Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland
Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland
Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland
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ALLAN RAMSAY 91<br />
the beauties without the grossness <strong>of</strong> country life, should<br />
be the aim <strong>of</strong> pastoral poetry.'<br />
By all these critics pastoral poetry is considered in its<br />
abstract or ideal form. They never dreamed <strong>of</strong> bidding<br />
poets descend to the concrete, or to actual rural life, as<br />
Beattie puts it, ' there to study that life as they found<br />
it.' Dr. Pennecuik justly remarks, in his essay on<br />
<strong>Ramsay</strong> and Pastoral Poetry :<br />
' Of the ancient fanciful<br />
division <strong>of</strong> the ages <strong>of</strong> the world into the golden^ silver^<br />
brazen^ and iron^ the first, introduced by Saturn into Italy,<br />
has been appropriated to the shepherd state. Virgil<br />
added this conceit to his polished plagiarisms from<br />
Theocritus ; and thus, as he advanced in elegance and<br />
majesty, receded from simplicity, nature, reality, and<br />
truth.'<br />
To <strong>Ramsay</strong>'s credit be it ascribed, that he broke away<br />
from these rank absurdities and false ideas <strong>of</strong> pastoral<br />
poetry, and dared to paint nature and rural Hfe as he<br />
found it. His principles are thus stated by himself:<br />
' The Scottish poet must paint his own country's scenes<br />
and his own country's life, if he would be true to his<br />
<strong>of</strong>fice. . . . The morning rises in the poet's description<br />
as she does in the Scottish horizon ; we are not carried<br />
to Greece and Italy for a shade, a stream, or a breeze<br />
the groves rise in our own valleys, the rivers flow from<br />
our own fountains, and the winds blow upon our own<br />
hills.'<br />
To the fact that <strong>Ramsay</strong> has painted <strong>Scotland</strong> and<br />
Scottish rustics as they are, and has not gone to the<br />
hermaphrodite and sexless inhabitants <strong>of</strong> a mythical<br />
Golden Age for the characters <strong>of</strong> his great drama, the<br />
heart <strong>of</strong> every Scot can bear testimony. Neither Burns,<br />
;