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

ALLAN RAMSAY 127
distinctively native and proper to persons in their sphere
of life. There is no dissidence visible between what
may imperfectly be termed the motif of the poem and
the sentiments of even the most subordinate characters
in it. Therein lies the true essence of literary symmetry
—the symmetry not alone of mere form, though that also
was present, but the symmetry resulting from the
harmony of thought with its expression, of scene and its
characters, of situation and its incidents. Such the
symmetry exhibited by Homer's Iliad, by Dante's
Inferno, by Milton's Paradise Lost, by Cervantes' Don
Quixote, by Camoens' Lusiad, by Scott's Lay of the Last
Minstrel, by Tennyson's Idylls.
Frankly, it must be admitted that only in his Gentle
Shepherd does Ramsay attain this outstanding ex-
cellence. His other pieces are meritorious,—highly so
but they could have been produced by many a writer of
the age with equal, perhaps superior, felicity, and they
shine only in the reflected light of The Gentle Shepherd;
even as Scott's Lord of the Isles and Harold the
Dauntless were saved from being 'damned as
mediocrity ' only by the excellence of the Lay of the
Last Minstrel and Mannion.
The great charm of The Gentle Shepherd lies in the
skilfully - balanced antithesis of its contrasts, in the
reflected interest each type casts on its opposite. As
in Moliere's Tartuffe, it is the vivid contrast created
between the hypocrisy of the title-character and the easy
good-nature of Orgon, that begets a reciprocal interest in
the fortunes of both ; as in Balzac's Pere Goriot, it is the
pitiless selfishness of his three daughters on the one
hand, and the doting self-denial of the poor old father
;