Two hundred years ago, in October, 1686, Allan Ramsay was born in the upland village of Leadhills; and one hundred years ago last July, the first edition of Burns's poems made its appearance in the weaving-town of Kilmarnock. For the greater part of the century prior to the latter event Ramsay was universally regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and The Gentle Shepherd was believed to be the most consummate flower of Scottish poetical genius; for just a century since, and in virtue of that latter event, his name and fame have suffered more or less partial eclipse. He has not been forgotten,—his reputation was too firmly rooted in the popular heart for that; but he has been undeservedly neglected; his poetical power has been growing more and more traditional, and is now, we fear, very largely taken on trust. His name, we have said, has not been forgotten—it is, indeed, a household word throughout the Scottish Lowlands. There, and more especially in the rural parts of that district, they talk familiarly, in the Scottish manner, of Allan; "that's ane o' Allan's sangs" they will say. But if they speak of Allan Cunningham, who was also in his way successful in touching the national heart, they never fail to give him his full name. Ramsay has a prescriptive right to the simple and unsupported prenomen. Sometimes they vary the expression by prefixing honest; "honest Allan!" they will say in the excess of a proud familiarity with his name. And then they will most likely follow up the words by a quotation, said to be from Burns, which probably reveals the origin of the adjective:

Yet it may well be doubted whether they appreciate at its proper value the epithet which they repeat so glibly. Ramsay was not unduly bold; but bashfulness was no feature of his disposition, and he was the last person of the men of his day to be found "jouking behint the hallan" [ducking behind the door]. If Burns did not write the lines, and it is only Burns's brother Gilbert who denies the authorship, somebody else of Burns's day did, who saw and lamented the neglect into which Ramsay was falling as the brighter orb of Burns's genius rose on the literary horizon. If Burns did write them, a supposition to which we decidedly incline, they are in his mouth a singularly graceful acknowledgment of the excellence of his first and best model and master, and at the same time express or imply a sentiment which is quite in harmony with the frequent and just confessions of his indebtedness to Ramsay. Ramsay's name marks an epoch in the history of Scottish poetry. Before him were "the Makkaris," who reached their lofty culmination in William Dunbar, and who may be said to have terminated in some obscurity in the Sempills. The era of modern Scottish poetry began with Ramsay. His is the style, the treatment of a subject, the language, which, with modifications and development of a perfectly natural and organic growth, Fergusson, and Burns, and Scott (in those of his novels which describe purely Scottish character), and all the many minor writers of distinctively Scottish literature, Hogg being the most notable exception, have since adopted and used. But though he began a new era, he was not altogether independent of the old. He links on, at the outstart of his literary career, to the middle Sempill, whose humorous elegy on the death of the Piper of Kilbarchan was the standard of his imitation, as it had previously been that of his contemporary and correspondent, Hamilton of Gilbertfield. Not less sympathetic was his sense of humour with the comic vein of the royal poet, James the First, as exemplified in "Christ's Kirk on the Green," and his two cantos of continuation to that famous poem are an acknowledgment of the inspiration which he drew from the ancient "Makkaris." He was, however, essentially original. Cowper was not more original, excepting only in the matter of language. The poets of Scotland have from time to time employed a conventional and artificial phraseology; but no age, and scarcely a writer in the long line of their history, has been quite deficient in the use of a vigorous vernacular, sufficient to bring them into living touch with the men of their generation. Ramsay's originality did not, therefore, chiefly show itself in his adoption of the current and conversational speech of his day. It is, however, to be noticed that by the voluminousness of his poems and their immense popularity, continued without a break for three generations, he may be said to have fixed the standard of modern Scotch, by blending his mother-tongue with antique expressions of the past, and proving the capability of the mixture for large and varied poetical representation. "Thy bonnie auld words gar (make) me smile," was part of a complimentary epistle addressed to Ramsay by a contemporary, himself an adept in the use of Scotch and considerably older than the person whom he was addressing. The fact would seem to be, that modern Scotch is very much what Ramsay made it; and we question if there are many expressions in the rural Scotch of to-day, with all Burns's cultivation of the language, which Ramsay, if he were living now, would not readily recognise.

But it is not in the humour of his delineations that Ramsay is really most original. The humour, though in one sense it was his own, that is, unaffectedly sincere and genuine as a personal possession, was, notwithstanding, what one might almost call a national property, in which such of the elder poets as Dunbar and Lyndsay, and such of their successors as Fergusson and Burns, could claim at least an equal share. Yet it may well be allowed that he deepened and widened the national sense of humour by the use which he made of his own share, and turned it with greater emphasis and effect upon the follies and minor immoralities of social life than any had ever done before him. He set the example of humorous portraiture and address to Burns; and even in that dangerous, though legitimate, field for satirical humour, which since Lyndsay's time has been the exclusive walk of Burns, namely, religious bigotry and hypocrisy, he was meditating entrance and onslaught at the age of seventy—too late an age! Hear his own words:

I have it even in my poo'er
The very Kirk itself to scour,
An' that ye'll say 's a brag richt bauld!
But did not Lyndsay this of auld?
Wha gave the scarlet harlot strokes
Sneller [keener] than all the pelts of Knox.

Ramsay's originality lies much in the unromantic and yet fascinating realism of his natural descriptions. He brings no lime-light effects to bear upon his scenery; neither does he present us with mere photographic copies. It is Nature, her naked self, but never presented except when in perfect harmony with the lyrical mood to which she is accessory, or the dramatic situation to which she is subordinated. It is very much the nature to which Cowper introduces us, allowance being made for difference of locality—healthy, every-day, commonplace nature; only, we think, more vividly, more completely and harmoniously presented. A brief quotation or two will in a general way exemplify what we mean. "This sunny morning," says the Gentle Shepherd,

This sunny morning, Roger, cheers my blood,
And puts all Nature in a jovial mood.
How heartsome is't to see the rising plants,
And hear the birds chirm owre their pleasing rants!

The description of Habbie's How (Hollow) is another case in point—

Gae farer up the burn to Habbie's How
Where a' the sweets of Spring and Simmer grow.
Between twa birks, out o'er a little linn,
The water fa's and maks a singand din;
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses with easy whirls 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.

It is, however, in his delineation of human nature that Ramsay is most genuine; but he is less so in his earlier and somewhat exaggerated descriptions of low life, than in his later and cheerfully serious representations of commonplace rural character. The pastoral drama of The Gentle Shepherd is not only a masterpiece, but an original creation. There was nothing like it, nothing to suggest it, in all the antecedent literature of Scotland. It is to this day the poem that most successfully represents Scottish rural life. The 'Farmer's Ingle' of Fergusson and Burns's 'Cotter's Saturday Night' are kindred poems, similar in subject, and approached with the same serious spirit. But the form is different; they are narrative poems, each descriptive of a common phase of rustic life within doors. None the less are they pendents to The Gentle Shepherd; for The Gentle Shepherd is less a rustic drama in which the interest depends on the plot, than a rustic idyll, the form of which happens to be dramatic, with the interest dependent on the author's views of rustic human life. It is to the credit of Ramsay that, living in close and actual contact with the artificial school of poets of whom Pope and Gay were the representatives of his acquaintance, and rather welcoming than seeking to withdraw himself from their influence, he had yet within himself an instinct of true poetic feeling and a power of true poetic art, sufficient to lift him above their blandishments, and to anticipate by half a century that return to nature which in England was inaugurated by Cowper and finally consummated by Wordsworth.

Nor should it ever be forgotten that Ramsay was, in fact, the first in point of time of Scottish song-writers. He may be called the inventor of that species of song which is regarded as distinctively Scottish. Burns's songs have in much more abundant measure the true lyrical quality, the inspiration and the utterance, but they are of identically the same species as Ramsay's. To the green and but halfopened buds of Ramsay they offer the contrast of the fullblown blossoms of June, gorgeous with dyes and breathing a paradise of fragrance, but they are yet the development of those buds, grown on the same stem and drawing nourishment from the same soil. Much was to be expected from a country which had already given the rich promise of "Polwarth on the Green," "Lochaber no more," "The last time I came o'er the Muir," and a really charming love-song beginning somewhat coldly with the question, "Now wat ye wha I met yestreen?" They were the genuine forerunners of "Bonnie Jean," "The gloomy Night is gath'ring fast," and even of "Highland Mary."…

It was about [1712 that] he first began to write verses in emulation of Hamilton, and it was in that same year he was admitted into a very select social coterie of twelve, self-styled the Easy Club, and numbering among its members a university professor, a doctor in large practice, and the well-known scholar and printer, Thomas Ruddiman. His connection with this club was of the utmost importance in drawing out and directing his poetical talent. He became its laureate, entertained its gatherings with his compositions, profited by its criticisms, and acquired something of its professional culture. It was for the Easy Club he wrote his humorous descriptions of low life, such as the elegy on the death of Maggie Johnston, a suburban ale-wife well known to all Edinburgh. This was really his first poem, his earlier pieces being merely the essays of an apprentice learning the art of literary expression. It was much applauded, and encouraged him to renewed

efforts which were still more successful. The companion elegy on the death of Lucky Wood, the cleanly ale-wife of the Canongate, and his additions to the ancient poem of "Christ's Kirk on the Green," mark his highest achievements as a humorist in the department of low life. His situations in these compositions are intensely comical, and the language that depicts them is correspondingly blunt and broad. Coarse, indeed, they are, but their coarseness is neither morbid nor prurient. It is the natural healthy coarseness of Chaucer. Hogarth found in Ramsay a brother artist, and in token of his delight at the discovery, dedicated to him the twelve plates of his illustrations of 'Hudibras.' But after his thirty-sixth year most of this coarseness disappears, and the result is a style of composition not less effective and much more refined, and more distinctly on the side of virtue. Ramsay however, it should be noticed, claimed in his earlier compositions the credit of a moralist, and attributed to the spiritual purblindness of his critics their failure to perceive the satire of his representations.

The members of the Easy Club were suspected of sympathy with Jacobitism, and the suspicion becoming warm, the club broke up in some alarm. Ramsay steered pretty clear of politics, but there is good ground for believing that his political leanings were towards the exiled Stuarts. The famous Countess of Eglinton, who accepted the dedication of The Gentle Shepherd, was no politically indiscriminate patroness of literature; and there can be no doubt that community of political sentiment would be a recommendation, if not a requisite, to the friendship of Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot—a friendship which Ramsay enjoyed. On the dissolution of the club, which occurred shortly after the fiasco of "The Fifteen," Ramsay resolved on an appeal to the public for confirmation of his claim to rank as a poet. He went about the matter with characteristic prudence. Specimens of his poetry were printed on broad sheets and circulated about the town by street-vendors, for the purpose of testing or stimulating the popular taste. The plan succeeded so well that it became a practice of the citizens' wives to send out for "Allan Ramsay's last piece," and discuss it with their afternoon tea. He next opened a subscription list for purchasers' names, and finally a handsome quarto of four hundred pages made its appearance from the press of his friend Ruddiman, and was speedily taken up. An analysis of the subscription list shows, to the credit of the Scottish nobility, that about one-seventh of his patrons were of aristocratic birth. It is pleasant to find Pope's name in the list. The result of the publication was to extend his fame, and to improve his fortunes by about four hundred guineas. At the same time it determined him to a literary career, and from the moment of that determination wig-making languished, and the more leisurely occupation of bookselling filled his vacant hours. A period of great industry followed. Scarcely a year passed for the next decade but he was before the public with one or more offerings of original or editorial work. His editorial work was the collection of selected songs, both Scottish and English, into The Tea-Table Miscellany, and a series of Scottish poems, purporting to have been "wrote by the ingenious, before 1600," brought together into The Evergreen. These collections contained compositions of his own, which were either too free morally or too dangerous politically to be owned amongst his authorised productions. Of these anonymous poems the best is, undoubtedly, "The Vision," which may, indeed, be regarded as Ramsay's most ambitious effort, and certainly reveals an unusual sweep and power of imagination. In creative work he ventured unfortunately into fields foreign alike to his genius and his art; he took to imitating Pope, and produced some very laborious essays in English verse, and a few sad but unsorrowful elegies. His true sphere and talent lay in the use of the Scottish language upon themes of national interest. Of this he was well aware; but he could not altogether resist the temptation to enter the lists with his English contemporaries and encounter them with their own weapons. His English verses, of which he wrote far too many, may show his culture, but they give no indication of his genius.

The quarto of which we have spoken appeared in 1721. Seven years later he published a companion quarto containing the pieces written in the interval, and then he rested from poetical labours. The period of his literary activity altogether extended over twenty years, of which the first five were the years of his apprenticeship. He gave over when he ceased to write with facility,—when, as he said, he found his muse beginning to be "dour and dorty," [loth and sulky]. He had, however, used the pen too long and too assiduously to be able entirely to forego the luxury of its use, and an occasional epistle in verse towards the end of his life showed that if he composed with more effort he also composed with more pith.

The second quarto established Ramsay's fame. It contained the composition which gave him the most satisfaction, and which best illustrates the true character of his genius, the charming pastoral drama of The Gentle Shepherd. It became instantly popular, and so excited the envy of enemies who had hitherto identified him with the school of art which delights to minister to immorality, that they absurdly refused him the authorship. The germ of the play will be found in two detached pastoral poems in the first quarto, where they seem to have attracted little attention. Ramsay ran them together as the first and second scenes of a drama which beautifully and naturally evolves the story they half suggest. No more pleasing and effective moral agency than this dramatic pastoral, the Bible alone excepted, ever entered the cottages of the Scottish peasantry. Its morality is of the best type; it is the morality of common sense, practicable, honest, and cheerful….

Satirist, of course, he was, but his satire was of that genial and even gentle kind, that aims at institutions rather than individuals, at manners rather than men, and is content with simple exposure. Ramsay, either as a poet or a man, needs no great critic to interpret him for us. His life, and his writings, which afford the best commentary on his life, are open to all who have eyes to see. But if we must find a critic of authority with whom our own opinion shall agree, we shall hardly find a better than Walter Scott, who brought the essential quality of the man into a single word when he called him "the joyous Ramsay."