life, if he would be true to his office.... The morning rises in the poet's description as she does in the Scottish horizon; we are not carried to Greece and Italy for a shade, a stream, or a breeze; the groves rise in our own valleys, the rivers flow from our own fountains, and the winds blow upon our own hills.'

To the fact that Ramsay has painted Scotland and Scottish rustics as they are, and has not gone to the hermaphrodite and s.e.xless inhabitants of a mythical Golden Age for the characters of his great drama, the heart of every Scot can bear testimony. Neither Burns, supreme though his genius was over his predecessors, nor Scott, revelling as he did in patriotic sentiments as his dearest possession, can rival Ramsay in the absolute truth wherewith he has painted Scottish rustic life. He is at one and the same time the Teniers and the Claude of Scottish pastoral--the Teniers, in catching with subtle sympathetic insight the precise 'moments' and incidents in the life of his characters most suitable for representation; the Claude, for the almost photographic truth of his reproductions of Scottish scenery.

That Ramsay was influenced by the spirit of his age cannot be denied, but he was sufficiently strong, both intellectually and imaginatively, to yield to that influence only so far as it was helpful to him in the inspiration of his great work, but to resist it when it would have imposed the fetters of an absurd mannerism upon the 'machinery' and the 'atmosphere' of his pastoral. The last decades of the seventeenth, and the first two or three of the eighteenth centuries, were periods when pastoral poetry was in fashion. Italian and French literary modes were supreme. Modern pastoral may be said to have taken its rise in the _Admetus_ of Boccaccio; in the introductory act of the _Orfeo_ of Politian, written in 1475, and termed _Pastorale_, and in the _Arcadia_ of Jacopo Sanazzara. But, according to Dr. Burney, the first complete pastoral drama prepared for the stage was the _Sacrificio Favola Pastorale_ of Agostino de Beccari, afterwards published in _Il Parna.s.so Italiano_. They followed the _Aminta_ of Ta.s.so and the _Filli di Sciro_ of Bonarelli in the beginning of the seventeenth century. In Italy and France, thereafter, pastoral became the literary mode for the time being; to Clement Marot, with his _Complaint of Louise of Savoy_, belonging the honour, as Professor Morley says, of producing the first French pastoral. It invaded all the fine arts,--music, painting, sculpture, romance, were all in turn conquered by it. From France it spread to England and to Scotland, and thereafter a flood of shepherds and shepherdesses, of Strephons and Chloes, of Damons, Phyllises, and Delias, spread over literature, of which the evidences in England are Spenser's _Shepherds' Calendar_, Sidney's _Arcadia_; and in Scotland, Robert Henryson's _Robene and Makyne_. Nor did Milton disdain this form for his _Lycidas_; Pope also affected it, as well as Ambrose Philips; while, under the t.i.tle of _The Shepherd's Week_, Gay produced one of the most charming of his many charming works, in which our age, by consigning them to oblivion, has deliberately deprived itself of genuine poetic enjoyment. To the extent of the name, and of that only, was Ramsay influenced by his time. As regards all else he struck out a new line altogether.

With regard to the _locale_ where Ramsay laid the scene of the drama, two places have laid claim to it; the first, and the least probable, being situate near Glencorse, about seven miles from Edinburgh; the second, one and a half miles from the village of Carlops, about twelve miles distant from the metropolis, and five farther on from the first-mentioned spot. The balance of probability lies strongly in favour of the Carlops 'scene.' In the first named, only the waterfall and one or two minor details can be identified as corresponding to the natural features of the scenery in the poem; in the second, every feature named by Ramsay is full in view. Here are 'the harbour-craig,' 'the trottin'

burnie,' 'the little linn' making 'a singin' din,' 'the twa birks,'

'the pool breast-deep,' 'the washing-green,' 'the loan,' 'Glaud's onstead,' 'Symon's house,' 'the craigy bield,' 'Habbie's Howe' or house, and many others. Another strong point is that in Act ii. scene 2 of _The Gentle Shepherd_, Glaud threatens to set his biggest peat-stack on fire, through sheer joy over Sir William Worthy's prospective return. Around the Glencorse site for the action of the drama, there is not a peat to be dug in the whole parish; at the Carlops 'scene,' peat is the staple fuel of the district. Near by, also, is Newhall, the estate which in Ramsay's days was in possession of the Forbes family, who had purchased it from Dr. Pennecuik, the author of the _Description of Tweeddale_ and other works. John Forbes of Newhall was one of Ramsay's dearest friends, and many relics of the poet are still preserved at the mansion house; but it was with the Pennecuik family Ramsay a.s.sociated his poem. In _The Gentle Shepherd_, Sir William Worthy is described as having had to fly into exile--

'Our brave good master, wha sae wisely fled, And left a fair estate to save his head; Because, ye ken fu' weel, he bravely chose To stand his liege's friend wi' great Montrose.'

Newhall was purchased by Dr. Pennecuik's father two years before Charles I. was beheaded. The doctor himself was contemporary with Cromwell, Montrose, Monk, and Charles II., all of whom appear so distinctly in the pastoral as a.s.sociated with the action of the piece. He had to go into hiding during the Commonwealth, for his support of Charles I., and for sheltering Montrose after the battle of Philiphaugh. Pennecuik the younger (great-grandson of the doctor), in his _Life of Ramsay_, states that the poet appeared to have been indebted to Dr. Pennecuik for the _Story of the Knight_, but to have drawn the character from that of his friend Sir David Forbes.

The issue of the successive editions of _The Gentle Shepherd_, though occupying a large share of his time not engrossed by the cares of business, did not altogether preclude him from writing some fresh pieces when occasion arose. In 1727 appeared a 'Masque,' which was performed at the celebration of the nuptials of James, Duke of Hamilton, and the Lady Ann Cochrane. In this form of poetry Ramsay revived a good old type very popular amongst the Elizabethan poets and dramatists, and even descending down to the days of Milton, whose _Masque of Comus_ is the n.o.blest specimen of this kind of composition in modern literature.

Ramsay's _dramatis personae_ are rather a motley crew, but on the whole he succeeds in managing the dialogue of his G.o.ds, and G.o.ddesses very creditably, though any admirer of his genius can see it moves on stilts under such circ.u.mstances. _The Pastoral Epithalamium_ upon the marriage of George Lord Ramsay and Lady Jean Maule is of a less ambitious cast, both as regards form and thought; the consequence being, that the poet succeeds admirably in expressing the ideas proper to the occasion, when he was not bound by the fetters of an unfamiliar rhythm.

Ramsay's later poems had in turn attained, numerically speaking, to such bulk as fairly ent.i.tled him to consider the practicability of issuing a second quarto volume, containing all of value he had written between 1721 and 1728. From all quarters came requests for him so to do.

Therefore, towards the close of 1728 he issued his second volume of collected poems. The interest awakened by _The Gentle Shepherd_ still burned with a clear and steady glow. From this fact, gratifying, indeed, as regards the proximate success of the individual book, but prophetic also in an ultimate sense of the stability of reputation to be his lot in the republic of letters, he concluded, as he says in one of his letters to the Clerks of Penicuik, 'to regard himself as ane o' the national bards of Scotland.' That he was justified in doing so, the future amply testified.

The realisation that he had now won for himself a permanent place in the literature of his land operated, however, rather injuriously upon the continued fecundity of his genius. He became timorous of further appeals to the public, lest he should injure his fame. Allan Ramsay, in his own eyes, became Ramsay's most dreaded rival. At length he deliberately adopted the resolution that the better part of valour was discretion, and that he would tempt fortune in verse no more. With the exception of his poetical epistle to the Lords of Session, and his volume of metrical _Fables_, Ramsay's poetical career was completed. Henceforth he was occupied in preparing the successive editions of his _Works_ and of the _Tea-Table Miscellany_, and in compiling his collection of _Scots Proverbs_.