The Gentle Shepherd: A Pastoral Comedy Part 2

[Footnote 11: Unwilling.]

[Footnote 12: Shaking.]

[Footnote 13: Stretching.]

"I am, sir, your friend and servant,

"ALLAN RAMSAY."]

He now therefore intermeddled no longer with the anxieties of authorship, but sat down in the easy chair of his celebrity to enjoy his laurels and his profits. After a lapse of six years of silence, and of happiness, his ardour for dramatic exhibitions involved him in some circ.u.mstances of perplexity, attended, it is believed, with pecuniary loss. As Edinburgh possessed as yet no fixed place for the exhibition of the drama, he endeavoured to supply that deficiency to the citizens, by building, at his own expense a theatre in Carrubber's-close. Shortly after, the Act for licensing the stage was pa.s.sed, which at once blasted all his hopes of pleasure and advantage; for, the Magistrates availing themselves of the power entrusted to them by the Act, shewed no indulgence to the author of the Gentle Shepherd, but, in the true spirit of that puritanism which reckons as unG.o.dly all jollity of heart, and relaxation of countenance, they shut up his theatre, leaving the citizens without exhilaration, and our poet without redress. This was not all; he was a.s.sailed with the satirical mockery of his laughter-hating enemies, who turned against him his own weapons of poetical raillery. Pamphlets appeared, ent.i.tled, "The flight of religious piety from Scotland, upon the account of Ramsay's lewd books, and the h.e.l.l-bred playhouse comedians, who debauch all the faculties of the soul of our rising generation;"--"A looking-gla.s.s for Allan Ramsay;"--"The dying words of Allan Ramsay." These maligners, in the bitterness of their sanctimonious resentments, reproached him with "having acquired wealth,"--with "possessing a fine house,"--with "having raised his kin to high degree;" all which vilifications must have carried along with them some secret and sweet consolations into the bosom of our bard.

Amid the perplexities caused by the suppression of his theatre, he applied by a poetical pet.i.tion to his friend the Honourable Duncan Forbes, then Lord President of the Court of Session, in order that he might obtain some compensation for his expenses; but with what success is not recorded by any of his biographers.

His theatrical adventure being thus unexpectedly crushed, he devoted himself to the duties of his shop, and the education of his children.

He sent in 1736 his son Allan to Rome, there to study that art by which he rose to such eminence. In the year 1743 he lost his wife, who was buried on the 28th of March in the cemetery of the Greyfriars. He built, probably about this time, a whimsical house of an octagon form, on the north side of the Castle-hill, where his residence is still known by the name of Ramsay-Garden. [The site of this house was selected with the taste of a poet and the judgment of a painter. It commanded a reach of scenery probably not surpa.s.sed in Europe, extending from the mouth of the Forth on the east to the Grampians on the west, and stretching far across the green hills of Fife to the north; embracing in the including s.p.a.ce every variety of beauty, of elegance, and of grandeur.[14]] This house he deemed a paragon of architectural invention. He showed it with exultation to the late Lord Elibank, telling his Lordship at the same time, that the wags of the town likened it to a "goose-pye:" "Indeed, Allan," replied his Lordship, "now that I see you in it, I think it is well named."

[Footnote 14: Chambers' Scottish Biographical Dictionary.]

Having for several years before his death retired from business, he gave himself up in this fantastical dwelling to the varied amus.e.m.e.nts of reading, conversation, and the cultivation of his garden. Being now "loose frae care and strife," he enjoyed, in the calmness and happiness of a philosophical old age, all the fruits of his many and well rewarded labours. A considerable part of every summer was spent in the country with his friends, of whom he had many, distinguished both for talents and rank. The chief of these were, Sir Alexander d.i.c.k of Prestonfield, and Sir John Clerk of Pennycuik, one of the Barons of Exchequer, a gentleman who united taste to scholarship, and had patronized and befriended Ramsay from the beginning. This amiable gentleman died in 1756, a loss which must have been severely felt by our Poet, and which he himself did not long survive. He had been afflicted for some time with a s...o...b..tic complaint in his gums, which after depriving him of his teeth, and consuming part of the jaw-bone, at last put an end to his sufferings and his existence on the 7th of January, 1758, in the 72d year of his age. He was interred in the cemetery of Greyfriars' church on the 9th of that month, and in the record of mortality he is simply called, "Allan Ramsay, Poet, who died of old age."

Of his person, Ramsay has given us a minute and pleasant description.

He was about five feet four inches high,

"A blackavic'd[15] snod[16] dapper fallow, Nor lean, nor overlaid with tallow."

[Footnote 15: Of a dark complexion.]

[Footnote 16: Neat.]

He is described by those who knew him towards the latter part of his life, as a squat man, with a belly rather portly, and a countenance full of smiles and good humour. He wore a round goodly wig rather short. His disposition may be easily collected from his writings. He possessed that happy Horatian temperament of mind, that forbids, for its own ease, all entrance to the painful and irascible pa.s.sions. He was a man rather of pleasantry and laughter, than of resentment and moody malignancy. His enemies, of whom he had some, he did not deem so important as on their account to ruffle his peace of mind, by indulging any reciprocal hostility, by which they would have been flattered. He was kind, benevolent, cheerful; possessing, like Burns, great susceptibility for social joys, but regulating his indulgences more by prudence, and less impetuous and ungovernable than the impa.s.sioned poet of Ayrshire. By his genius he elevated himself to the notice of all those of his countrymen who possessed either rank or talents; but these attentions proceeded spontaneously from their admiration of his talents, and were not courted by any servilities or unworthy adulations. Never drawn from business by the seductions of the bowl, or the invitations of the great, he consulted his own respect, and the comfort of his family, by attending to the duties of his shop, which so faithfully and liberally rewarded him. His vanity (that const.i.tutional failing of all bards) is apparent in many of his writings, but it is seasoned with playfulness and good humour. He considered, indeed, that "pride in poets is nae sin," and on one occasion jocularly challenges superiority in the temple of Fame, even to Peter the Great of Russia, by saying, "But haud, proud Czar, I wadna niffer[17] fame."--He is called by Mr. William Tytler, who enjoyed his familiarity, "an honest man, and of great pleasantry."

[Footnote 17: Exchange.]

Of learning he had but little, yet he understood Horace faintly in the original; a congenial author, with whom he seems to have been much delighted, and in the perusal of whose writings he was a.s.sisted by Ruddiman. He read French, but knew nothing of Greek. He did not, however, like Burns, make an appearance of vilifying that learning of which he was so small a partaker; he bewailed his "own little knowledge of it;" and, like the Ayrshire bard, he was sufficiently ostentatious and pedantic in the display of what little he possessed.

He composed his verses with little effort or labour; his poetry seems to have evaporated lightly and airily from the surface of a mind always jocose and at its ease. And as _it lightly came_, he was wont to say, _so it lightly went_; for after composition, he dismissed it from his mind without further care or anxiety.

In 1759 an elegant obelisk was erected to the memory of Ramsay, by Sir James Clerk, at his family-seat of Pennycuik, containing the following inscription:

Allano Ramsay, Poetae egregio, Qui Fatis concessit VII. Jan. MDCCLVIII.

Amico paterno et suo, Monumentum inscribi jussit D. Jacobus Clerk.

Anno MDCCLIX.

At Woodhouselee, near the [supposed] scene of the Gentle Shepherd,[18]

a rustic temple was dedicated, by the late learned and accomplished Lord Woodhouselee, with the Inscription

ALLANO RAMSAY, et Genio Loci.

[Footnote 18: "According to Mr. Tytler, this supposition is founded in error; and the estate of New Hall in the parish of Pennycuik, was to a certainty the legitimate parent of the pastoral. This fact has been since farther confirmed, in a dissertation[19] from the elegant pen of Sir David Rae, Lord Justice-Clerk; a descendant of Sir David Forbes, proprietor of New Hall, and contemporary of Ramsay. Even without such respectable evidence, however, we would inevitably be led to the same conclusion, by the poet's well known acquaintance with the natural beauties of the landscape at New Hall, where he was a constant and welcome visitor; and because within the boundaries of that fine estate, there is actually to be found all the peculiar scenery, so graphically and beautifully described in the drama."

(Gentle Shepherd, edition of 1828.)]

[Footnote 19: Sir John Sinclair's Statistical account of Scotland; Vol. XVII., appendix.]

REMARKS ON THE WRITINGS OF ALLAN RAMSAY.

BY W. TENNANT.

Of Ramsay's Poems, the largest, and that on which his fame chiefly rests, is his _Gentle Shepherd_. Though some of his smaller poems contain pa.s.sages of greater smartness, yet its more general interest as a whole, and the uniformity of talent visible in its scenes, render it one of the finest specimens of his genius. We have no hesitation in a.s.serting, that it is one of the best pastoral dramas in the wide circle of European literature; an excellent production in a department of writing in which the English language has as yet nothing to boast of. While other modern tongues have been enriching themselves with pastoral, the English, copious in all other kinds, continues, in this, barren and deficient. No English production, therefore, can enter into compet.i.tion with the Gentle Shepherd. We must look to the south of Europe for similar and rival productions, with which it can be compared. The shepherd plays of Ta.s.so, and Guarini, and Bonarelli, contain more invention, and splendour, and variety of incident and of dialogue, than our Scottish drama; but they have also more conceit and flimsiness of sentiment, more artifice of language, more unnatural and discordant contrivance of fable. _In its plot_, the Gentle Shepherd is simple and natural, founded on a story whose circ.u.mstances, if they did not really happen, are at least far within the compa.s.s of verisimilitude. Its development is completed by means interesting but probable, without the intervention of G.o.ds, or satyrs, or oracles, or such heathenish and preposterous machinery. _The characters_ of the Gentle Shepherd are all framed by the hand of one evidently well acquainted with rural life and manners. They are not the puling, sickly, and unimpressive phantoms that people the bowers of Italian pastoral; they are lively, stirring creatures, bearing in their countenances the hardy lineaments of the country, and expressing themselves with a plainness, and downright sincerity, with which every mind sympathizes. They are rustics, it is true, but they are polished, not only by their proximity to the metropolis, but by the influence of the princ.i.p.al shepherd, who, besides the gentility of blood that operates in his veins,

----also reads and speaks, With them that kens them, Latin words and Greeks.

The situations in which the persons are placed are so ingeniously devised, as to draw forth from their bosoms all those feelings and pa.s.sions which accompany the shepherd, life, and which are described with a happiness and a simplicity, the truer to nature, on account of its being removed from that over-wrought outrageousness of pa.s.sion which we sometimes think is the fault of modern writing. The tenderness of correspondent affections,--the hesitation and anxiety of a timid lover,--the mutual bliss on the mutual discovery of long concealed attachment,--the uneasiness of jealousy, with the humorous and condign punishment of its evil devices,--the fidelity of the shepherd notwithstanding his elevation to an unexpected rank,--the general happiness that crowns, and winds up the whole, are all impressively and vividly delineated.

With regard to _its sentiments_, the Gentle Shepherd has nothing to be ashamed of; though in a very few places coa.r.s.e, the thoughts are nowhere impure; they have somewhat of the purity of Gesner, with rather more vivacity and vigour. There is no affectation; every character thinks as country people generally do, artlessly, and according to nature. With regard to _its language_, we know not whether to say much, or to say little. Much has been already said, to redeem from the charge of vulgarity a language once courtly and dignified, but now a.s.sociated with meanness of thought, and rudeness of manners. We do not think it necessary, however, to stand up in defence of a dialect which has, since the days of Ramsay, been enn.o.bled by the poems of Burns, and is eternized more lately in the tales of that mighty genius, who sits on the summit of Northern Literature, and flashes forth from behind his cloud his vivid and his fiery productions. In the use of this dialect, Ramsay is extremely fortunate; for Scottish shepherds he could have employed none other; and he wields his weapon with a dexterity which we do not think has been since exceeded. Out of his own familiar language, he is indeed heavy and wearisome; English armour is too c.u.mbrous for him; he cannot move in it with grace and activity. We find, accordingly, that in his Gentle Shepherd the most unskilful pa.s.sages are in English, without beauty or energy; whereas his Scottish has in it a felicity which has rendered it popular with all ranks, and caused his verses to pa.s.s with proverbial currency among the peasants of his native country.

Next in value to his Gentle Shepherd, we think, are his imitations of Horace. To this good-humoured author Ramsay had, from congeniality of mind, a strong predilection; and he in some places has fully equalled, if not surpa.s.sed, his prototype in happy hits of expression. Pope himself is not so fortunate. Take for instance,

Daring and unco stout he was, With heart _hool'd in three sloughs_[20] of bra.s.s, Wha ventur'd first on the rough sea, With _hempen branks_,[21] _and horse of tree_.

Again,

Be sure ye dinna quat the grip O' ilka joy when ye are young, Before auld age your vitals nip, And _lay ye twafald o'er a rung_.[22]

[Footnote 20: Coats.]

[Footnote 21: A sort of bridle.]

[Footnote 22: A stout staff.]

In his _Vision_ there is more grandeur, and a nearer approach to sublimity than in any other of his poems. He is indeed, here, superior to himself, and comes nearer to the strength and splendour of Dunbar, whose antiquated style he copied. The 5th stanza may be a specimen.

Grit[23] daring dart.i.t frae his ee, A braid-sword schogled[24]at his thie,[25]

On his left arm a targe; A shinnand[26] speir filld his richt hand, Of stalwart[27] mak, in bane and brawnd, Of just proportions large; A various rainbow-colourt plaid Owre[28] his left spawl[29] he threw, Doun his braid back, frae his quhyte[30] heid, The silver wymplers[31] grew.

[Footnote 23: Great.]

[Footnote 24: Dangled.]

[Footnote 25: Thigh.]

[Footnote 26: Shining]

[Footnote 27: Strong.]