RAMSAY AS A PASTORAL POET AND AN ELEGIST
In attempting a critical estimate of the value of Ramsay's works, for
the purpose of analysis it will be most convenient to consider the great
body of his writings under certain classified headings--(1) Ramsay as a
Pastoral Poet and an Elegist; (2) Ramsay as a Satirist and a
Song-writer; (3) Ramsay's Miscellaneous Works.
In the chapter on _The Gentle Shepherd_, we noted the distinctive
constituents of pastoral poetry, as currently defined, and also wherein
Ramsay's principles, as exemplified in practice, differ from those of
other writers of pastoral. To furnish examples illustrative of our
contention is now all that remains to be done. Early in his poetical
career, as soon, in fact, as he had completed his first tentative
efforts, Ramsay seems to have become conscious, with that rare gift of
prevision always distinguishing him, that his strength lay in a
picturesque yet truthful delineation of rural life. His earliest pieces,
although termed elegies, exhibit, rather, many of the characteristics of
pastorals, in the broad humour and in the graphic and vivid colouring
wherewith he depicts the scenes at Maggy Johnston's tavern at
Morningside, or the incidents in the life of Luckie Wood or of Patie
Birnie. But, as he has termed them _elegies_, under that heading let
them be considered, though a humorous or mock elegy is somewhat of a
contradiction in terms.
Roughly classified, Ramsay's pastorals may be stated as follows:--the
dialogues between _Richy_ (Sir Rich. Steele) _and Sandy_ (Alex. Pope),
on the death of Mr. Addison; between _Robert, Richy, and Sandy_, on the
death of Matthew Prior; _Keitha_, on the death of the Countess of
Wigton; an _Ode with a Pastoral Recitative_, on the marriage of James
Earl of Wemyss to Miss Janet Charteris; _A Masque_, performed at the
celebration of the nuptials of James Duke of Hamilton and Lady Ann
Cochrane; _A Pastoral Epithalamium_, on the marriage of George Lord
Ramsay and Lady Jean Maule; _Betty and Kate_, a pastoral farewell to Mr.
Aikman; and finally, _The Gentle Shepherd_.
Of Ramsay's less important pastorals, the distinguishing characteristics
are their simplicity, their tenderness, and their freedom from aught
didactic. In conforming to the conventional idea of pastoral,--the idea,
that is, of the shepherd state being a condition of perfect peace and
Arcadian felicity and propriety,--in place of copying direct from
nature, they one and all differ from _The Gentle Shepherd_. The picture
of burly Sir Richard Steele and of crooked little Alexander Pope, clad
in shepherd's weeds, and masquerading with dogs and pipes and what not,
savours somewhat of the ludicrous. Then, in _Richy and Sandy_, he makes
Pope bewail the death of Addison, with whom he had been on anything but
friendly terms for years previous; while the following picture of the
deceased grave-visaged Secretary of State, in such a position as
described in the following lines, tends to induce us profane Philistines
of these latter days, to smile, if not to sneer--
'A better lad ne'er leaned out o'er a kent,
Nor hounded collie o'er the mossy bent:
Blythe at the bughts how oft hae we three been,
Heartsome on hills, and gay upon the green.'
This, however, was the fashion in vogue, and to it our poet had to
conform. In _Richy and Sandy_, in _Robert, Richy, and Sandy_, and in his
earlier pastorals generally, we seem to see the poet struggling to rid
himself of the conventional prejudices against painting rural nature in
the real, and in favour of 'a golden-age rusticity' purely imaginary.
Not by this is it implied that I claim for our poet the credit of first
insisting on reverting to nature for the study of scenes and character.
The same conviction, according to Lowell, was entertained by Spenser,
and his _Shepherds' Calendar_ was a manifestation, however imperfect and
unsatisfactory, of his desire to hark back to nature for inspiration. In
_Keitha_ the same incongruity, as noted above, is visible. The poem in
question, with that on the _Marriage of the Earl of Wemyss_, can neither
be ranked as conventional pastoral nor as pure pastoral, according to
Ramsay's later style. We note the 'Colins' and 'Ringans,' the
'shepherd's reeds' and 'shepherd's weeds,' and the picture of
----'the singing shepherd on the green
Armyas hight, wha used wi' tunefu' lay
To please the ear when he began to play,'
--an imitation of Milton's immortal lines in _Comus_, which are too well
known to need quotation. All of a piece this with the 'golden-age
pastoral.' In the same poems, however, occur intimations that the
incongruity was perceived by the author, but that, as yet, he did not
see any means of remedying the uniform monotony of the conventional
form. The leaven was at work in Ramsay's mind, but so far it only
succeeded in influencing but the smallest moiety of the lump.
In the _Masque_, written in celebration of the marriage of the Duke of
Hamilton, the sentiments expressed are wholly different. Written
subsequently to _The Gentle Shepherd_, Ramsay exhibited in it his
increased technical deftness, and how much he had profitted by the
experience gained in producing his great pastoral. The _Masque_, albeit
professedly a dramatic pastoral, entirely abjures the lackadaisical
shepherds and shepherdesses of conventional pastoral, and, as a poem of
pure imagination, reverts to the ancient mythology for the _dramatis
personae_.
All these pieces, however, though they exhibit a facility in
composition, a fecundity of imagination, a skilful adaptation of theme
to specific metrical form, a rare human sympathy, and a depth of pathos
as natural in expression as it was genuine in its essence, are only, so
to speak, the preludes to _The Gentle Shepherd_. In the latter, Ramsay's
matured principles of pastoral composition are to be viewed where best
their relative importance can be estimated, namely, when put into
practice.
By competent critics, _The Gentle Shepherd_ is generally conceded to be
the noblest pastoral in the English language. Dr. Hugh Blair, in his
lectures on _Rhetoric and Belles Lettres_, styled it 'a pastoral drama
which will bear being brought into comparison with any composition of
this kind in any language.... It is full of so much natural description
and tender sentiment as would do honour to any poet. The characters are
well drawn, the incidents affecting, the scenery and manners lively and
just.' And one of Dr. Blair's successors in the Chair of Rhetoric and
English Literature in the University of Edinburgh,--a man and a Scotsman
who, in his day, has done more than any other to foster amongst our
youth a love of all that is great and good and beautiful in our
literature; a teacher, too, whose students, whom he has imbued with his
own noble spirit, are scattered over the world, from China to
Peru,--Emeritus-Professor David Masson, has observed in his charming
_Edinburgh Sketches_: 'The poem was received with enthusiastic
admiration. There had been nothing like it before in Scottish
literature, or in any other: nothing so good of any kind that could be
voted even similar; and this was at once the critical verdict.'
To anyone who will carefully compare the _Idylls_ of Theocritus, the
_Eclogues_ of Virgil, and the _Aminta_ of Tasso, with Ramsay's great
poem, the conviction will be driven home,--in the face, it may be, of
many deeply-rooted prejudices,--that the same inspiration which, like a
fiery rivulet, runs through the three former masterpieces, is present
also in the latter--that inspiration being the perfect and unbroken
homogeneity existing between the local atmosphere of the poem and the
characteristics of the _dramatis personae_. This fact it is which renders
the _Aminta_ so imperishable a memorial of Tasso's genus; for it is
Italian pastoral, redolent of the air, and smacking of the very soil of
sunny Italy. The symmetrical perfection of _The Gentle Shepherd_, in
like manner, is due to the fact that the feelings and desires and
impulses of the characters in the pastoral are those distinctively
native and proper to persons in their sphere of life. There is no
dissidence visible between what may imperfectly be termed the _motif_ of
the poem and the sentiments of even the most subordinate characters in
it. Therein lies the true essence of literary symmetry--the symmetry not
alone of mere form, though that also was present, but the symmetry
resulting from the harmony of thought with its expression, of scene and
its characters, of situation and its incidents. Such the symmetry
exhibited by Homer's _Iliad_, by Dante's _Inferno_, by Milton's
_Paradise Lost_, by Cervantes' _Don Quixote_, by Camoens' _Lusiad_, by
Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, by Tennyson's _Idylls_.
Frankly, it must be admitted that only in his _Gentle Shepherd_ does
Ramsay attain this outstanding excellence. His other pieces are
meritorious,--highly so; but they could have been produced by many a
writer of the age with equal, perhaps superior, felicity, and they shine
only in the reflected light of _The Gentle Shepherd_; even as Scott's
_Lord of the Isles_ and _Harold the Dauntless_ were saved from being
'damned as mediocrity' only by the excellence of the _Lay of the Last
Minstrel_ and _Marmion_.
The great charm of _The Gentle Shepherd_ lies in the skilfully-balanced
antithesis of its contrasts, in the reflected interest each type casts
on its opposite. As in Moliere's _Tartuffe_, it is the vivid contrast
created between the hypocrisy of the title-character and the easy
good-nature of Orgon, that begets a reciprocal interest in the fortunes
of both; as in Balzac's _Pere Goriot_, it is the pitiless selfishness of
his three daughters on the one hand, and the doting self-denial of the
poor old father on the other, that throws both sets of characters into
relief so strong: so, in _The Gentle Shepherd_, it is the subtle force
of the contrast between Patie's well-balanced manliness and justifiable
pride, and Roger's _gauche_ bashfulness and depression in the face of
Jenny's coldness; between Peggy's piquant lovableness and maidenly joy
in the knowledge of Patie's love, and Jenny's affected dislike to the
opposite sex to conceal the real state of her feelings towards Roger in
particular, that impart to the poem the vivid interest wherewith its
scenes are perused. Minor contrasts are present too, in the faithfulness
of Patie to Peggy, as compared with the faithlessness of Bauldy to Neps.
The whole drama, in fact, might be styled a beautiful panegyric on
fidelity in love. Such passages as the following are frequent--
'I'd hate my rising fortune, should it move
The fair foundation of our faithfu' love.
If at my feet were crowns and sceptres laid
To bribe my soul frae thee, delightful maid,
For thee I'd soon leave these inferior things
To sic as have the patience to be kings.'
As a pastoral poet, Ramsay excels in painting all those homely virtues
that befit the station to which most of his characters belonged. A
fault, and a serious one, it was among the writers of conventional
pastoral, to make their shepherds and shepherdesses talk like
philosophers, and reason upon all the mysteries of life, death, and
futurity. What reader of Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_, but must have
smiled over the shepherds in that delicious romance discussing love, and
treating of its metaphysical causes and effects, as profoundly as any
----'clerke of Oxenforde also
Who unto logik hadde long y-go.'
The extravagances of conventional pastoral had been keenly satirised by
Gay, who made his Lobbin Clouts and Cloddipoles, his Blowzalinds and
Bowzabees and Bumkinets, in the _Shepherd's Week_, 'talk the language
that is spoken neither by country maiden nor courtly dame; nay, not only
such as in the present time is not uttered, but never was in times past,
and, if I judge aright, will never be uttered in times future.' But by
Ramsay the silliness of the prevailing mode, both of British and French
pastoral, was more aptly satirised, by presenting, as a contrast, a
picture of rural life absolutely truthful in all its details, and thus
slaying falsehood by the sword of truth.
Of _The Gentle Shepherd_, the plot is simplicity itself. It describes
the love of a young Pentland shepherd named Patie for a country maiden
named Peggy. The pastoral drama, the time of whose action is all
embraced within four-and-twenty hours, thus preserving one, at least, of
the Greek dramatic unities as defined by the French critics, opens at
early morning with the two young shepherds, Patie and Roger, feeding
their flocks on the hills, and discussing the progress of their
love-suits. The scene is charmingly realistic and natural. Patie is
happy in his love for Peggy who reciprocates it; Roger, in despair over
his ill-success with 'dorty Jenny.' His friend, however, raises his
spirits by telling him how he once served Peggy when she had a fit of
tantrums, by feigning indifference to her, a course which soon brought
the fair one to reason. He exhorts Roger to adopt the same line,
conveying his counsel in the following terms, that contain excellent
advice to young lovers, and might have given a hint to Burns for his
song, 'Duncan Gray'--
'Dear Roger, when your jo puts on her gloom,
Do ye sae too, and never fash your thumb;
Seem to forsake her, soon she'll change her mood;
Gae woo anither, and she'll gang clean wood.'
Roger agrees to take the advice, and the scene concludes with a
delightful picture of a shepherd's meal--
'But first we'll tak a turn up to the height,
And see gif all our flocks be feeding right;
By that time, bannocks and a shave of cheese
Will make a breakfast that a laird might please,--
Might please the daintiest gabs, were they sae wise
To season meat with health instead of spice.
When we have ta'en the grace-drink at this well,
I'll whistle syne'--
The second scene opens with an exquisite description of
'A flowrie howm between twa verdant braes,
Where lasses use to wash and spread their claes;
A trottin' burnie wimpling through the ground,
Its channel, pebbles, shining, smooth and round.
Here view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear.'
These are Peggy and Jenny. The latter proposes to begin their work on
the 'howm' or green in question, but Peggy entreats her to
Gae farer up the burn to Habbie's How,
Where a' that's sweet in spring and simmer grow;
Between twa birks out o'er a little linn
The water fa's, and makes a singin' din;
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses wi' easy whirles the bordering grass.
We'll end our washing while the morning's cool,
And when the day grows het we'll to the pool,
There wash oursels; 'tis healthfu' now in May,
And sweetly cauler on sae warm a day.'
The girls then enter on a discussion regarding Jenny's cruel
indifference to Roger. The maiden, who by the way is a bit of a prude,
affects to despise love and marriage, but in the end, overcome by
Peggy's beautiful description of conjugal happiness, is obliged to
confess her love for Roger. What more delightful picture of maternal
yearning over the young have we in all English literature, than Peggy's
splendid defence of motherhood?--
'Yes, it's a heartsome thing to be a wife,
When round the ingle-edge young sprouts are rife.
Gif I'm sae happy, I shall have delight
To hear their little plaints, and keep them right.
Wow, Jenny! can there greater pleasure be,
Than see sic wee tots toolying at your knee;
When a' they ettle at,--their greatest wish,
Is to be made of and obtain a kiss?
Can there be toil in tenting day and night
The like of them, when love makes care delight?'
The first scene of the Second Act opens with a picture of a peasant
farmer's 'onstead'; to wit, his dwelling and outhouses--
'A snug thack-house; before the door a green;
Hens on the midden, ducks in dubs are seen;
On this side stands a barn, on that a byre:
A peat stack joins, and forms a rural square.'
Here the neighbours, Glaud and Symon, meet. The latter has been into
Edinburgh to sell his 'crummock and her bassened quey,' and over their
pipes he informs his friend that their landlord, Sir William Worthy,
who, as a Royalist, had been compelled to go into exile during the
Commonwealth, would now, owing to the Restoration, be able to return
home again, when all would be well. Symon has heard the news from the
laird's servant, 'Habbie,' after whom the 'How' or _house_ is named.
Glaud is so overjoyed at the news that he seeks to persuade Symon to
remain and dine with him, offering, for it was before the age of good
roads and carts,
'To yoke my sled, and send to the neist town
And bring a draught o' ale baith stout and brown.'
But Symon wishes to exercise hospitality himself, and insists upon
Glaud, his sister Madge, his daughter Jenny, and his niece Peggy, all
dining with him, in honour of the day. This they are to do. We have here
presented a graphic picture of rural fare on fete-days--
'For here yestreen I brewed a bow of maut,
Yestreen I slew twa wethers prime and fat.
A furlet of good cakes, my Elspa beuk,
And a large ham hangs reesting in the neuk.
I saw mysel', or I cam o'er the loan,
Our muckle pot that scads the whey, put on,
A mutton-bouk to boil, and ane we'll roast;
And on the haggies Elspa spares nae cost.
Small are they shorn, and she can mix fu' nice
The gusty ingans wi' a curn of spice;
Fat are the puddings,--heads and feet weel sung.'
The second scene introduces a new element into the drama. Another
shepherd, Bauldy (Archibald) by name, has also been smitten with Peggy's
charms--and it affords an excellent idea of the simplicity of these
rural districts in Scotland, when he repairs to a poor old woman named
Mause, whom the district reputes to be a witch, to entreat her aid in
turning Peggy's heart towards himself. Bauldy's picture of Peggy, in his
soliloquy, is beautiful in its very simplicity--
'O Peggy! sweeter than the dawning day,
Sweeter than gowany glens or new-mawn hay;
Blyther than lambs that frisk out o'er the knowes,
Straighter than aught that in the forest grows.
Her een the clearest blob of dew out-shines,
The lily in her breast its beauty tines;
Her legs, her arms, her cheeks, her mouth, her een,
Will be my deid'--
The existence of superstition among the Scottish peasantry, a state of
things lasting until well on into last century, is also well brought out
in Bauldy's soliloquy, when he refers to Mausy, 'a witch that for sma'
price, can cast her cantrips, and gie me advice.' Mause, meaning to read
the faithless lover of Neps a lesson, consents to help him. The fourth
scene of the Second Act is undoubtedly one of the finest in the
drama--the meeting of the lovers, Patie and Peggy. The two great
constituents of a successful piece, strength and pathos, are both
present in rich measure. To test her lover's fidelity, the maiden, with
coy coquetry, affects to think that he might alter his mind and deceive
her if she trusted him too implicitly. To this Patie replies that she
deeply wrongs him in doubting his fidelity, and that he would be dull
and blind
'Gif I could fancy aught's sae sweet and fair
As my sweet Meg, or worthy of my care.
Thy breath is sweeter than the sweetest brier,
Thy cheek and breast the finest flowers appear,
Thy words excel the maist delightfu' notes
That warble through the merle or mavis' throats;
With thee I tent nae flowers that busk the field,
Or ripest berries that our mountains yield;
The sweetest fruits that hing upon the tree
Are far inferior to a kiss frae thee.'
With all a loving woman's sweet perversity, however, Peggy still affects
to doubt, only to be indulged in the delicious bliss of hearing her
lover's vows anew--
'Sooner a mother shall her fondness drap,
And wrang the bairn sits smiling in her lap;
The sun shall change, the moon to change shall cease;
The gaits to climb, the sheep to yield the fleece;
Ere aught by me be either said or done
Shall do thee wrang;--I swear by all aboon.'
In no scene does Ramsay exhibit his wonderful knowledge of the human
heart to such advantage as in the one before us. Peggy and Patie then
sing a duet, taking alternate verses, into which are introduced many of
the old Scots songs,--'The Broom o' Cowdenknowes,' 'Milking the Ewes,'
'Jenny Nettles,' 'Thro' the Wood, Laddie,' 'The Boatman,' 'Maggie
Lauder,' 'The Lass o' Patie's Mill,' and the curtain falls over one of
the most delightful scenes illustrative of pure affection, in modern
drama.
The Third Act sees the return of Sir William Worthy, who, in the
disguise of a wizard, introduces himself into the company, merry-making
at Symon's. Here he tells Patie's fortune, and the surprising discovery
is ere long made that the youth is Sir William's only son, placed under
Symon's care when the knight had to go into exile on the execution of
Charles I. The description of the little festivity at Symon's is well
wrought out. The third scene contains the love-making of Jenny and
Roger, where the faithful swain's happiness is rendered complete. With
great gusto Ramsay paints this episode, as well as with consummate
fidelity to nature,--a fact becoming increasingly apparent when one
notes the marked difference between the love-scene wherein Patie and
Peggy take part, and that wherein Jenny declares her love for Roger. The
latter scene is more decidedly tinged with rusticity than the former. In
the fourth scene Sir William reveals himself to Symon, and inquires
eagerly about the progress made by his son during his years of absence.
Symon praises the youth's devotion to letters, and then hints at his
love for Peggy, which Sir William declares must be forgotten.
The first scene of the Fourth Act relieves, by the introduction of
humorous episodes, the sentimentality whereinto the drama at this stage
shows signs of lapsing. Mause, Madge, and Bauldy have an interview, at
which the two last named come to blows; and when Bauldy has taken
himself off, the two women perfect their plans for playing on the
foolish fellow's superstitious fears. The remainder of the Fourth Act
deals with Patie's sorrow and Peggy's anguish when Sir William's
decision is made known. Of course, they vow everlasting fidelity to each
other. The scene between the lovers is a very powerful one, wherein
Ramsay evinced his sway over the subtler emotions. Yet here, as
elsewhere, his simplicity constitutes his strength. He never attempts to
depict any complex interaction of human passions. Like Aeschylus, he
contents himself with the representation of one elemental emotion at a
time, and he thoroughly exhausts the one '_moment_' before he passes on
to another. Few passages are there in literature more genuinely
pathetic, yet keeping more rigidly within the modesty of nature, than
that wherein poor Peggy, after dwelling on the golden past, tries to
picture the dull grey round of duty in the future when Patie shall have
been taken from her--
'Speak on, speak ever thus, and still my grief;
But short, I dare to hope the fond relief.
New thoughts a gentler face will soon inspire,
That with nice airs swims round in silk attire;
Then I, poor me! with sighs may ban my fate,
When the young laird's nae mair my heartsome Pate.
Nae mair again to hear sweet tales expresst
By the blyth shepherd that excelled the rest,--
Nae mair be envied by the tattling gang
When Patie kissed me when I danced or sang;
Nae mair, alake! we'll on the meadows play,
And rin half-breathless round the rucks of hay,
As aft-times I have fled from thee right fain,
And fa'n on purpose, that I might be tane.'--
But Patie reiterates his vows to her, and Peggy, comforted, declares she
will set herself to learn 'gentler charms, through ilka school where I
may manners learn.' Patie applauds her resolution, but declares that
----'without a' the little helps of art
Thy native sweets might gain a prince's heart,
Yet now, lest in our station we offend,
We must learn modes to innocence unken'd.'
The scene closes with Peggy's vows of fidelity. In this scene Ramsay
touched the high-water mark of his genius, and for the elements of
simplicity, strength, and propriety of the sentiments expressed by each
character with the root-idea of that character, it is rivalled by very
few scenes of its kind in the literature of our land.
The first scene of the last Act opens with Bauldy's fright. He had gone
to fulfil his engagement to meet Mause, the pretended witch, who was to
turn Peggy's heart to him. But as he had insulted Madge, Peggy's aunt,
in the fore part of the day, the latter, to punish him by taking
advantage of his dread of ghosts, meets him at the dead hour of the
night when he is repairing to Mause's cottage. She is draped in a white
sheet, and utters ghastly groans. Bauldy, having sunk terror-stricken to
the ground, is soundly cuffed and trounced by the two women. As soon,
therefore, as daylight breaks, he seeks an interview with Sir William to
entreat redress. The latter, who had been passing the night in Symon's
house, enters fully into the spirit of the joke, and orders Mause to be
brought before him.
The second scene exhibits Glaud's 'onstead' again, and the family
preparing to go down to Symon's to take their leave of Patie. Peggy is
very sad,--so much so that her sharp-tongued aunt cannot refrain from
jeering at it--
'Poor Meg!--Look, Jenny, was the like e'er seen?
How bleared and red wi' greetin' look her een!
This day her brankan wooer taks his horse
To strut a gentle spark at Edinburgh Cross.
But Meg, poor Meg! maun wi' the shepherds stay,
And tak what God will send in hodden gray.'
To this ill-timed speech Peggy makes a pathetic reply, that must have
caused a pang of remorse to her aunt. But when Glaud ventures to warn
her against being too free with Patie, seeing he could not marry her
now, she replies with gentle reproach--
'Sir William's virtuous, and of gentle blood;
And may not Patrick too, like him, be good?'
Glaud's answer exhibits the simple faith of the rural inhabitants of the
district in a striking light--
'That's true and mony gentry mae than he,
As they are wiser, better are than we;
But thinner sawn: they're sae pufft up wi' pride,
There's mony o' them mocks ilk haly guide
That shows the gate to heav'n. I've heard mysel
Some of them laugh at doomsday, sin, and hell.'
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 assigns their _mailings_ (farms) in
perpetual feu, while Roger is made his chamberlain. As the curtain then
descends over general happiness, Sir William pronounces 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 sex'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 sex are delicately yet incisively portrayed, while the
staunch fidelity of Symon, the cheery chirpiness of Glaud, the bucolic
ignorance and superstition of Bauldy, the cankered impatience of
Madge--a spinster against her will, and the pathetic, age-worn weariness
of Mause, are depicted with the assured hand of a master. Many of the
lyrics interspersed throughout the pastoral are gems of rustic song;
not high-class 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 coarseness 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 multitude 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 cock had crawn,
Begoud to rax and rift;
And greedy wives, wi' girning thrawn,
Cry'd "Lasses, 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 unsurpassed 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.