a deliberate judgment rare amongst poets. 'I
e^en gave over,' lie wrote six years later, ' in good
time, before the coolness of fancy that attends ripe
years should risk the reputation I had acquired.'
He set up his bookseller's shop on a larger scale,
and with it the first circulating library in Scotland,
associated on terms of equality with the leaders of
wit and fashion, and sent his son, afterwards the
famous painter, to Rome to learn his art. Having
saved a considerable sum of money, he misinvested
it in the establishment of a theatre, and suffered
his only severe check at the hands of liis only real
enemies.
In the Golden Age when the lamb and the wolf lay
down together, so did the minstrel and the monk.
In the ages of authentic Scottish history the Muses
have, by some vmhappy fatality, been almost always
antagonistic to the dominant church. Even pious
old Barbour exercises a sage incredulity with regard
to the miracles and predictions of his time. ' The
King's Quhair ' is a rich Pagan fantasy, conceived in
a spirit alien to that of the Acta Sandoruin. Doug-
las and Henryson may pass free from the ' Index
Expurgatorius.' But Dunbar writes like a dis-
frocked ecclesiast, assailing with invective and scorn
unsurpassed for centuries the abuses and shams of
which he had in his youth largely availed himself.
Lyndsay, in the attitude of a more imdisguised par-
tisan, alternately mocks and denounces every cere-
monial and institution of the fold of his fathers.
The scene changed in the 16th century, and 'New
Presbyter' took the place of 'Old Priest.' The few
versifiers of the 17th more or less directly assailed
the Covenant. Puritanism having done its worst
to put down Poetry, it was natural that when the
reaction came Poetry should lead the assault on
the Puritans. Their rule, as censors of life and
manners, was more firmly rooted in the northern
than in the southern section of our island ; and the
magistrates of Edinburgh, acting on their dictation
in 1737, refused to license Ramsay's Theatre while
the small fry of litterateurs in their train assailed
him with a shower of lampoons. He protested
vigorously in prose and verse ; but, appealing in vain
to the legislature for compensation for his unexjiected
loss, had to succumb. The bigots triumphed, and
more than a generation elapsed before they were
shot through and through by the arrows of a mightier
genius. Ramsay threw himself again with energy
into his business, repaired his fortunes, and died at
the age of 72, in general content with his lot, having
looked through half a century on the bright side of
nature, and made the best of both worlds of fancy
and of fact. He was no hero, but as honest as a
man can be who is above all thint^s resolved to be
popular. As is generally the case with such tem-
peraments, his genius never takes a very high flight.
His thoughts are seldom subtle, his passions never
intense, his good-natured view of men and things
never penetrates to the Tragedy that underlies the
Comedy, the misery beneath the merriment, of life.
He is a stranger to the mood represented in the
refrain of his great predecessor, Dunbar, ' Timor
mortis conturbat me, or in that of his yet greater
successor, ' Man was made to mourn.' According
to Ramsay, he was made to drive an honest trade,
to mix in good society, to collect old songs, to sniff
the fresh country air, and, watching the manners
and loves of gentle hinds and village maidens, to
reproduce their adventures, their dialogues in more
polished speech, and dedicate the i-esult to the
Countess of Eglintoii. YiaOi'i^ara /xadij/xara : he
who has never suffered cannot thrill the world's
heart : he who is all smiles will have all smiles, but
the end of him is the sod. Yet the superficial
observer knows his role, and with the sound sense of
a canny Scot, adheres to it. Ramsay has written no
absolute nonsense, is never guilty of bombast or the
drivel that conceals itself under a show of violence,
and only here and there of the mild affectation and
classical pedantry of his age. As long as hi* best
verses are read they will continue to please ; for his
genius, so far as it goes, is genuine.
' The pastoral,' says Addison, ' which flourished
when cities had not been built or commerce estab-
lished, belonged to a state of ease, innocence,
aud contentment where plenty begot pleasure, and
pleasure begot singing, and singing begot poetry.'
Perhaps there never was such a state or time, but
when every shepherd ' told his tale under the liaw-
thoriie in the dale ' it ^^•as easier to imagine it, and
Ramsay came as near to the imagination as possible
in an artificial age. One merit of ' The Gentle
Shepherd ' is its rapport with external nature. The character he assigns to Scotch poetry in general
specially belongs to his verse. In it ' the morning
rises as she does on oiu' own horizon ; we are not
carried to Greece and Italy for a shade, a stream, or a breeze; groves rise in our own valleys ; the rivers flow from our own fountains ; and the winds blow upon our own hills.' His landscapes resemble those of Claude: a haze of classical refinement is thrown over real features. Towards the close of the last century the hinds of the Pentlands used to point out to strangers the waterfall of ' Habbie's Howe,' the cottages of Glaud and Symon, Sir William's Tower, the avenue of shady groves, the strand where Patie
' Took delight To pu' the rashes green wi' roots sae white ; '
