ALLAN RAMSAY.*

THE present passion in Scotland for issuing reprints of the poets who have written in the Lowland dialect of the country is ominous of the future of that dialect. The sooner, indeed, Professor Blackie sets about establishing Chairs to render it, as well as Celtic, intelligible to the rising generation of his country- men, the better, for all the dictionaries and glossaries in the world will not save it from becoming even more of a foreign tongue than the English of Chaucer and Barbour. The passion is, in itself, not unpraiseworthy, and is certainly patriotic. It has been the means, no doubt, of giving to us a number of inferior repub- lications; and certainly the editorial pruning-knife might, as in the case of Wilson, the ornithologist and poet, have been used to advantage. But if the movement had given us nothing else than a reprint of the works of Allan Ramsay, the Theocritus of his country,.if not of his age, it would have been worthy of encourage- ment. We speak, however, more of the fact of the reprint, than of the reprint itself that is now before us. There seems, indeed no particular objection to the reproduction of the 1800 text, although there is perhaps also no particular reason in favour of that text. But what object is served by reprinting a biography of Ramsay saturated, as the one now before us is, with provincialisms, tempered only by good intentions? If nothing better or fresher was to be had, why not have quoted a graceful account of Ramsay's life and works written by some one of the more widely cultured of his countrymen and critics, such as that of Dr Robert Carruthers, in Chambers's Eneyelopmclia of English Literature.

It may seem a heresy or an absurdity to say so, but a reperusal of Allan Ramsay's works makes us come to the conclusion that he was fully as much of an Englishman as of a Scotchman. It is true that he wrote the dialect of Scotland with a purity equal to Burns's ; that Burns inherited Ramsay's metres and lyrical spirit, and was as inferior to Ramsay in accuracy as a photographer of Scotch life and customs as he was superior in genuine poetic passion. But Ramsay's mother was a Derbyshire woman, and although he claimed to be a Scot of the Douglas breed, there seems to be much more of the traditional Derby geniality than of the traditional Scotch intensity in his character and works. That unlimited fund of good-humour, that refraining from carry- ing anything—whether fanaticism, or morality, or "canniness," or the reverse of these—to what Marcus Aurelius calls "the sweating-point," that mixture of prudence with love in his poetry, and of prudence and success with hilarity and freedom in his life, were surely more English than Scotch. The greatest blunder, from the pecuniary point of view, that Ramsay ever committed was to spend his savings in the erection of a theatre for the performance of the regular drama in Edin- burgh. As a matter of course, the religious precisians of the place and time "sat upon" Allan ; the pamphleteers in their employ treated him to "The Dying Words of Allan Ramsay" and "The Flight of Religious Piety from Scotland," and he had to shut up his theatre, and even to beg his influential friends to "edge him into some canny post." Had he been a pure Scots- man, he would have sounded the feelings of his countrymen better before engaging in an enterprise which was doomed to be a failure ; thus all that the shrewd Hume did in support of the theatre was to aid and abet his clerical friends, such as Home and Alexander Carlyle, in patronising it with their presence or writings ; and even the " uncanny " Burns contented himself with writing odes to or epilogues for actresses who had attained favour in his eyes. Ramsay, however, made only one mistake of this kind. On the whole, he made wigs 'and sold books to good purpose ; he lived on pleasant terms with the literati, artists, and nobility of the period ; he died at a ripe age, and in possession of a sub- stantial competence, and passed his last evenings with Horatian equanimity.

One must take consideration of this English element in Ramsay, before the catholic character and enduring charm of his best works can be comprehended. He is coarse enough, and occasionally

• The Poems of Allan Ramsay, With Ulossary, Life of the Author, and Remarks. In 2 vole. Paisley: Alexander Gardner. 187S. a trifle irreverent, but even in his Christ's Kirk an the Green and in his Tales there is more of the realism of Hogarth than of the prurience of Sterne. He may laugh at folly and Pharisaism in high or holy places, but he does not dance upon them, like Dunbar or Burns. He is no ascetic, but he does not sing the praises of strong drink ; on the contrary, his creed is the prudential one :— "I hate a drunkard or a glutton,

Yet I'm nae fae to wine or mutton ; Great tables ne'er engaged my wishes, When crowded with owre mony dishes."

Although not inclined to take a very severe view of the moral slips of Scottish peasants, he does not shout out, like his suc- cessor :—

"Morality, thou deadly bane, Thy tens of thousands thou hart slain."

He rather appears to look upon early marriage as a prudent step to prevent such sins, with the inevitable result of "the shoal of repentance." Indeed, the best of his belief comes out in one of the least known and noticed, because simplest of his minor poems, entitled, "This is no my am n house"

:- "Then farewell to my father's house,

I gang where love invites me ; The strictest duty this allows,

When love with honour meets me, When Hymen moulds us into ane, My Roble' nearer than ony kin, And to refuse him were a sin, Sae lang's he kindly treats me."

In many respects Ramsay was eminently fitted to have translated Horace. His efforts in this direction were few, but such as they were, were undoubtedly superior to the more elaborate and sus- tained attempts of Dryden. Even in Burns there is nothing to surpass the easy charm of this :— " Let neist day come as it thinks fit,

The present moment's only ours ; On pleasure let's employ our wit, And laugh at Fortune's feckless powers.

Be sure ye dinna quit the grip Of ilka joy when ye are young, Before auld age your vitals nip, And lay ye twafauld owre rung.

Sweet youth's a blithe and heartsome time, Then, lads and lasses, while its May, Gae pn' the gowan in its prime, Before it wither and decay."

Ramsay's fame outside of Scotland has hitherto rested on his "Gentle Shepherd," and a fresh dip into it will not shake one's faith in the justice of past criticism. There is a vast difference between the chapter of the Gorgo and Praxinoe of Theocritus and the simple dialogue of Ramsay's Jenny and Peggy, but the one is as true to life as the other. The simple morality of people content with "the silent magnanimity of Nature and her God" is a luxury, to any one who has had a lengthened ex- perience of strained passion and artificiality. The lower animalism of the Scotch peasantry Ramsay did not allow himself to indicate, as he might so easily have done. "The strong hand of the purity" of Calvinism is upon them. They talk easily and freely of lovers, husbands, and children ; but after all, their wishes come to nothing more than this

Wow ! Jenny, can there greater pleasure be Than see sic wee tots toolying at yaur knee ; When a they ettle at, their greatest wish Is to be made o', and obtain a kiss?

Can there be toil in tending day and night The like o' them, when love maks care delight ?"

Many of those amongst us who are oscillating between criticism and cynicism could do worse than take a royal road to Arcadia by perusing Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd." In few works would they find purity and playfulness so happily allied, or so gracefully described.