Allan Ramsay

“ Nothing can be more delicately beautiful, or more agreeable to the true simplicity of pastoral, than Amyntas's recounting to Tircis the rise of his passion for Silvia. The description of their joint occupations and sports, till love insensibly arose in the breast of Tircis; the natural and innocent device he employed to obtain a kiss from Silvia; the discovery of his affection, and his despair on finding her heart insensible to his passion, are proofs that Tasso was a true poet, and knew [how] to touch those strings, with which our genuine feelings must ever harmonize. ”

“ To the sarcastical picture which Jenny draws of the anxieties and turmoil of a wedded life, Peggy thus warmly replies:
Such are the sentiments of nature; nor is the language, in which they are conveyed, inadequate to their force and tenderness: for to those who understand the Scotish dialect, the expression will be found to be as beautiful as the thought. It is in those touches of simple nature, those artless descriptions, of which the heart instantly feels the [xlix] force, thus confessing their consonance to truth, that Ramsay excels all the pastoral poets that ever wrote. ”

“ The admirers of the Gentle Shepherd, must perhaps be contented to share some suspicion of national partiality, while they do justice to their own feeling of its merit. Yet as this drama is a picture of rustic Scotland, it would perhaps be saying little for its fidelity, if it yielded no more agreeableness to the breast of a native than he could expound to a stranger by the strict letter of criticism. ”

“ Hunting in the forest, he holds a long discourse with an echo, and is half persuaded, by the reflected sounds of his own voice, that there is some real pleasure in love, and that he himself must one day yield to its influence. Dorinda clothes herself in the skin of a wolf, and is shot by him with an arrow, mistaking her for that animal. Then all at once he becomes her most passionate lover, sucks out the barb of the arrow with a plaister of green herbs, and swears to marry her on her recovery, which, by the favour of the gods, is fortunately accomplished in an instant. ”

“ The principal shepherd never speaks out of consistency with the habits of a peasant, but he moves in that sphere with such a manly spirit, with so much cheerful sensibility to its humble joys, with maxims of life so rational and independent, and with an ascendency over his fellow swains so well maintained by his force of character, that if we could suppose the pacific scenes of the drama to be suddenly changed into situations of trouble and danger, we should, in exact consistency with our former idea of him, expect him to become the leader of the peasants, and the Tell of his native hamlet. ”

“ And we think the Gentle Shepherd, 'in some respects,' the best pastoral that ever was written, not because it has anything, in a poetical point of view, to compare with Fletcher and Milton, but because there is, upon the whole, more faith and more love in it, and because the kind of idealized truth which it undertakes to represent, is delivered in a more corresponding and satisfactory form than in any other entire pastoral drama. ”

“ Equally unnatural with the fable are the sentiments of this pastoral. Amaryllis, passionately adored by Mirtillo, and secretly loving him, employs a long and refined metaphysical argument to persuade him, that if he really loves her, he ought to love her virtue; and that man's true glory lies in curbing his appetites. The moral chorus seems to have notions of love much more consonant to human nature, who discourses for a quarter of an hour on the different kinds of kisses, and the supreme pleasure felt, when they are the expression of a mutual passion. ”

“ But, as associated ideas arise only where the connection is either in itself necessary, or the relation is so intimate, the two ideas are seldom found disunited; so of late years, that disunion has taken place in a twofold manner; for the language, even of the common people of Scotland, is gradually refining, and coming nearer to the English standard; and it has fortunately happened, that the Scotish dialect has lately been employed in compositions of transcendant merit, which have not only exhibited the finest strokes of the pathetic, but have attained even to a high pitch of the sublime. ”

“ In what I have said of the manners of the characters in the Gentle Shepherd, I know that I encounter the prejudices of some Scotish critics, who allowing otherwise the very high merits of Ramsay as a poet, and giving him credit in particular for his knowledge of human nature, and skill to touch the passions, quarrel with him only on the score of his language; as they seem to annex inseparably the idea of coarseness and vulgarity to every thing that is written in the native dialect of their country: but of this I have said enough before. ”

“ Peggy, beautiful in person as in mind, endowed with every quality that can adorn the character of woman; gentle, tender-hearted, constant in affection, free from vanity as from caprice; of excellent understanding; judging of others by the criterion of her own innocent mind, and therefore forming the most amiable views of human nature. Jenny, sensible and affectionate, sprightly and satirical; possessing the ordinary qualities of her sex, self-love, simulation, and the passion of conquest; and pleased with exercising a capricious dominion over the mind of a lover ”

“ Here, surrounded by wild and mountainous scenery, and amid an artless and secluded people, whose manners and language were of patriarchal simplicity, his childhood received those pastoral and Arcadian impressions, which were too lively to be effaced by future habits, however uncongenial, and of which he in his manhood, amid all the artificial life of the city, made so lively and fascinating a transcription. ”

“ Her sons, in trying to adorn her, have shown remarkable defects of judgment. The ancient history of the Picts, so splendid in the page of Tacitus, is lost in our own fables. We neglect all our great poets, and are in raptures with Allan Ramsay. Our prejudices are as pitiful as strong; and we know not that the truth would make us far more illustrious, than all our dreams of prejudice, if realized, to use an expression of impossibility. Good sense in antiquities, and good taste in poetry, are astonishingly wanting in Scotland to this hour. ”

“ I have been the fuller on this subject, because, to the great discredit of taste in Scotland, while we admire the effusions of this scribbler, we utterly neglect our really great poets, such as Barbour, Dunbar, Drummond, &c. There is even a sort of national prejudice in favour of the Gentle Shepherd, because it is our only drama in the Scotish language; yet we ought to be ashamed to hold prejudices so ridiculous to other nations, and so obnoxious to taste, and just criticism. I glory in Scotland as my native country ”

“ The character of Silvio, utterly insensible to the charms of beauty or of female excellence, and who repays an ardent passion with insolence and hatred, if it exists at all in nature, is fitted only to excite contempt and detestation. Dorinda's courtship of Silvio is equally nauseous, and the stratagem she employs to gain his love is alike unnatural. ”

“ I am sure of vast numbers that will crowd into your Ladyship's opinion, and think it their honour to agree in their sentiments with the Countess of Eglintoun, whose penetration, superior wit, and sound judgment, shines with an uncommon lustre, while accompanied with the diviner charms of goodness and equality of mind.
If it were not for offending only your Ladyship, here, Madam, I might give the fullest liberty to my muse to delineate the finest of women, by drawing your Ladyship's character, and be in no hazard of being deemed a flatterer ”

“ Ramsay was a man of strong natural parts, and a fine poetical genius, of which his celebrated pastoral The Gentle Shepherd will ever remain a substantial monument; and though some of his songs may be deformed by far-fetched allusions and pitiful conceits, The Lass of Patie's Mill, The Yellow-hair'd Laddie, Farewell to Lochaber, and some others, must be allowed equal to any, and even superior, in point of pastoral simplicity, to most lyric productions, either in the Scotish or any other language. ”

“ The highest refinement of the heart, though too rare in most classes, is luckily to be found in all; and hence it is, that certain meetings of extremes in lovers of different ranks in life are not always to be attributed either to a failure of taste on the one side, or unsuitable pretensions on the other. Scotish dukes have been known to meet with real Gentle-Shepherd heroines; and everybody knows the story of a lowly Countess of Exeter, who was too sensitive to survive the disclosure of the rank to which her lover had raised her. ”

“ The principal difficulty in pastoral poetry, when it attempts an actual delineation of nature, (which we have seen is too seldom its object,) lies in the association of delicate and affecting sentiments with the genuine manners of rustic life; an union so difficult to be accomplished, that the chief pastoral poets, both ancient and modern, have either entirely abandoned the attempt, by choosing to paint a fabulous and chimerical state of society ”

“ We do not think it necessary, however, to stand up in defence of a dialect which has, since the days of Ramsay, been ennobled by the poems of Burns, and is eternized more lately in the tales of that mighty genius, who sits on the summit of Northern Literature, and flashes forth from behind his cloud his vivid and his fiery productions. In the use of this dialect, Ramsay is extremely fortunate; for Scottish shepherds he could have employed none other ”

“ There is not a milk-maid, a plough-boy, or a shepherd, of the Lowlands of Scotland, who has not by heart its favourite passages, and can rehearse its entire scenes. There are many of its couplets that, like the verses of Homer, are become proverbial, and have the force of an adage, when introduced in familiar writing, or in ordinary conversation. ”

“ To a just taste, and unadulterated feelings, the natural beauties of the country, the simple manners, rustic occupations, and rural enjoyments of its inhabitants, brought into view by the medium of a well-contrived dramatic fable, must afford a much higher degree of pleasure, than any chimerical fiction, in which Arcadian nymphs and swains hold intercourse with Pan and his attendant fauns and satyrs. If the position be disputed, let the Gentle Shepherd be fairly compared with the Aminta, and, Pastor Fido. ”

“ The situations in which the persons are placed are so ingeniously devised, as to draw forth from their bosoms all those feelings and passions which accompany the shepherd, life, and which are described with a happiness and a simplicity, the truer to nature, on account of its being removed from that over-wrought outrageousness of passion which we sometimes think is the fault of modern writing. ”

“ In fact, the Gentle Shepherd has no alloy whatsoever to its pretensions, such as they are—no failure in plot, language, or character—nothing answering to the coldness and irrelevances of 'Comus,' nor to the offensive and untrue violations of decorum in the 'Wanton Shepherdess' of Fletcher's pastoral, and the pedantic and ostentatious chastity of his Faithful one. ”

“ The interest which Ramsay excites is spread over a long poem, delineating manners more than passions; and the mind must be at home both in the language and manners, to appreciate the skill and comic archness with which he has heightened the display of rustic character without giving it vulgarity, and refined the view of peasant life by situations of sweetness and tenderness, without departing in the [lxviii] least degree from its simplicity. The Gentle Shepherd stands quite apart from the general pastoral poetry of modern Europe. ”

“ If, at times, we discern in the Aminta the proofs of a knowledge of the human heart, and the simple and genuine language of nature, our emotions of pleasure are soon checked by some frivolous stroke of refinement, or some cold conceit. In the Pastor Fido, the latter impression is entirely predominant, and we are seldom gratified with any thing like a natural or simple sentiment. ”

“ The persons of the Scotish pastoral are the actual inhabitants of the country where the scene is laid; their manners are drawn from nature with a faithful pencil. The contrast of the different characters is happily imagined, and supported with consummate skill. ”

“ The fables of the Aminta and Pastor Fido, drawn from a state of society which never had an existence, are, for that reason, incapable of exciting any high degree of interest; and the mind cannot for a moment remain under the influence of that deception, which it is the great purpose of the drama to produce. ”

“ So likewise when, forgetting nature, he resorts to the ordinary cant of pastoral, the language and thoughts of Theocritus and Virgil, and even superadds to those common-places, the false refinement, which in his age delighted his countrymen, we turn with dissatisfaction from his page. If we compare him, where the similarity of the subject allows a comparison, with the Scotish poet, how poor does the Italian appear in the competition!
Thus, let the first scene of the Aminta, between Silvia and Daphne, be compared with the scene between Jenny and Peggy, in the Gentle Shepherd. ”

“ The character which, in the preface to his Evergreen, he assigns to the Scotish poetry in general, is in the most peculiar manner assignable to his own: "The morning rises in the poet's description, as she does in the Scotish horizon: we are not carried to Greece and Italy for a shade, a [lix] stream, or a breeze; the groves rise in our own valleys, the rivers flow from our own fountains, and the winds blow upon our own hills." Ramsay's landscapes are drawn with the most characteristic precision: we view the scene before us, as in the paintings of a Claude or a Waterloo ”

“ While other modern tongues have been enriching themselves with pastoral, the English, copious in all other kinds, continues, in this, barren and deficient. No English production, therefore, can enter into competition with the Gentle Shepherd. We must look to the south of Europe for similar and rival productions, with which it can be compared. The shepherd plays of Tasso, and Guarini, and Bonarelli, contain more invention, and splendour, and variety of incident and of dialogue, than our Scottish drama ”

“ There are, in truth, two sorts of genuine pastoral—the high ideal of Fletcher and Milton, which is justly to be considered the more poetical,—and the homely ideal, as set forth by Allan Ramsay and some of the Idyls of Theocritus, and which gives us such feelings of nature and passion as poetical rustics not only can, but have entertained and eloquently described. ”

“ He viewed the former with the enthusiasm which, in early childhood, is the inseparable attendant of genius; and on the latter he remarked, with that sagacity of discriminating observation, which instructed the future moralist, and gave the original intimations to the contemporary satirist. With this predisposition of mind, it is natural to imagine, that the education, which he certainly received, opened to him such sources of instruction as English literature could furnish; and his kindred talents directed his reading chiefly to such of the poets as occasion threw in his way. ”