THE HAPPY MARRIAGE.

How blest has my time been! what joys have I known,

Since wedlock's soft bondage made Jessy my own!
So joyful my heart is, so easy my chain,
That freedom is tasteless and roving a pain.

Through walks grown with woodbines, as often we stray,

Around us our boys and girls frolic and play: How pleasing their sport is! the wanton ones see, And borrow their looks from my Jessy and me.

To try her sweet temper, ofttimes am I seen,
In revels all day with the nymphs on the green :
Though painful my absence, my doubts she beguiles,
And meets me at night with complacence and smiles.
What though on her cheeks the rose loses its hue,
Her wit and good humour bloom all the year through;
Time still, as he flies, adds increase to her truth,
And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth.
Ye shepherds so gay, who make love to ensnare,
And cheat, with false vows, the too credulous-fair;
In search of true pleasure, how vainly you roam !
To hold it for life, you must find it at home.

DYER was the son of a solicitor at Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire. He was educated at Westminster school, and returned from thence to be instructed in his father's profession, but left it for poetry and painting; and, having studied the arts of design under a master, was for some time, as he says, an itinerant painter in Wales. Dividing his affections, however, between the sister Muses, he indited (1726) his Grongar Hill amidst those excursions. It was published about his twentyseventh year. He afterwards made the tour of Italy in the spirit both of an artist and poet,

and, besides studying pictures and prospects, composed a poem on the Ruins of Rome. On his return to England he married a lady of the name of Ensor, a descendant of Shakspeare, retired into the country, and entered into orders. His last preferment was to the living of Kirkley on Bane. The witticism on his "Fleece," related by Dr. Johnson, that its author, if he was an old man, would be buried in woollen, has, perhaps been oftener repeated than any passage in the poem itself.

SILENT nymph, with curious eye!
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man;
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale;
Come, with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister Muse;
Now, while Phoebus riding high
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill invites my song,

Draw the landscape bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells,
Sweetly musing, Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made,
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,
Sat upon a flow'ry bed,

With my hand beneath my head ;

[* In Lewis' Miscellanies, 1726.]

While stray'd my eyes o'er Towy's flood,
Over mead, and over wood,

From house to house, from hill to hill,
Till contemplation had her fill.

About his chequer'd sides I wind,
And leave his brooks and meads behind,
And groves, and grottoes where I lay,
And vistos shooting beams of day:
Wide and wider spreads the vale;
As circles on a smooth canal:

The mountains round, unhappy fate,
Sooner or later, of all height,
Withdraw their summits from the skies,
And lessen as the others rise:

Still the prospect wider spreads,

Adds a thousand woods and meads;

Still it widens, widens still,
And sinks the newly-risen hill.

Now I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapours intervene ;
But the gay, the open scene,
Does the face of nature show,
In all the hues of heaven's bow;

And, swelling to embrace the light, Spreads around beneath the sight.

Old castles on the cliffs arise, Proudly towering in the skies! Rushing from the woods, the spires Seem from hence ascending fires! Half his beams Apollo sheds On the yellow mountain-heads! Gilds the fleeces of the flocks, And glitters on the broken rocks! Below me trees unnumber'd rise, Beautiful in various dyes : The gloomy pine, the poplar blue, The yellow beech, the sable yew, The slender fir, that taper grows,

The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.
And beyond the purple grove,
Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love!
Gaudy as the opening dawn,
Lies a long and level lawn,

On which a dark hill, steep and high,
Holds and charms the wandering eye!
Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,
His sides are clothed with waving wood,
And ancient towers crown his brow,
That cast an awful look below;
Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps,
And with her arms from falling keeps :
So both a safety from the wind
On mutual dependence find.
"Tis now the raven's bleak abode ;
"Tis now th' apartment of the toad;
And there the fox securely feeds;
And there the poisonous adder breeds,
Conceal'd in ruins, moss, and weeds;
While, ever and anon, there falls
Huge heaps of hoary moulder'd walls.
Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
And level lays the lofty brow,
Has seen this broken pile complete,
Big with the vanity of state;

But transient is the smile of fate!
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.

And see the rivers how they run,
Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life, to endless sleep!
Thus is nature's vesture wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought;
Thus she dresses green and gay,

To disperse our cares away i

Ever charming, ever new,

*

When will the landscape tire the view!

[* See Byron's remark on this passage. Life and Works, vol. vi. p. 365.]

;

The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!
The pleasant seat, the ruin'd tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Æthiop's arm.

See on the mountain's southern side,
Where the prospect opens wide,
Where the evening gilds the tide ;
How close and small the hedges lie!
What streaks of meadows cross the eye!
A step methinks may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem;
So we mistake the future's face,
Eyed through hope's deluding glass;
As yon summits soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,
Which, to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear ;
Still we tread the same coarse way,
The present's still a cloudy day*.
O may I with myself agree,
And never covet what I see :
Content me with an humble shade,
My passions tamed, my wishes laid;
For, while our wishes wildly roll,
We banish quiet from the soul:
"Tis thus the busy beat the air,
And misers gather wealth and care.

Now, ev'n now, my joys run high,
As on the mountain-turf I lie;
While the wanton zephyr sings,
And in the vale perfumes his wings :
While the waters murmur deep;
While the shepherd charms his sheep;
While the birds unbounded fly,
And with music fill the sky,
Now, ev'n now, my joys run high.

Be full, ye courts; be great who will;
Search for peace with all your skill;
Open wide the lofty door,

Seek her on the marble floor;

In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain ye search the domes of care!
Grass and flowers Quiet treads,
On the meads and mountain-heads,
Along with Pleasure, close allied,
Ever by each other's side:
And often, by the murmuring rill,
Hears the thrush, while all is still,
Within the groves of Grongar Hill.

[* Lord Byron asks, (vol. vi. p. 366,) original of Mr. Campbell's far-famed,

"Is not this the

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue"?

We answer for Mr. Campbell, decidedly not!]

THE personal history of Allan Ramsay is marked by few circumstances of striking interest; yet, independently of his poetry, he cannot be reckoned an insignificant individual who gave Scotland her first circulating library, and who established her first regular theatre. He was born in the parish of Crawfurd Moor, in Lanarkshire, where his father had the charge of Lord Hopeton's lead-mines. His mother, Alice Bower, was the daughter of an Englishman who had emigrated to that place from Derbyshire. By his paternal descent the poet boasts of having sprung from a Douglas loin;” but, owing to the early death of his father, his education was confined to a parish-school, and at the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to the humble business of a wig-maker. On this subject one of his Scottish biographers refutes, with some indignation, a report which had gone abroad, that our poet was bred a barber, and carefully instructs the reader, that in those good times, when a fashionable wig cost twenty guineas, the employment of manufacturing them was both lucrative and creditable. Ramsay, however, seems to have felt no ambition either for the honours or profits of the vocation, as he left it on finishing his apprenticeship. In his twenty-fourth year he married the daughter of a writer, or attorney, in

* Apropos to this delicate distinction of the Scottish biographer may be mentioned the advertisement of a French perruquier in the Palais Royal, who ranks his business among the "imitative arts." A London artist in the same profession had a similar jealousy with the historian of Ramsay's life, at the idea of mere " trimmers of the human face" being confounded with "genuine perruquiers." In advertising his crop-wigs he alluded to some wig-weaving competitors, whom he denominated "mere hair-dressers and barbers;" and "shall a barber (he exclaims) affect to rival these crops?" "Barbarus has segetes."-VIRGIL.

This son of the poet was a man of literature as well as genius. The following whimsical specimen of his poetry is subjoined as a curiosity. The humorous substitution of the kirk-treasury man for Horace's wolf, in the third stanza, will only be recognised by those who understand the importance of that ecclesiastical officer in Scotland, and the powers with which he is invested for summoning delinquents before the clergy and elders, in cases of illegitimate love.

HORACE'S" INTEGER VITE," &c.

BY ALLAN RAMSAY, JUN.

A man of no base (John) life or conversation,
Needs not to trust in, coat of mail nor buffskin,
Nor need he vapour, with the sword and rapier,
Pistol, or great gun.
Whether he ranges, eastward to the Ganges,
Or if he bends his course to the West Indies,
Or sail the Sea Red, which so many strange odd
Stories are told of.

Edinburgh. His eldest sont rose to well-known eminence as a painter. Our poet's first means of subsistence after his marriage, were to publish small poetical productions in a cheap form, which became so popular, that even in this humble sale he was obliged to call upon the magistrates to protect his literary property from the piracy of the hawkers. He afterwards set up as a bookseller, and published, at his own shop, a new edition of "Christ's Kirk on the Green," with two cantos of his own subjoined to the ancient original, which is ascribed to James I. of Scotland. A passage in one of those modern cantos of Ramsay's, describing a husband fascinated homewards from a scene of drunkenness by the gentle persuasions of his wife, has been tastefully selected by Wilkie, and been made the subject of his admirable pencil.

In 1724 he published a collection of popular Scottish songs, called the Tea-Table Miscellany, which speedily ran through twelve impressions. Ruddiman assisted him in the glossary, and Hamilton of Bangour, Crawfurd, and Mallet were among the contributors to his modern songs. In the same year appeared his Evergreen, a collection of pieces from the Bannatyne MSS. written before the year 1600. Here the vanity of adorning what it was his duty to have faithfully transcribed led him to take many liberties with the originals; and it is pretty clear that one poem, viz. the Vision, which he pretended to have found in ancient manuscript, was the fruit of his own brain. But the Vision, considered as his own, adds a plume to his poetical character which may overshade his defects as an editor.

In 1726 he published his Gentle Shepherd. The first rudiments of that pleasing drama had been given to the public in two pastoral dialogues, which were so much liked that his friends exhorted him to extend them into a regular play.

For but last Monday, walking at noon-day,
Conning a ditty, to divert my Betty,

By me that son's Turk (I not frighted) our Kirk-
Treasurer's man pass'd,

And sure more horrid monster in the torrid-
Zone ne'er was found, Sir, though for snakes renown'd, Sir,
Nor can great Peter's empire boast such creatures,
Th'of bears the wet nurse.

Should I by hap land on the coast of Lapland,
Where there no fir is, much less pears and cherries,
Where stormy weather's sold by hags, whose leather-
faces would fright one.

Place me where tea grows, or where sooty negroes,
Sheep's guts round tie them, lest the sun should fry them,
Still while my Betty smiles and talks so pretty,
I will adore her.

The reception of this piece soon extended his reputation beyond Scotland. His works were reprinted at Dublin, and became popular in the colonies. Pope was known to admire The Gentle Shepherd; and Gay, when he was in Scotland, sought for explanations of its phrases, that he might communicate them to his friend at Twickenham. Ramsay's shop was a great resort of the congenial fabulist while he remained in Edinburgh; and from its windows, which overlooked the Exchange, the Scottish poet used to point out to Gay the most remarkable characters of the place.

A second volume of his poems appeared in 1728; and in 1730 he published a collection of fables. His epistles in the former volume are generally indifferent; but there is one addressed to the poet Somervile, which contains some easy lines. Professing to write from nature more than art, he compares, with some beauty, the rude style which he loved and practised, to a neglected orchard.

I love the garden wild and wide,

Where oaks have plum-trees by their side,
Where woodbines and the twisting vine
Clip round the pear-tree and the pine;
Where mixt jonquils and gowans grow,
And roses midst rank clover blow,
Upon a bank of a clear strand,

Its wimplings led by nature's hand;
Though docks and brambles, here and there,
May sometimes cheat the gard'ner's care,
Yet this to me's a Paradise,

Compared to prime cut plots and nice,

Where nature has to art resign'd,

And all looks stiff, mean, and confined.

Of original poets he says, in one expressive couplet :

The native bards first plunged the deep,
Before the artful dared to leap.

About the age of forty-five he ceased to write for the public. The most remarkable circumstance of his life was an attempt which he made to establish a theatre in Edinburgh. Our poet had been always fond of the drama, and had occasionally supplied prologues to the players who visited the northern capital. But though the age of fanaticism was wearing away, it had not yet suffered the drama to have a settled place of exhibition in Scotland; and when Ramsay had, with great expense, in the year 1736, fitted up a theatre in Carubber's Close, the act for licensing the stage, which was passed in the following year, gave the magistrates of Edinburgh a power of shutting it up, which they exerted with gloomy severity. Such was the popular hatred of playhouses in Scotland at this period, that, some time afterwards, the mob of Glasgow demolished the first playhouse that was erected in their city; and though the work of destruction was accomplished in daylight by many hundreds, it was reckoned so godly, that no reward could bribe any witness to appear or inform against the

a Daisies.

rioters. Ten years from the date of this disappointment, Ramsay had the satisfaction of seeing dramatic entertainments freely enjoyed by his fellow-citizens; but in the mean time he was not only left without legal relief for his own loss in the speculation (having suffered what the Scotch law denominated a "damnum sine injuria”), but he was assailed with libels on his moral character, for having endeavoured to introduce the "hellbred playhouse comedians."

He spent some of the last years of his life in a house of whimsical construction, on the north side of the Castle-hill of Edinburgh, where the place of his residence is still distinguished by the name of Ramsay-garden.

A scurvy in his gums put a period to his life in his seventy-second year. He died at Edinburgh, and was interred in Grey Friars church-yard. Ramsay was small in stature, with dark but expressive and pleasant features. He seems to have possessed the constitutional philosophy of good-humour. His genius gave him access to the society of those who were most distinguished for rank and talents in his native country; but his intercourse with them was marked by no servility, and never seduced him from the quiet attention to trade by which he ultimately secured a moderate independence. His vanity in speaking of himself is often excessive, but it is always gay and good-natured. On one occasion he modestly takes precedence of Peter the Great, in estimating their comparative importance with the public." But ha'd', proud Czar (he says) I wad na niffer fame." Much of his poetry breathes the subdued aspirations of Jacobitism. He was one of those Scotsmen who for a long time would not extend their patriotism to the empire in which their country was merged, and who hated the cause of the Whigs in Scotland, from remembering its ancient connexion with the leaven of fanaticism. The Tory cause had also found its way to their enthusiasm by being associated with the pathos and romance of the lost independence of their country. The business of Darien was still "alta mente repostum." Fletcher's eloquence on the subject of the Union was not forgotten, nor that of Belhaven, who had apostrophised the Genius of Caledonia in the last meeting of her senate, and who died of grief at the supposed degradation of his country. Visionary as the idea of Scotland's independence as a kingdom might be, we must most of all excuse it in a poet whose fancy was expressed, and whose reputation was bound up, in a dialect from which the Union took away the last chance of perpetuity.

Our poet's miscellaneous pieces, though some of them are very ingenious*, are upon the whole

of a much coarser grain than his pastoral drama. The admirers of the Gentle Shepherd must perhaps be contented to share some suspicion of national partiality, while they do justice to their own feeling of its merit. Yet as this drama is a picture of rustic Scotland, it would perhaps be saying little for its fidelity, if it yielded no more agreeableness to the breast of a native than he could expound to a stranger by the strict letter of criticism. We should think the painter had finished the likeness of a mother very indifferently, if it did not bring home to her children traits of indefinable expression which had escaped every eye but that of familiar affection. Ramsay had not the force of Burns; but, neither, in just proportion to his merits, is he likely to be felt by an English reader. The fire of Burns's wit and passion glows through an obscure dialect by its confinement to short and concentrated bursts. The interest which Ramsay excites is spread over a long poem, delineating manners more than passions; and the mind must be at home both in the language and manners, to appreciate the skill and comic archness with which he has heightened the display of rustic character without giving it vulgarity, and refined the view of peasant life by situations of sweetness and tenderness, without departing in the least degree from its simplicity. The Gentle Shepherd stands quite apart from the

general pastoral poetry of modern Europe. It has no satyrs, nor featureless simpletons, nor drowsy and still landscapes of nature, but distinct characters and amusing incidents. The principal shepherd never speaks out of consistency with the habits of a peasant; but he moves in that sphere with such a manly spirit, with so much cheerful sensibility to its humble joys, with maxims of life so rational and independent, and with an ascendancy over his fellow swains so well maintained by his force of character, that if we could suppose the pacific scenes of the drama to be suddenly changed into situations of trouble and danger, we should, in exact consistency with our former idea of him, expect him to become the leader of the peasants, and the Tell of his native hamlet. Nor is the character of his mistress less beautifully conceived. She is represented, like himself, as elevated, by a fortunate discovery, from obscure to opulent life, yet as equally capable of being the ornament of either. A Richardson or a D'Arblay, had they continued her history, might have heightened the portrait, but they would not have altered its outline. Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, that of the Gentle Shepherd is engraven on the memory of its native country. Its verses have passed into proverbs; and it continues to be the delight and solace of the peasantry whom it describes.

A flowrie howm d between twa verdant braes,
Where lasses use to wash and spread their claiths,
A trotting burnie wimpling throw the ground,
Its channel peebles shining smooth and round:
Here view twa barefoot beauties clean and clear;
First please your eye, then gratify your ear;
While Jenny what she wishes discommends,
And Meg with better sense true love defends.

PEGGY and JENNY.

Jenny. COME, Meg, let 's fa'to wark upon this This shining day will bleach our linen clean; [green, The water's clear, the liftf unclouded blue, Will make them like a lily wet with dew.

Peggy. Gae farrer up the burn to Habbie's How, Where a' that's sweet in spring and simmer grow: Between twa birks out o'er a little linng, The water fa's, and makes a singin' din : A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass, Kisses with easy whirls the bord'ring grass. We'll end our washing while the morning's cool, And when the day grows het we'll to the pool, There wash oursells; 'tis healthfu' now in May, And sweetly caller on sae warm a day.

d The level low ground on the banks of a stream. e Clothes.

f Sky.-g A pool beneath a waterfall.

Jenny. Daft lassie, when we're naked, what'll ye

say,

Giff our twa herds come brattling down the brae,
And see us sae ?-that jeering fellow, Pate,
Wad taunting say, "Haith, lasses, ye're no blate"

Peggy. We're far frae ony road, and out of sight;
The lads they're feeding far beyont the hight;
But tell me now, dear Jenny, we're our lane,
What gars ye plague your wooer with disdain?
The neighbours a' tent this as well as I ;
That Roger lo'es ye, yet ye care na by.
What ails ye at him? Troth, between us twa,
He's wordy you the best day e'er ye saw.
Jenny. I dinna like him, Peggy, there's an end;
A herd mair sheepish yet I never ken'd.
He kames his hair, indeed, and gaes right snug,
With ribbon-knots at his blue bonnet lug;
Whilk pensylie' he wears a thought a-jee,)
And spreads his garters diced beneath his knee.
He falds his owrelay down his breast with care,
And few gangs trigger to the kirk or fair;
For a' that, he can neither sing nor say, [day."
Except, "How d'ye?" or, "There's a bonny
Peggy. Ye dash the lad with constant slighting
Hatred for love is unco sair to bide: [pride,

h Modest.-i Sprucely. To one side. Cravat.