72
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. JULY 22, une.
THOMSON AND ALLAN RAMSAY.
(12 S. ii. 29.)
THE legend that makes Thomson of ' The Seasons ' the author of ' The Gentle Shep- herd,' and Allan Ramsay its humble sponsor, is an old one, the absurdity of which has been frequently exposed. Some years ago it was used in ' N. & Q.' as in its way an appreciable parallel to the Shakespeare- Bacon craze, but at the moment an exact reference to the allusion cannot be given. In its first form the tradition located the transaction between the adventurers in Allan Ramsay's place of business, which, it was explained, was a barber's shop. Thither, the story ran, Thomson had gone to be shaved by the senior poet, and the conclusion was that their consequent intimacy would facilitate the arrangements for the publica- tion of the poem. By and by, even gossip- mongers realized that Ramsay, who belonged to the honourable craft of periwig-makers, had never been a barber, and it became imperative to drop the tonsorial episode. Now Mr. E. H. Barker of Thetford is con- strained to indicate very vaguely the scene of the presumptive interview. " Thomson, the poet," says he, " went into a shop at Edinburgh, while Allan Ramsay was there " ; and, lo ! the sinister plot was straightway completed.
At the outset, let it be said that Ramsay was well known as a poet while Thomson was in his boyhood. By the time the future author of ' The Seasons ' was a student in Edinburgh University, it was a common occurrence for the goodwives of the city to send their children with a copper to buy " Allan Ramsay's last piece." He had begun his poetical career when Thomson was about 10 years old, and he had published his pastoral ' Patie and Roger ' (the prime source of ' The Gentle Shepherd ' ) while the other was still a stripling. This he reprinted in the first collection of his poems in 1721, when Thomson was a student of divinity. When ' Jenny and Meggy ' followed ' Patie and Roger' as a sequel, the poet's friends urged him to elaborate a drama on such a promising basis, and this he ultimately did, producing ' The Gentle Shepherd ' in 1725. In the quarto issue of the work, published in 1728, he appended to its first scene a bibliographical note of distinct importance. "Having," he says, "carried the pastoral
he length of five acts, at the desire of some
persons of distinction, I was obliged to print
- his preluding scene with the rest." With
- hese indubitable facts it is impossible to
reconcile Mr. Barker's statement that " Thomson delivered to him the MS. of
The Gentle Shepherd.' "
A complete offset to the myth was given by Lord Hailes when he thus dismissed some tattle regarding help given to Ramsay by Sir John Clerk and others :
" They who attempt to depreciate his 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.'"
This is obviously applicable to Thomson, whose genius could not have worked in the medium through which Ramsay's pastoral drama is presented. Thomson lacked the ready, affable temperament that finds scope iu comedy, and he had but a limited facility in the management of the Scottish vernacu- lar. These gifts and accomplishments, on the other hand, were pre-eminently Ram- say's, and they secured for him his permanent place in the republic of letters. Among Thomson's juvenile poems, contributed to ' The Edinburgh Miscellany ' in 1720 when he was at the University, and should have furnished Ramsay with his MS. if Mr. Barker's tradition is trustworthy there is not the slightest evidence of anything that in the least resembles the style of ' The Gentle Shepherd.' He does make a brief pastoral experiment in heroic couplets, discovering " thrice happy swains," who enjoy a " rural feast," while they recline "on seats of homely turf," and are guarded by the inevitable shade thrown " by twining boughs of spreading beeches." It is all, however, sheer puerile experiment, and indicates nothing whatever of the genial, buoyant spirit that revelled among the idyllic amenities of Habbie's Howe. It is in" no sense a poetical achievement, but merely a venture in composition after the classical manner that naturally appealed to the writer's inexperience. Thomson's ver- nacular ' Elegy upon James Therburn,' in. the Habbie Simpson stanza perhaps his only serious attempt of the kind is a very crude effort, sufficient of itself to show that its author could never have gained distinction as a maker of Scottish poetry. Presently, however, Thomson found himself, publishing in 1726 his ' Winter,' which thus proclaimed a fresh poetic outlook just a year after Allan Ramsay's ' Gentle Shepherd ' had empha- tically done the same. Each poet worthily
