'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 classes, by titled 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 appetite. 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 space 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 title 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 associated. 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 Tasso, 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, pricks 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 pass 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 space 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
passing 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 sexless 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 Parnasso
Italiano_. They followed the _Aminta_ of Tasso 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 title 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 associated 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 associated 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
noblest 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 gods, and goddesses very
creditably, though any admirer of his genius can see it moves on stilts
under such circumstances. _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 entitled 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_.