Allan Ramsay Part 9

The last scene of the pastoral contains the _denouement_. 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 a.s.signs their _mailings_ (farms) in perpetual feu, while Roger is made his chamberlain. As the curtain then descends over general happiness, Sir William p.r.o.nounces 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 s.e.x'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 s.e.x are delicately yet incisively portrayed, while the staunch fidelity of Symon, the cheery chirpiness of Glaud, the bucolic ignorance and superst.i.tion of Bauldy, the cankered impatience of Madge--a spinster against her will, and the pathetic, age-worn weariness of Mause, are depicted with the a.s.sured hand of a master. Many of the lyrics interspersed throughout the pastoral are gems of rustic song; not high-cla.s.s 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 mult.i.tude 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 c.o.c.k had crawn, Begoud to rax and rift; And greedy wives, wi' girning thrawn, Cry'd "La.s.ses, up to thrift"; Dogs barked, 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 unsurpa.s.sed 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 _metier_. 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.

CHAPTER XI

RAMSAY AS A SATIRIST AND A SONG-WRITER

Difficult it is to make any exact cla.s.sification of Ramsay's works, inasmuch as he frequently applied cla.s.s-names to poems to which they were utterly inapplicable. Thus many of his elegies and epistles were really satires, while more than one of those poems he styled satires were rather of an epic character than anything else. By the reader, therefore, certain shortcomings in cla.s.sification must be overlooked, as Ramsay's poetical terminology (if the phrase be permissible) was far from being exact.

As I have previously remarked, Ramsay's studies in poetry, in addition to the earlier Scottish verse, had lain largely in the later Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline periods. In these, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, and Pope were his favourites, and their influence is to be traced throughout his satires. To Boileau he had paid some attention, though his acquaintance with French literature was more through the medium of translations, than by drawing directly from the fountainhead.

Ramsay's satires exhibit all the virtues of correct mediocrity. Their versification is smooth, and they generally scan accurately: the ideas are expressed pithily, at times epigrammatically and wittily. The faults and foibles satirised in most cases are those that richly merited the satiric lash. Yet, all these merits granted, the reader feels something to be lacking. The reason is not far to seek. Ramsay never felt at home in what may be termed 'polished satire.' He was as much out of place as would a low comedian on being suddenly called upon to undertake 'drawing-room comedy.' Perpetually would he feel the inclination to rap out one of the rousing, though vulgar, jokes that inevitably evoked a roar of applause from the gallery, and sooner or later he would give way to it. Ramsay was in precisely the same position. The consequence is that in the _Morning Interview_, professedly an imitation of Pope's _Rape of the Lock_, there are incongruous images introduced, for the purpose of relieving the piece by humorous comparisons, which offend the taste even of the most cursory reader. Such allusions as that to 'soft fifteen on her feet-washing night,' and others of a cognate character, are entirely out of place in 'polished satire.' If he attempted the type of composition, he ought to have conformed to its rules.

Of course, Ramsay wrote certain satires, _The Last Speech of a Wretched Miser_ and the like, in the Scots vernacular, and addressed to the lower cla.s.ses in the community, where his genius is seen at its best, because dealing with 'low-life satire' and the types of character he loved most of all to paint. But his _Wealth or the Woody_, his _Health_--a poem addressed to Lord Stair, his _Scribblers Lashed_, _The General Mistake_, _The Epistle to Lord Ramsay_, and the _Rise and Fall of Stocks in 1720_, exhibit Ramsay's genius moving in fetters. His touch lacks piquancy and epigrammatic incisiveness,--lacks, too, that determinate deftness so characteristic of Horace, as well as those subtle _nuances_ of double-meaning wherein Pope and Arbuthnot excelled, and of which the latter's terrible 'Epitaph on Colonel Chartres' is a favourable example.

Ramsay hits with the hammer of Thor, when he should tap as lightly as 'twere reproof administered by a fair one with her fan. Witness his portrait of Talpo in _Health_--a poem in many respects one of Ramsay's best. With what airy satiric touches Pope or Gay would have dashed off the character. Note the laboured strokes wherewith Ramsay produces his picture--

'But Talpo sighs with matrimonial cares, His cheeks wear wrinkles, silver grow his hairs, Before old age his health decays apace, And very rarely smiles clear up his face.

Talpo's a fool, there's hardly help for that, He scarcely knows himself what he'd be at.

He's avaricious to the last degree, And thinks his wife and children make too free With his dear idol; this creates his pain, And breeds convulsions in his narrow brain.

He's always startled at approaching fate, And often jealous of his virtuous mate; Is ever anxious, shuns his friends to save: Thus soon he'll fret himself into a grave; There let him rot'--

But Ramsay's distinguishing and saving characteristic in satire was the breadth and felicity of his humour. To satire, however, humour is less adapted than wit, and of wit Ramsay had, in a comparative sense, but a scanty endowment. He was not one of those who could say smart things, though he could depict a humorous episode or situation as felicitously as anyone of his age. Like Rabelais, he was a humorist, not a wit, and his satires suffered accordingly. Perhaps the best of his satires is _The Last Speech of a Wretched Miser_, wherein his humour becomes bitingly sardonic. The wretch's address to his pelf is very powerful--

'O dool! and am I forced to dee, And nae mair my dear siller see, That glanced sae sweetly in my e'e!

It breaks my heart!

My gold! my bonds! alackanie That we should part.

Like Tantalus, I lang have stood, Chin-deep into a siller flood; Yet ne'er was able for my blood, But pain and strife, To ware ae drap on claiths or food, To cherish life.'

Different, indeed, is the case when we come to consider Ramsay as a song-writer and a lyrist. To him the former t.i.tle rather than the latter is best applicable. This is not the place to note the resemblances and the differences between the French _chanson_, the German _lied_, the Italian _canzone_, and the English song or lyric. But as indicating a distinction between the two last terms, Mr. F. T. Palgrave, in the introduction to his invaluable _Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics_, regards a 'lyric' as a poem turning on 'some single thought, feeling, or situation'; Mr. H. M. Posnett, in his thoughtful volume on _Comparative Literature_, remarks that the lyric has varied from sacred or magical hymns and odes of priest bards, only fulfilling their purpose when sung, and perhaps never consigned to writing at all, down to written expressions of individual feeling from which all accompaniments of dance or music have been severed. But approximately defined, a lyric may be said to be a poem--short, vivid, and expressive of a definite emotion, appealing more to the eye than with any ultimate view of being set to music; a song, as a composition appealing more to the ear, wherein the sentiments are more leisurely expressed, with the intention of being accompanied by music. Mr. E. H. Stoddard, in the preface to his _English Madrigals_, defines a lyric 'as a simple, unstudied expression of thought, sentiment, or pa.s.sion; a song, its expression according to the mode of the day.' The essence of a lyric is point, grace, and symmetry; of a song, fluency, freedom, and the expression of sympathetic emotions.

Ramsay, according to this basis of distinction, was, as has been said, rather a song-writer than a lyrist. The works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ma.s.singer, abound in lyrics, but contain comparatively few songs, in the modern sense of the word, in which we speak of the songs of Burns, Moore, and Barry Cornwall. Ramsay, in his songs, sacrificed everything to mode. In nine cases out of ten he had the tune for the song in his mind when he was writing the words. In Scotland, as is well known, there is an immense body of music, some of it ancient, some of it comparatively modern, though none of it much later than the Restoration. That was the mine wherein Ramsay dug long and deep for the music for his _Tea-Table Miscellany_. To those ancient tunes he supplied words--words that to this day remain as a memorial of the skill and sympathy wherewith he wedded the spirit of the melodies to language in keeping with their national character.

To a _soupcon_ of diffuseness the poet must, however, plead guilty--guilty, moreover, because of the invincible temptation to pad out a line now and then 'for crambo's sake' when the ideas ran short.

Ramsay possessed all the qualities const.i.tuting a song-writer of great and varied genius. His work exhibits ease and elasticity of rhythm, liquid smoothness of a.s.sonance, sympathetic beauty of thought, with subtle skill in wedding sense to sound. Though his verse lacked the dainty finish of Herrick and Waller, the brilliant facet-like sparkle of Carew, Suckling, and Lovelace, the tender grace of Sedley, and the half-cynical, half-regretful, but wholly piquant epicureanism, of Rochester and Denham, yet Ramsay had a charm all his own. Witness the 'La.s.s o' Patie's Mill'; is it not entirely _sui generis_?

'The la.s.s o' Patie's Mill, So bonny, blythe, and gay, In spite of all my skill, She stole my heart away.

When tedding of the hay, Bareheaded on the green, Love midst her locks did play, And wantoned in her een.

Her arms, white, round, and smooth, b.r.e.a.s.t.s rising in their dawn, To age it would give youth To press 'em with his hand Thro' all my spirits ran An ecstasy of bliss When I such sweetness fan'

Wrapt in a balmy kiss.

Without the help of art, Like flowers that grace the wild, She did her sweets impart Whene'er she spoke or smil'd.

Her looks they were so mild, Free from affected pride, She me to love beguiled, I wished her for my bride.'

Take also 'Bessy Bell and Mary Gray'; what a rich fancy and charming humour plays throughout the piece, united to a keen knowledge of the human heart--

'O Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, They are twa bonny la.s.ses; They bigg'd a bower on yon burnbrae, And theek'd it o'er with rashes.

Fair Bessy Bell I loo'd yestreen, And thought I ne'er could alter; But Mary Gray's twa pawky e'en, They gar my fancy falter,'

or that verse in his 'Scots Cantata,' with what simplicity, yet with what true pathos, is it not charged?--