Nor is the ferly great, when nature kind
Has blest them wi' solidity o' mind.
They'll reason calmly, and wi' kindness smile,
When our short passions wad our peace beguile.
Sae, whensoe'er they slight their maiks at hame,
It's ten to ane the wives are maist to blame.
Then I'll employ wi' pleasure a' my art
To keep him cheerfu' an' secure his heart.
At e'en, when he comes weary frae the hill,
I'll hae a' things made ready to his will.

In winter, when he toils through wind and rain,
A bleezing ingle and a clean hearth-stane;
An' soon as he flings by his plaid an' staff,
The seething pats be ready to tak' aff:
Clean hag-a-bag1 I'll spread upon his board,
And serve him wi' the best we can afford.
Good humour and white bigonets 2 shall be

Guards to my face, to keep his love for me.3

Allan Ramsay in his Songs often anticipates the natural style of Burns; but in The Gentle Shepherd his inspiration seems also to be sometimes derived from classical sources, as in the following bucolic duet :—

PEGGY. When first my dear laddie gaed to the green hill,
An' I at ewe-milking first say'd my young skill,
To bear the milk-bowie nae pain was to me
When I at the bughting foregathered wi' thee.

PATIE. When corn-riggs waved yellow, an' blue heather-bells,
Bloom'd bonny on muirland and sweet-rising fells,
Nae birns, briars, or breckens, gaed trouble to me,
Gif I found the berries right ripen'd for thee.

PEGGY. When thou ran or wrestled or putted the stane,
An' cam aff the victor, my heart was aye fain;

Thy ilka sport manly gae pleasure to me,
For nane can putt, wrestle, or run swift as thee.

PATIE. Our Jenny sings saftly the Cowden-broom-knowes ;
And Rosie lilts sweetly the Milking the Ewes;
There's few Jenny Nettles like Nancy can sing;
At Thro' the Wood, Laddie, Bess gars our lugs ring:

But when my dear Peggy sings wi' better skill
The Boatman, Tweedside, or The Lass o' the Mill,

It's mony times sweeter an' pleasing to me;
For though they sing nicely, they cannot like thee.

PEGGY. How easy can lasses trow what they desire!
An' praises sae kindly increases love's fire:
Gie me still this pleasure; my study shall be
To mak' mysel' better and sweeter for thee.1

The following is in a more purely Scottish vein :-
At setting day an' rising morn

Wi' saul that still shall love thee,
I'll ask o' Heav'n thy safe return,
Wi' a' that can improve thee.
I'll visit aft the birken bush,

Where first thou kindly tauld me
Sweet tales o' love, or hid my blush,
Whilst round thou didst infald me.

To a' our haunts I will repair,

To greenwood, shaw, or fountain,
Or where the simmer day I'd share
Wi' thee upon yon mountain.
There will I tell the trees and flowers,

Frae thoughts unfeigned and tender,
By vows you're mine, by love is yours
A heart that cannot wander. 2

From these extracts it will be readily inferred that The Gentle Shepherd is classical in form, romantic in feeling. The romance springs partly out of the spirit of local feudalism, so strongly surviving in the country districts both of England and Scotland, partly out of the growing love of rural Nature, as opposed to the conventionalities of urban Society. In respect of the former element, Ramsay had much in common with his English contemporary William Somervile, author of The Chase, who was born at Edston, in Warwickshire, about 1679, his father being the chief representative of one of the oldest Norman families in England. He was admitted into Winchester College in 1692, and afterwards became a Fellow of New College, Oxford, relinquishing that position in 1704, when he came into possession of his estate. He lived chiefly in the country, doing his duty 2 Ibid. Song xx.

1 The Gentle Shepherd, Song x.

as justice of the peace, and enjoying the rustic amusements which he has celebrated in The Chase (1735), Hobbinol (1740), and Field Sports (1742). All of these poems appeared in the latter years of his life: his death took place on the 19th of July 1742. According to Shenstone, who knew him, his last days were troubled with the embarrassment of his affairs, and to drown his cares he resorted too frequently to the bottle.

Somervile's poems show little originality of form. He wrote the ordinary panegyrical Ode-for he was a Whig ; imitated Prior-not very successfully-in his Tales; and in his poems, descriptive of country life, followed the lead of John Philips in Cider, and of Thomson in The Seasons. His personality, rather than his art, gives him a representative position among English poets. He seems to have combined some of the refined tastes of Sir Roger de Coverley1 with those of the country squires-described by Pope in a letter to Cromwell-whose favourite poet was Tom D'Urfey. But his love of the country and his acquaintance with its pursuits are unmistakably shown in his poems, which breathe a spirit as different as possible from the literary coffee-house pastoralism cultivated by Pope and Ambrose Philips. He was a friend and a great admirer of Allan Ramsay, and the following lines from the epistle which he addressed to the latter on the publication of The Gentle Shepherd, and in which he describes his own disposition, may be taken as indicative of the new spirit beginning to make itself felt in English Poetry. He begins his epistle by describing the sympathy with which he and his English neighbours had read the Scottish poet's verse :—

Near fair Avona's silver tide,

Whose waves in soft meanders glide,

1 His best-known lines are those in his address to Addison, whom he compliments on the moral effects produced by The Spectator :—

When panting Virtue her last efforts made,
You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid.

2 Pope to Cromwell, 10th April 1710 (Elwin and Courthope's edition of Pope's Works).

I read to the delighted swains

Your jocund songs and rural strains.

And answering the invitation to visit Allan in Scotland, he proceeds:

What a strange figure should I make,

A poor abandoned English rake;
A squire well-born and six-foot high,
Perched in that sacred pillory.1
Let spleen and zeal be banished thence,
And troublesome impertinence,
That tells his story o'er again :
Ill manners and his saucy train,
And self-conceit and stiff-rumpt pride,
That grin at all the world beside :
Foul scandal with a load of lies,
Intrigues, rencounters, prodigies;
Fame's busy hawker, light as air,
That feeds on frailties of the fair:
Envy, hypocrisy, deceit,

Fierce party rage, and warm debate :
And all the hell-hounds that are foes
To friendship and the world's repose.
But mirth instead and dimpling smiles,
And wit that gloomy care beguiles;
And joke, and pun, and merry tale,
And toasts that round the table sail;
While laughter, bursting through the crowd
In vollies, tells our joys aloud.

Hark! the shrill piper mounts on high;
The woods, the streams, the rocks reply
To his far-sounding melody.

Behold each labouring squeeze prepare
Supplies of modulated air.

Observe Croudero's active bow,

His head still nodding to and fro;

His eyes, his cheeks, with rapture glow.

See, see, the bashful nymphs advance,
To lead the regulated dance;
Flying still, and still pursuing,
Yet with backward glances wooing.
This, this shall be the joyous scene;
Nor wanton elves, that skim the green,
Shall be so blest, so blithe, so gay,
Or less regard what dotards say.

1 i.e. The ecclesiastical tribunals of the Scotch Kirk.

VOL. V

2 B

My Rose shall then your Thistle greet;
The Union shall be more complete ;
And in a bottle and a friend

Each national dispute shall end.1

The love of the country and external nature, which was inborn in Allan Ramsay and Somervile, was cultivated as an artificial sentiment by William Shenstone, owner of The Leasowes. This poet was born at Halesowen in Worcestershire on the 13th of November 1714, the son of William Shenstone of Lappal, a small proprietor in the district. His first teacher was Sarah Lloyd, whose fame he has perpetuated in The Schoolmistress? From her charge he passed on to Halesowen Grammar School, and thence again to one Crampton of Solihull, who taught him most of his knowledge of classical literature, till, on the 17th of May 1732, he was admitted into Pembroke College, Oxford, where he seems to have resided for several years, but without taking a degree. He was still there when he published anonymously in 1737 his first volume of poems, which contained the earliest draft of The Schoolmistress. The Judgment of Hercules appeared, also anonymously, in 1741. In 1745 he came into the occupation of The Leasowes, a little property purchased by his father, on which he resided for the rest of his life, amusing himself with developing its " picturesque features, and with showing them to strangers who came to the place out of curiosity. Here, at different dates, he wrote most of his verses, which, collected under the different titles of Elegies, Odes, Songs and Ballads, Levities and Moral Pieces, were published 1748-1758. He died on the 11th of February 1763, and was buried in Halesowen Churchyard.

Shenstone was perhaps the first English poet who cultivated sentiment and style for their own sake. A

1 Chalmers' English Poets, vol. x. p. 199.

2 He calls the poem "a deformed portrait of my old school-dame, Sarah Lloyd, whose house is to be seen as thou travellest towards the native home of thy faithful servant-but she sleeps with her fathers-and Thomas, her son, reigneth in her stead.”—Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone, Esq. (1791), vol. iii. p. 46.