cidents and scenes, suggested the manners of rural and everyday life, were written many of them in the vernacular; and if they did not contain descriptions of scenery for their own sake, they yet suggested localities, contained pictures by the way, and allusions to nature for purposes of simile and illustration. Out of these rose the suggestions and the inspiration which, when fused in a whole, gave birth to 'The Gentle Shepherd' in 1725.

Of the general merits of this poem, as a pastoral, this is not the place to speak. These are now definitely and permanently recognised. A Scotsman who retains his nationality cannot read it without feeling its truth and its power. Properly enough it does not pause on descriptions of scenery, nor does it unduly prolong them; but they are there as the groundwork of the piece, constantly recurring, well woven into the progress of the incidents; and truer or more apt pictures of certain aspects of the Scottish landscape we have not in the language. Ramsay overleaps the garden limits, so common and tiresome in the older poets; goes out into the meadows, the fields, and the pastoral moorlands; daunders by the burn, climbs the hill

side, and tells us what he finds there at first hand-what the eye sees and the ear hearsand tells it so deftly, so briefly often, that a few lines contain a complete picture. His painting is thoroughly realistic, taken straight from nature, and yet it is completely typical of the scene. Ramsay first revealed the power and the beauty of the Lowland and pastoral landscape of Scotland. To grandeur or sublimity he never rises. We have nothing of mountain power, beetling crag, deep corrie, or unfathomable glen-nothing of the stern and the wild in our scenery. His somewhat toned-down and timid spirit, always tending to the golden mean in action and even imagination, shrank from this; and it was as yet hardly recognised in the feeling of the time. The sympathy with and depicting of this side of things came much later. It is neither in Fergusson nor in Burns. Leyden probably was the first after Ramsay to feel it; and it comes to its climax in Scott. Withal, Ramsay's work in this direction is invaluable; and one of its merits is, that it first led a native artist-David Allanin 1788, to illustrate with the pencil those native scenes which Ramsay had so well portrayed in words. This gave a direction to Scottish art,

the fruits of which the country has reaped richly since the last quarter of last century.

The key-note to Ramsay's mode of dealing with nature is in these lines :

"I love the garden wild and wide,
Where oaks have plum-trees by their side;
Where woodbines and the twisting vine
Clip round the pear-tree and the pine;
Where mixed jonquils and gowans grow,
And roses 'midst rank clover blow
Upon a bank of a clear strand,

In wimplings led by Nature's hand.

Though docks and brambles here and there
May sometimes cheat the gardener's care,
Yet this to me's a paradise

Compared with prim-cut plots and nice,
Where Nature has to Art resigned,
Till all looks mean, stiff, and confined.

Heaven Homer taught; the critic draws
Only from him and such their laws:
The native bards first plunge the deep
Before the artful dare to leap.” *

This was the new spirit, the very spirit of

* Epistle to W. Somerville, 1729.

Scott himself, carried in him to a greater height

and freedom :-

"On the wild hill

Let the wild heath-bell flourish still;
Cherish the tulip, prune the vine;
But freely let the woodbine twine,
And leave untrimmed the eglantine."

In 'The Gentle Shepherd' the pictures of scenery, complete and rounded, are too numerous to quote; but it is only by reference to some of these that we can understand the change which has now come over the mode of dealing with the Scottish landscape. The Prologue to each scene contains a perfect image. Thus, to Act I., Scene 1, we have the following Prologue:

"Beneath the south side of a craigy bield,
Where crystal springs the halesome waters yield,
Twa youthfu' shepherds on the gowans lay,
Tenting their flocks ae bonny morn of May.
Poor Roger granes,1 till hollow echoes ring,
But blither Patie likes to laugh an' sing."

1

* Marmion, Int., c. iii.

1 Groans.

Patie and Roger.

"Pat. This sunny morning, Roger, cheers

my blood,

And puts all nature in a jovial mood.

How heartsome 'tis to see the rising plants,

To hear the birds chirm o'er their pleasing

rants!

How halesome 'tis to snuff the cauler air,

And all the sweets it bears, when void of care! What ails thee, Roger, then? What gars thee grane?

Tell me the cause of thy ill-season'd pain."

In Scene II., Prologue, we have

"A flowrie howm atween twa verdant braes, Where lasses use to wash and spread their claes; A trotting burnie wimpling thro' the ground, Its channel pebbles, shining, smooth and round; Here view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear;

First please your eye, then gratify your ear."

"Jen.

Peggy and Jenny.

Come Meg, let's fa' to wark upon this green,

This shining day will bleach our linen clean;