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Rh 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 ; '