RAMSAY AS A SATIRIST AND A SONG-WRITER
Difficult it is to make any exact classification of Ramsay's works,
inasmuch as he frequently applied class-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 classification 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
classes 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 title 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 passion; 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 Massinger, 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 constituting a song-writer of great
and varied genius. His work exhibits ease and elasticity of rhythm,
liquid smoothness of assonance, 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
'Lass o' Patie's Mill'; is it not entirely _sui generis_?
'The lass 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,
Breasts 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 lasses;
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?--
'O bonny lassie, since 'tis sae,
That I'm despised by thee,
I hate to live; but O, I'm wae,
And unco sweer to dee.
Dear Jeany, think what dowy hours
I thole by your disdain:
Why should a breast sae saft as yours
Contain a heart of stane?'
George Withers' famous lines, 'Shall I, wasting in despaire,' are not a
whit more pathetic. Then if we desire humour pure and unadulterated,
where can be found a more delightful _lilt_ than 'The Widow'?
'The widow can bake, and the widow can brew,
The widow can shape, and the widow can sew,[3]
And mony braw things the widow can do,--
Then have at the widow, my laddie.'
Or if you affect a dash of satire in your songs, what more to your taste
than--
'Gi'e me a lass wi' a lump o' land,
And we for life shall gang thegither,
Though daft or wise I'll ne'er demand,
Or black or fair it maks na whether.
I'm aff wi' wit, and beauty will fade,
And blood alane is no worth a shilling;
But she that's rich, her market's made,
For ilka charm aboot her's killing.'
Or if the reader desire the wells of his deepest sympathies to be
stirred, what more truly pathetic than his 'Auld Lang Syne,' which
supplied Burns with many of the ideas for his immortal song; or his
version of 'Lochaber No More'--
'Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell my Jean,
Where heartsome wi' thee I've mony day been;
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more,'
--a song than which to this day few are more popular among Scotsmen. As
a song-writer Ramsay appeals to all natures and all temperaments. He was
almost entirely free from the vice of poetic conventionality. He wrote
what seemed to him best, undeterred by the dread of offending against
poetic canons, or the principles of this, that, or the other school of
poetry. He was a natural singer, not one formed by art--a singer,
voicing his patriotic enthusiasm in many a lay, that for warmth of
national feeling, for intense love of his species, for passionate
expression of the tenderer emotions, is little behind the best of the
songs of Robert Burns. Granted that his was not the power to sweep,
like Burns, or Beranger, or Heine, with masterful hand over the entire
gamut of human passions; that to him was not given, as to them, the
supremely keen insight into the workings of the human heart, and the
magical witchery of wedding sense to sound so indissolubly, that alter
but a word in the texture of the lines and the poem is ruined. Yet, in
his province, Ramsay was dowered with a gift but little less notable,
that of portraying so faithfully the natural beauties of his country,
and the special characteristics of his countrymen, that, in a greater
degree even than Burns,--were Ramsay's songs only recognised as his, in
place of being ascribed to others,--he has a right to the proud title of
Scotland's national song-writer. Not for a moment do I seek to place
Ramsay on a pedestal co-equal with Burns--that were an error worse than
folly; not for a moment do I seek to detract from the transcendent merit
of our great national poet. But though I do not rate Burns the less, I
value Ramsay the more, when I say that, had there been no Ramsay there
might have been no Burns nor any Fergusson--at least, the genius of the
two last named poets would not have found an adequate vehicle of
expression lying readymade to their hand. Ramsay it was who virtually
rendered the Scots vernacular a possible medium for the use of Burns;
and this service, unconsciously rendered by the lesser genius to the
greater, is generously acknowledged by the latter, who could not but be
aware that, as his own star waxed higher and yet higher from the horizon
line of popularity, that of his elder rival waned more and more.
Therefore his noble panegyric on Ramsay is but a tribute to his 'father
in song'--
'Thou paints auld nature to the nines,
In thy sweet Caledonian lines;
Nae gowden stream through myrtle twines,
Where Philomel,
While nightly breezes sweep the vines,
Her griefs will tell.
In gowany glens thy burnie strays,
Where bonnie lassies bleach their claes;
Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes,
Wi' hawthorns gray,
Where blackbirds join the shepherd's lays
At close o' day.
Thy rural loves are nature's sel';
Nae bombast spates o' nonsense swell;
Nae snap conceits, but that sweet spell
O' witchin' love,
That charm that can the strongest quell,
The sternest move.'
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Pronounced in Scots, _shoo_.