The Gentle Shepherd. Allan Ramsay

the finest strokes of the pathetic, but have attained even to a high pitch of the sublime. For the truth of this observation, we may appeal to The Cotter's Saturday Night, and The Vision of Burns. In these, the language, so far from conveying the idea of vulgarity, appears most eminently suited to the sentiment, which seems to derive, from its simplicity, additional tenderness, and superior elevation.

      The Scots, and the English, languages are, indeed, nothing more than different dialects of the same radical tongue, namely, the Anglo-Saxon; and, setting prejudice apart, (which every preference, arising from such associations, as we have mentioned, must be,) it would not perhaps be difficult, on a fair investigation of the actual merits of both the dialects, to assert the superior advantages of the Scotish to the English, for many species of original composition. But a discussion of this kind would lead too far; and it is but incidentally connected with the proper subject of these remarks.[41] It is enough to say, that the merits of those very compositions, on which we are now to offer some remarks, are of themselves a sufficient demonstration of the powers of that language in which, chiefly, they are composed, for many, if not for all the purposes of poetry.

      (Remarks on Ramsay's miscellaneous poems are here omitted.)

      In the year 1725, Ramsay published his pastoral comedy of The Gentle Shepherd, the noblest and most permanent monument of his fame. A few years before, he had published, in a single sheet, A Pastoral Dialogue between Patie and Roger, which was reprinted in the first collection of his poems, in 1721. This composition being much admired, his literary friends urged him to extend his plan to a regular drama: and to this fortunate suggestion the literary world is indebted for one of the most perfect pastoral poems that has ever appeared.[42]

      The pastoral drama is an invention of the moderns. The first who attempted this species of poetry was Agostino de Beccari, in his Sacrificio Favola Pastorale, printed in 1553. Tasso is supposed to have taken the hint from him; and is allowed, in his Aminta, published in 1573, to have far surpassed his master. Guarini followed, whose Pastor Fido contends for the palm with the Aminta, and, in the general opinion of the Italians, is judged to have obtained it. Tasso himself is said to have confessed the superior merit of his rival's work; but to have added, in his own defence, that had Guarini never seen his Aminta, he never would have surpassed it. Yet, I think, there is little doubt, that this preference is ill-founded. Both these compositions have resplendent beauties, with glaring defects and improprieties. I am, however, much mistaken, if the latter are not more abundant in the Pastor Fido, as the former are predominant in the Aminta. Both will ever be admired, for beauty of poetical expression, for rich imagery, and for detached sentiments of equal delicacy and tenderness: but the fable, both of the Aminta, and Pastor Fido, errs against all probability; and the general language and sentiments of the characters are utterly remote from nature. The fable of the Aminta is not dramatic; for it is such, that the principal incidents, on which the plot turns, are incapable of representation: the beautiful Silvia, stripped naked, and bound by her hair to a tree by a brutal satyr, and released by her lover Amyntas;—her flight from the wolves;—the precipitation of Amyntas from a high rock, who narrowly escapes being dashed in pieces, by having his fall broken by the stump of a tree;—are all incidents, incapable of being represented to the eye; and must therefore be thrown into narration. The whole of the last act is narrative, and is taken up entirely with the history of Amyntas's fall, and the happy change produced in the heart of the rigorous Silvia, when she found her lover thus miraculously preserved from the cruel death, to which her barbarity had prompted him to expose himself.