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

CHAPTER XI
RAMSAY AS A SATIRIST AND A SONG-WRITER
Difficult it is to make any exact classification of
Ramsay's works, inasmuch as he frequently applied
class-names to poems to which they were utterly inapplic-
able. Thus many of his elegies and epistles were
really satires, while more than one of those poems he
styled satires were rather of an epic character than
anything else. By the reader, therefore, certain short-
comings in classification must be overlooked, as
Ramsay's poetical terminology (if the phrase be per-
missible) was far from being exact.
As I have previously remarked, Ramsay's studies
in poetry, in addition to the earlier Scottish verse,
had lain largely in the later Elizabethan, Jacobean, and
Caroline periods. In these, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, and
Pope were his favourites, and their influence is to be
traced throughout his satires. To Boileau he had paid
some attention, though his acquaintance with French
literature was more through the medium of translations,
than by drawing directly from the fountainhead.
Ramsay's satires exhibit all the virtues of correct
mediocrity. Their versification is smooth, and they
generally scan accurately : the ideas are expressed
pithily, at times epigrammatically and wittily. The