The Gentle Shepherd. Allan Ramsay

of his genius. We have no hesitation in asserting, 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 competition 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 Tasso, 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 circumstances, if they did not really happen, are at least far within the compass of verisimilitude. Its development is completed by means interesting but probable, without the intervention of gods, 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 principal 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 passions 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 passion 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 coarse, 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 associated 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 ennobled 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 cumbrous for him; he cannot move in it with grace and activity. We find, accordingly, that in his Gentle Shepherd the most unskilful passages 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 pass 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 surpassed, 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 brass, 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]

      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 dartit 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.

      His Tales and Fables, a species of writing which he himself deemed as "casten for his share," display great ease and readiness of versification, with much comic vivacity. The best of these are the Twa Cats and the Cheese; the Lure, in which the Falconer's "foregathering with auld Symmie" is excellently described; and the Monk and the Miller's Wife, for the story of which he is indebted to Dunbar. As a song writer we are not inclined to give Ramsay a very high place. His mind had not those deep and energetic workings of feeling that fitted Burns so admirably for this difficult species of writing. He is stiff, where passion is required; and is most easy, as usual, where he is comic. Several of his songs yet retain their popularity; but even of these none are without some faults. We prefer the Highland Laddie, Gie me a Lass wi' a Lump o' Land, The Carle he came o'er the Craft, The Lass of Patie's Mill and Jenny Nettles.

      His Christ's Kirk is no mean effort of his muse; the idea of continuing King James's production was good, and he has executed it happily. Ramsay's humour must, however, be acknowledged to be inferior to the pure, strong, irresistible merriment that shines even through the dim and nearly obsolete language of his royal master. In the Third Canto, the morning, with its effect on the crapulous assemblage, is well painted.

      Now frae east nook o' Fife the dawn Speel'd[32] westlins up the lift, Carles wha heard the cock had crawn Begoud, &c. An' greedy wives, wi' girning thrawn, Cry'd lasses up to thrift; Dogs barked, an' the lads frae hand Bang'd[33] to their breeks,[34] like drift, Be break o' day

      Of a character similar to the first two lines of the above stanza, are the following other passages of Ramsay's works, which remind us a little of the Italian poets;—

      Now Sol wi' his lang whip gae cracks

       Upon his nichering coosers'[35] backs, To gar them tak th' Olympian brae, Wi' a cart-lade o' bleezing day. Tale of the Three Bonnets. And ere the sun, though he be dry, Has driven down the westlin sky, To drink his wamefu' o' the sea. Fables and Tales. Soon as the clear goodman o' day Does bend his morning draught o' dew. Fables and Tales.

      To sum up our opinion of Ramsay's merits as a poet—he was fortunate, and he deserved well, in being the first to redeem the Muse of Scotland from wasting her strength in a dead language, which, since the days of Buchanan, had been the freezing vehicle of her exertions. He re-established the popularity of a dialect, which, since the removal of the Scottish Court, had received no honour from the pen of genius, but which, near two hundred years before, had been sublimed into poetical dignity by Dunbar and the bards of that age. To Ramsay, and to his treasures of Scottish phraseology, succeeding poets have been much indebted; he knew the language well, and had imbibed the facetious and colloquial spirit of its idioms. Ramsay, therefore, when he employs his beloved dialect, manages it masterly, and, though never lofty, he is always at his ease: Burns, in his highest flights,