Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland

ALLAN RAMSAY 125
poems, however, occur intimations that the incongruity
was perceived by the author, but that, as yet, he did not
see any means of remedying the uniform monotony
of the conventional form. The leaven was at work
in Ramsay's mind, but so far it only succeeded in
injfluencing but the smallest moiety of the lump.
In the Masque^ written in celebration of the marriage
of the Duke of Hamilton, the sentiments expressed are
wholly different. Written subsequently to The Gentle
Shepherd^ Ramsay exhibited in it his increased technical
deftness, and how much he had profitted by the experience
gained in producing his great pastoral. The
Masque^ albeit professedly a dramatic pastoral, entirely
abjures the lackadaisical shepherds and shepherdesses of
conventional pastoral, and, as a poem of pure imagination,
reverts to the ancient mythology for the dramatis personce.
All these pieces, however, though they exhibit a facility
in composition, a fecundity of imagination, a skilful
adaptation of theme to specific metrical form, a rare
human sympathy, and a depth of pathos as natural in
expression as it was genuine in its essence, are only, so
to speak, the preludes to The Gentle Shepherd. In the
latter, Ramsay's matured principles of pastoral composi-
tion are to be viewed where best their relative importance
can be estimated, namely, when put into practice.
By competent critics. The Gentle Shepherd is generally
conceded to be the noblest pastoral in the English
language. Dr. Hugh Blair, in his lectures on Rhetoric
and Belles Lettres, styled it ' a pastoral drama which will
bear being brought into comparison with any composition
of this kind in any language. ... It is full of so much
natural description and tender sentiment as would do