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

T48 FAMOUS SCOTS
been severed. But approximately defined, a lyric may
be said to be a poem—short, vivid, and expressive of a
definite emotion, appealing more to the eye than with
any ultimate view of being set to music ; a song, as a
composition appealing more to the ear, wherein the
sentiments are more leisurely expressed, with the inten-
tion of being accompanied by music. Mr. E. H.
Stoddard, in the preface to his English Madrigals, defines
a lyric 'as a simple, unstudied expression of thought,
sentiment, or passion; a song, its expression according
to the mode of the day.' The essence of a lyric is
point, grace, and symmetry ; of a song, fluency, freedom,
and the expression of sympathetic emotions.
Ramsay, according to this basis of distinction, was,
as has been said, rather a song -writer than a lyrist.
The works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
Fletcher, and Massinger, abound in lyrics, but contain
comparatively few songs, in the modern sense of the
word, in which we speak of the songs of Burns, Moore,
and Barry Cornwall. Ramsay, in his songs, sacrificed
everything to mode. In nine cases out of ten he had
the tune for the song in his mind when he was writing
the words. In Scotland, as is well known, there is an
immense body of music, some of it ancient, some of it
comparatively modern, though none of it much later
than the Restoration. That was the mine wherein
Ramsay dug long and deep for the music for his Tea-
Table Miscellany. To those ancient tunes he supplied
words—words that to this day remain as a memorial
of the skill and sympathy wherewith he wedded the
spirit of the melodies to language in keeping with their
national character.