The Gentle Shepherd: A Pastoral Comedy Part 7

JOHN PINKERTON. 1786.

"ALLAN RAMSAY. The convivial buffoonery of this writer has acquired him a sort of reputation, which his poetry by no means warrants; being far beneath the middling, and showing no spark of genius. Even his buffoonery is not that of a tavern, but that of an ale-house.

"The _Gentle Shepherd_ all now allow the sole foundation of his fame.

Let us put it in the furnace a little; for, if it be gold, it will come out the purer. Dr. Beattie, in his Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition, observes, that the effect of the Gentle Shepherd is ludicrous from the contrast between meanness of phrase, and dignity or seriousness of sentiment. This is not owing to its being written in the Scotish dialect, now left to the peasantry, as that ingenious writer thinks; for the first part of Hardyknute, written in that very dialect, strikes every English reader as sublime and pathetic to the highest degree. In fact this glaring defect proceeds from Allan Ramsay's own character as a buffoon, so evident from all his poems, and which we all know he bore in private life; and from Allan's total ignorance of the Scotish tongue, save that spoken by the mob of Mid Lothian. It is well known that a comic actor of the Shuter or Edwin cla.s.s, though highly meritorious in his line, yet, were he to appear in any save _queer_ characters, the effect would even be more ludicrous than when he was in his proper parts, from the contrast of the man with his a.s.sumed character. This applies also to authors; for Sterne's sermons made us laugh, though there was nothing laughable in them: and, had Rabelais, or Sterne, written a pastoral opera, though the reader had been ignorant of their characters, still a something, a je ne scai quoi, in the phraseology, would have ever provoked laughter. But this effect Ramsay has even pushed further; for, by his entire ignorance of the Scotish tongue, save that spoken by the mob around him, he was forced to use the very phraseology of the merest vulgar, rendered yet more ridiculous by his own turn to low humour; being himself indeed one of the mob, both in education and in mind. So that putting such _queer_ language into the mouth of respectable characters--nay, pretending to clothe sentiments, pathos, and all that, with such phraseology--his whole Gentle Shepherd has the same effect as a gentleman would have who chose to drive sheep on the highway with a harlequin's coat on. This radical defect at once throws the piece quite out of the cla.s.s of good compositions.

"Allan was indeed so much a _poet_, that in his _Evergreen_ he even puts rhyming t.i.tles to the old poems he publishes; and by this silly idea, and his own low character, has stamped a kind of ludicrous hue on the old Scotish poetry, of which he pretended to be a publisher, that even now is hardly eradicated, though many editors of great learning and high respectability have arisen.

"I have been the fuller on this subject, because, to the great discredit of taste in Scotland, while we admire the effusions of this scribbler, we utterly neglect our really great poets, such as Barbour, Dunbar, Drummond, &c. There is even a sort of national prejudice in favour of the Gentle Shepherd, because it is our only drama in the Scotish language; yet we ought to be ashamed to hold prejudices so ridiculous to other nations, and so obnoxious to taste, and just criticism. I glory in Scotland as my native country; and, while I try to root up all other prejudices out of my mind, shall ever nourish my partiality to my country; as, if that be a prejudice, it has been esteemed an honest and a laudable one in all ages; and is, indeed, the only prejudice perfectly consonant to reason, and vindicable by truth.

But Scotland has no occasion to recur to false history, false taste, false science, or false honours of any kind. In the severest light of truth she will stand very conspicuous. Her sons, in trying to adorn her, have shown remarkable defects of judgment. The ancient history of the Picts, so splendid in the page of Tacitus, is lost in our own fables. We neglect all our great poets, and are in raptures with Allan Ramsay. Our prejudices are as pitiful as strong; and we know not that the truth would make us far more ill.u.s.trious, than all our dreams of prejudice, if _realized_, to use an expression of impossibility. Good sense in antiquities, and good taste in poetry, are astonishingly wanting in Scotland to this hour."[49]

[Footnote 49: Ancient Scotish Poems. Vol. I. London, 1786.]

JOSEPH RITSON. 1794.

"Ramsay was a man of strong natural parts, and a fine poetical genius, of which his celebrated _pastoral_ The Gentle Shepherd will ever remain a substantial monument; and though some of his songs may be deformed by far-fetched allusions and pitiful conceits, _The La.s.s of Patie's Mill_, _The Yellow-hair'd Laddie_, _Farewell to Lochaber_, and some others, must be allowed equal to any, and even superior, in point of pastoral simplicity, to most lyric productions, either in the Scotish or any other language."[50]

[Footnote 50: Ritson's Hist. Essay on Scotish Song, p. lxiii.]

WILLIAM ROSCOE. 1795.

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

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

THOMAS CAMPBELL. 1819.

"The admirers of the Gentle Shepherd, must perhaps be contented to share some suspicion of national partiality, while they do justice to their own feeling of its merit. Yet as this drama is a picture of rustic Scotland, it would perhaps be saying little for its fidelity, if it yielded no more agreeableness to the breast of a native than he could expound to a stranger by the strict letter of criticism. We should think the painter had finished the likeness of a mother very indifferently, if it did not bring home to her children traits of undefinable expression which had escaped every eye but that of familiar affection. Ramsay had not the force of Burns; but, neither, in just proportion to his merits, is he likely to be felt by an English reader. The fire of Burns' wit and pa.s.sion glows through an obscure dialect by its confinement to short and concentrated bursts.

The interest which Ramsay excites is spread over a long poem, delineating manners more than pa.s.sions; and the mind must be at home both in the language and manners, to appreciate the skill and comic archness with which he has heightened the display of rustic character without giving it vulgarity, and refined the view of peasant life by situations of sweetness and tenderness, without departing in the least degree from its simplicity. The Gentle Shepherd stands quite apart from the general pastoral poetry of modern Europe. It has no satyrs, nor featureless simpletons, nor drowsy and still landscapes of nature, but distinct characters and amusing incidents. The princ.i.p.al shepherd never speaks out of consistency with the habits of a peasant, but he moves in that sphere with such a manly spirit, with so much cheerful sensibility to its humble joys, with maxims of life so rational and independent, and with an ascendency over his fellow swains so well maintained by his force of character, that if we could suppose the pacific scenes of the drama to be suddenly changed into situations of trouble and danger, we should, in exact consistency with our former idea of him, expect him to become the leader of the peasants, and the Tell of his native hamlet. Nor is the character of his mistress less beautifully conceived. She is represented, like himself, as elevated, by a fortunate discovery, from obscure to opulent life, yet as equally capable of being the ornament of either.

A Richardson or a D'Arblay, had they continued her history, might have heightened the portrait, but they would not have altered its outline.

Like the poetry of Ta.s.so and Ariosto, that of the Gentle Shepherd is engraven on the memory of its native country. Its verses have pa.s.sed into proverbs and it continues to be the delight and solace of the peasantry whom it describes."[52]

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

LEIGH HUNT. 1848.

"Poetical expression in humble life is to be found all over the south.

In the instances of Burns, Ramsay, and others, the north also has seen it. Indeed, it is not a little remarkable, that Scotland, which is more northern than England, and possesses not even a nightingale, has had more of it than its southern neighbour."

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

"Allan Ramsay's poem is not only a probable and pleasing story, containing charming pictures, much knowledge of life, and a good deal of quiet humour, but in some respects it may be called cla.s.sical, if by cla.s.sical is meant ease, precision, and unsuperfluousness of style.

Ramsay's diction is singularly straightforward, seldom needing the a.s.sistance of inversions; and he rarely says anything for the purpose of 'filling up;'--two freedoms from defect the reverse of vulgar and commonplace; nay, the reverse of a great deal of what pretends to be fine writing, and is received as such. We confess we never tire of dipping into it, 'on and off,' any more than into Fletcher or Milton, or into Theocritus himself, who, for the union of something higher with true pastoral, is unrivalled in short pieces. The Gentle Shepherd is not a forest, nor a mountain-side, nor Arcady; but it is a field full of daisies, with a brook in it, and a cottage 'at the sunny end;'

and this we take to be no mean thing, either in the real or the ideal world. Our Jar of Honey may well lie for a few moments among its heather, albeit filled with Hybla. There are bees, 'look you,' in Habbie's How. Theocritus and Allan shake hands over a shepherd's pipe.

Take the beginning of Scene ii., Act i., both for description and dialogue:--

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

JENNY.

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

PEGGY.

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

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

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

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

At setting day, and rising morn, With soul that still shall love thee, I'll ask of Heaven thy safe return, With all that can improve thee.

I'll visit aft the Birken Bush, Where first thou kindly told me Sweet tales of love, _and hid my blush, Whilst round thou didst enfold me_.

'To all our haunts I will repair, By Greenwood-shaw or fountain; Or where the summer-day I'd share With thee upon yon mountain.

There will I tell the trees and flowers, From thoughts unfeign'd and tender, _By vows_ you're mine, _by love_ is yours A heart which cannot wander.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

London, 1848.]

ANECDOTE OF LADY STRANGE.

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

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