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of visiting London, though the journey was still performed on horseback; and the writings of Pope and Swift were circulated over the north. Clubs and taverns were rife in Edinburgh, in which the assembled wits loved to indulge in a pleasantry that often degenerated to excess. Talent was readily known and appreciated; and when Ramsay appeared as an author, he found the nation ripe for his native humour, his mannerspainting strains,' and his lively original sketches of Scottish life. Allan Ramsay was born in 1686, in the village of Leadhills, Lanarkshire, where his father held the situation of manager of Lord Hopetoun's mines. When he became a poet, he boasted that he was of the 'auld descent' of the Dalhousie family, and also collaterally 'sprung from a Douglas loin. His mother, Alice Bower, was of English parentage, her father having been brought from Derbyshire to instruct the Scottish miners in their art. Those who entertain the theory that men of genius usually partake largely of the qualities and dispositions of their mother, may perhaps recognise some of the Derbyshire blood in Allan Ramsay's frankness and joviality of character. His father died while the poet was in his infancy; but his mother marrying again in the same district, Allan was brought up at Leadhills, and put to the village school, where he acquired learning enough to enable him, as he tells us, to read Horace 'faintly in the original.' His lot might have been a hard one, but it was fortunately spent in the country till he had reached his fifteenth year; and his lively temperament enabled him, with cheerfulness

To wade through glens wi' chorking' feet,
When neither plaid nor kilt could fend the weet;
Yet blithely wad he bang out o'er the brae,
And stend o'er burns as light as ony rae,
Hoping the morn might prove a better day.

At the age of fifteen, Allan was put apprentice to a wig-maker in Edinburgh-a light employment, suited to his slender frame and boyish smartness, but not very congenial to his literary taste. His poetical talent, however, was more observant than creative, and he did not commence writing till he was about twenty-six years of age. He then penned an address to the 'Easy Club,' a convivial society of young men, tinctured with Jacobite predilections, which were also imbibed by Ramsay, and which probably formed an additional recommendation to the favour of Pope and Gay, a distinction that he afterwards enjoyed. Allan was admitted a member of this 'blithe society,' and became their poet-laureate. He wrote various light pieces, chiefly of a local and humorous description, which were sold at a penny each, and became exceedingly popular. He also sedulously courted the patronage of the great, subduing his Jacobite feelings, and never selecting a fool for his patron. In this mingled spirit of prudence and poetry, he contrived

To theek the out, and line the inside,
Of mony a douce and witty pash,
And baith ways gathered in the cash.

In the year 1712, he married a writer's daughter, Christian Ross, who was his faithful partner for more than thirty years. He greatly extended his

1 Chorking or chirking, the noise made by the feet when the shoes are full of water. Spring.

reputation by writing a continuation to King James's Christ's Kirk on the Green, executed with genuine humour, fancy, and a perfect mastery of the Scottish language. Nothing so rich had appeared since the strains of Dunbar or Lindsay. What an inimitable sketch of rustic-life, coarse, but as true as any by Teniers, is presented in the first stanzas of the third canto!

Now frae the east nook of Fife the dawn
Speeled1 westlins up the lift;
Carls wha heard the cock had craw'n,
Begoud to rax and rift;

And greedy wives, wi' girning thrawn,
Cried lasses up to thrift;
Dogs barked, and the lads frae hand
Banged to their breeks like drift
By break of day.

Ramsay now left off wig-making, and set up a bookseller's shop, opposite to Niddry's Wynd.' He next appeared as an editor, and published two works, The Tea-table Miscellany, being a collection of songs, partly his own; and The Evergreen, a collection of Scottish poems written before 1600. He was not well qualified for the task of editing works of this kind, being deficient both in knowledge and taste. In the Evergreen, he published, as ancient poems, two pieces of his own, one of which, The Vision, exhibits high powers of poetry. The genius of Scotland is drawn with a touch of the old heroic Muse:

"Great daring darted frae his ee,
A braid-sword shogled at his thie,
On his left arm a targe;

A shining spear filled his right hand,
Of stalwart make in bane and brawnd,
Of just proportions large;

A various rainbow-coloured plaid
Owre his left spawl he threw,
Down his braid back, frae his white head,
The silver wimplers3 grew.

Amazed, I gazed,

To see, led at command, A stampant and rampant

Fierce lion in his hand.

In 1725, appeared his celebrated pastoral drama, The Gentle Shepherd, of which two scenes had previously been published under the titles of Patie and Roger, and Jenny and Meggy. It was received with universal approbation, and was republished both in London and Dublin. When Gay visited Scotland in company with his patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, he used to lounge in Allan Ramsay's shop, and obtain from him explanations of some of the Scottish expressions, that he might communicate them to Pope, who was a great admirer of the poem. This was a delicate and marked compliment, which Allan must have felt, though he had previously represented himself as the vicegerent of Apollo, and equal to Homer! He now removed to a better shop, and instead of the Mercury's head which had graced his sign-board, he put up 'the presentment of two brothers' of the Muse, Ben Jonson and Drummond. He next established a associated on familiar terms with the leading circulating library, the first in Scotland. He nobility, lawyers, wits, and literati. His son, afterwards a distinguished artist, he sent to Rome

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for instruction. But the prosperity of poets seems liable to an uncommon share of crosses. He was led by the promptings of a taste then rare in Scotland to expend his savings in the erection of a theatre, for the performance of the regular drama. He wished to keep his 'troop' together by the 'pith of reason;' but he did not calculate on the pith of an act of parliament in the hands of a hostile magistrate. The statute for licensing theatres prohibited all dramatic exhibitions without special licence and the royal letters-patent; and on the strength of this enactment the magistrates of Edinburgh shut up Allan's theatre, leaving him without redress. To add to his mortification, the envious poetasters and strict religionists of the day attacked him with personal satires and lampoons, under such titles as-A Looking-glass for Allan Ramsay; The Dying Words of Allan Ramsay, &c. Allan endeavoured to enlist President Forbes and the judges on his side by a poetical address in which he prays for compensation from the legislature

Syne, for amends for what I've lost,
Edge me into some canny post.

His circumstances and wishes at this crisis are more particularly explained in a letter to the president, which now lies before us :

'Will you,' he writes, 'give me something to do? Here I pass a sort of half-idle scrimp life, tending a trifling trade, that scarce affords me the needful. Had I not got a parcel of guineas from you, and such as you, who were pleased to patronise my subscriptions, I should not have had a gray groat. I think shame-but why should I, when I open my mind to one of your goodness?to hint that I want to have some small commission, when it happens to fall in your way to put me into it.'1

It does not appear that he either got money or a post, but he applied himself attentively to his business, and soon recruited his purse. A citizenlike good sense regulated the life of Ramsay. He gave over poetry 'before,' he prudently says, 'the coolness of fancy that attends advanced years should make me risk the reputation I had acquired.'

Frae twenty-five to five-and-forty,

My muse was nowther sweer nor dorty;"
My Pegasus wad break his tether
E'en at the shagging of a feather,
And through ideas scour like drift,
Streaking his wings up to the lift;
Then, then, my soul was in a lowe,
That gart my numbers safely row.
But eild and judgment 'gin to say,
Let be your sangs, and learn to pray.

About the year 1743, his circumstances were sufficiently flourishing to enable him to build himself a small octagon-shaped house on the north side of the Castle-hill, which he called Ramsay Lodge, but which some of his waggish friends compared to a goose-pie. He told Lord Elibank one day of this ludicrous comparison. 'What!' said the witty peer, 'a goose pie! In good faith, Allan, now that I see you in it, I think the house is not ill named.' He lived in this singular-looking mansion-which has since been much improved -twelve years, and died of a complaint that had

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long afflicted him, scurvy in the gums, on the 7th of January 1758, at the age of seventy-two. So much of pleasantry, good-humour, and worldly enjoyment is mixed up with the history of Allan Ramsay, that his life is one of the 'green and sunny spots' in literary biography. His genius was well rewarded; and he possessed that turn of mind which David Hume says it is more happy to possess than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year-a disposition always to see the favourable side of things.

Ramsay's poetical works are sufficiently various; and one of his editors has ambitiously classed them under heads of serious, elegiac, comic, satiric, epigrammatical, pastoral, lyric, epistolary, fables and tales. His tales are quaint and humorous, though, like those of Prior, they are too often indelicate. The Monk and Miller's Wife, founded on a humorous old Scottish poem, is as happy an adaptation as any of Pope's or Dryden's from Chaucer. His lyrics want the grace, simplicity, and beauty which Burns breathed into these 'wood-notes wild,' designed alike for cottage and hall; yet some of those in the Gentle Shepherd are delicate and tender; and others, such as The Last Time I came o'er the Moor, and The Yellowhaired Laddie, are still favourites with all lovers of Scottish song. In one of the least happy of the lyrics there occurs this beautiful image :

How joyfully my spirits rise,

When dancing she moves finely, O;
I guess what heaven is by her eyes,
Which sparkle so divinely, O.

His Lochaber no More is a strain of manly feeling and unaffected pathos. The poetical epistles of Ramsay were undoubtedly the prototypes of those by Burns, and many of the stanzas may challenge comparison with them. He makes frequent classical allusions, especially to the works of Horace, with which he seems to have been well acquainted, and whose gay and easy turn of mind harmonised with his own. In an epistle to Mr James Arbuckle, the poet gives a characteristic and minute painting of himself:

Imprimis, then, for tallness, I

Am five foot and four inches high;
A black-a-viced1 snod dapper fellow,
Nor lean, nor overlaid wi' tallow;
With phiz of a morocco cut,
Resembling a late man of wit,

Auld gabbet Spec,2 who was so cunning
To be a dummie ten years running.

Then for the fabric of my mind,

'Tis mair to mirth than grief inclined:
I rather choose to laugh at folly,
Than shew dislike by melancholy;
Well judging a sour heavy face
Is not the truest mark of grace.
I hate a drunkard or a glutton,
Yet I'm nae fae to wine and mutton :
Great tables ne'er engaged my wishes,
When crowded with o'er mony dishes;
A healthfu' stomach, sharply set,
Prefers a back-sey3 piping het.
I never could imagine't vicious
Of a fair fame to be ambitious:
Proud to be thought a comic poet,
And let a judge of numbers know it,

I court occasion thus to shew it.

1 Dark complexioned. From black and Fr. vis, the visage. The Spectator, No. 1, by Addison. 3 A sirloin.

Ramsay addressed epistles to Gay and Somerville, and the latter paid him in kind, in very flattering verses. In one of Allan's answers is the following picturesque sketch, in illustration of his own contempt for the stated rules of art:

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 mixed jonquils and gowans grow,
And roses 'midst rank clover blow
Upon a bank of a clear strand,

In wimplings led by nature's hand;
Though docks and brambles here and there
May sometimes cheat the gardener's care,
Yet this to me 's a paradise

Compared with prime cut plots and nice,
Where nature has to art resigned,
Till all looks mean, stiff, and confined.

Heaven Homer taught; the critic draws
Only from him and such their laws :
The native bards first plunge the deep
Before the artful dare to leap.

The Gentle Shepherd is the greatest of Ramsay's works, and perhaps the finest pastoral drama in the world. It possesses that air of primitive simplicity and seclusion which seems indispensable in compositions of this class, at the same time that its landscapes are filled with lifelike beings, who interest us from their character, situation, and circumstances. It has none of that studied pruriency and unnatural artifice which are intruded into the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, and is equally free from the tedious allegory and forced conceits of most pastoral poems. It is a genuine picture of Scottish life, but of life passed in simple rural employments, apart from the guilt and fever of large towns, and reflecting only the pure and unsophisticated emotions of our nature. The affected sensibilities and feigned distresses of the Corydons and Delias find no place in Ramsay's clear and manly page. He drew his shepherds from the life, placed them in scenes which he actually saw, and made them speak the language which he every day heard-the free idiomatic speech of his native vales. His art lay in the beautiful selection of his materials-in the grouping of his well-defined characters-the invention of a plot, romantic, yet natural-the delightful appropriateness of every speech and auxiliary incident-and in the tone of generous sentiment and true feeling which sanctifies this scene of humble virtue and happiness. The love of his 'gentle' rustics is at first artless and confiding, though partly disguised by maiden coyness and arch humour; and it is expressed in language and incidents alternately amusing and impassioned. At length the hero is elevated in station above his mistress, and their affection assumes a deeper character from the threatened dangers of a separation. Mutual distress and tenderness break down reserve. The simple heroine, without forgetting her natural dignity and modesty, lets out her whole soul to her early companion; and when assured of his unalterable attachment, she not only, like Miranda, 'weeps at what she is glad of,' but, with the true pride of a Scottish maiden, she resolves to study 'gentler charms,' and to educate herself to be worthy of her lover. Poetical justice is done to this faithful attachment, by both the characters being found equal in birth and station.

The poet's taste and judgment are evinced in the superiority which he gives his hero and heroine, without debasing their associates below their proper level; while a ludicrous contrast to both is supplied by the underplot of Bauldy and his courtships. The elder characters in the piece afford a fine relief to the youthful pairs, besides completing the rustic picture. While one scene discloses the young shepherds by 'craigy bields' and 'crystal springs,' or presents Peggy and Jenny on the bleaching-green

A trotting burnie wimpling through the ground— another shews us the snug thatched cottage with its barn and peat-stack, or the interior of the house, with a clear ingle glancing on the floor, and its inmates happy with innocent mirth and rustic plenty. The drama altogether makes one proud of peasant-life and the virtues of a Scottish cottage. In imitation of Gay in his Beggar's Opera, Ramsay interspersed songs throughout the Gentle Shepherd, which tend to interrupt the action of the piece, and too often merely repeat, in a diluted form, the sentiments of the dialogue. These songs in themselves, however, are simple and touching lyrics, and added greatly to the effect of the drama on the stage. the songs may be advantageously passed over, In reading it, leaving undisturbed the most perfect delineation of rural life and manners, without vulgar humility or affectation, that was ever drawn.

Ode from Horace.

Look up to Pentland's towering tap,
Buried beneath great wreaths of snaw,
O'er ilka cleugh, ilk scaur, and slap,1
As high as ony Roman wa'.
Driving their ba's frae whins or tee,
There's no ae gowfer to be seen,
Nor douser fouk wysing ajee

The biassed bowls on Tamson's green.

Then fling on coals, and ripe the ribs,

And beek the house baith but and ben;
That mutchkin-stoup it hauds but dribs,
Then let's get in the tappit hen.2
Good claret best keeps out the cauld,

And drives away the winter soon;
It makes a man baith gash and bauld,
And heaves his saul beyond the moon.
Leave to the gods your ilka care,

If that they think us worth their while;
They can a rowth of blessings spare,
Which will our fashous fears beguile.
For what they have a mind to do,
That will they do, should we gang wud;
If they command the storms to blaw,
Then upo' sight the hailstanes thud.
But soon as e'er they cry, 'Be quiet,'
The blattering winds dare nae mair move,
But cour into their caves, and wait

The high command of supreme Jove. Let neist day come as it thinks fit,

The present minute's only ours; On pleasure let's employ our wit,

And laugh at fortune's feckless powers.

1 Cleugh, a hollow between hills; scaur, a bare hill-side; slap, a narrow pass between two hills.

2 A large bottle of claret holding three magnums or Scots pints.

Be sure ye dinna quat the grip

Of ilka joy when ye are young, Before auld age your vitals nip,

And lay ye twafald o'er a rung.

Sweet youth's a blithe and heartsome time;
Then lads and lasses, while it's May,
Gae pu' the gowan in its prime,
Before it wither and decay.

Watch the saft minutes of delight,

When Jenny speaks beneath her breath; And kisses, laying a' the wyte

On you, if she kep ony skaith.

'Haith, ye 're ill-bred,' she 'll smiling say;
'Ye'll worry me, you greedy rook ;'
Syne frae your arms she'll rin away,
And hide hersell in some dark nook.

Her laugh will lead you to the place,
Where lies the happiness you want,
And plainly tells you to your face,
Nineteen naysays are half a grant.

Now to her heaving bosom cling,
And sweetly toolie for a kiss,
Frae her fair finger whup a ring,
As token of a future bliss.

These benisons, I'm very sure,

Are of the gods' indulgent grant ; Then surly carles, whisht, forbear

To plague us with your whining cant.

In this instance, the felicitous manner in which Ramsay has preserved the Horatian ease and spirit, and at the same time clothed the whole in a true Scottish garb, renders his version superior even to Dryden's English one. For comparison two stanzas of the latter are subjoined :

Secure those golden early joys,

That youth unsoured with sorrow bears,
Ere withering time the taste destroys
With sickness and unwieldy years.
For active sports, for pleasing rest,
This is the time to be possest;
The best is but in season best.

The appointed hour of promised bliss,

The pleasing whisper in the dark,

The half-unwilling willing kiss,

The laugh that guides thee to the mark,
When the kind nymph would coyness feign,
And hides but to be found again;

These, these are joys the gods for youth ordain.

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Lochaber no More.

Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell my Jean,
Where heartsome with thee I've mony day been;
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.
These tears that I shed, they are a' for my dear,
And no for the dangers attending on weir;
Though borne on rough seas to a far bloody shore,
Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.

Though hurricanes rise, and rise every wind,
They'll ne'er mak a tempest like that in my mind;
Though loudest o' thunder on louder waves roar,
That's naething like leaving my love on the shore.
To leave thee behind me my heart is sair pained;
By ease that's inglorious no fame can be gained;
And beauty and love's the reward of the brave,
And I must deserve it before I can crave.

Then glory, my Jeanie, maun plead my excuse;
Since honour commands me, how can I refuse?
Without it I ne'er can have merit for thee,
And without thy favour I'd better not be.
I gae then, my lass, to win honour and fame,
And if I should luck to come gloriously hame,
I'll bring a heart to thee with love running o'er,
And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more.

Rustic Courtship.

From the Gentle Shepherd.-Act L.
Hear how I served my lass I lo'e as weel
As ye do Jenny, and wi' heart as leal.
Last morning I was gye and early out,
Upon a dike I leaned, glow'ring about;
I saw my Meg come linkin' o'er the lea;
I saw my Meg, but Meggy saw na me;
For yet the sun was wading through the mist,
And she was close upon me ere she wist;
Her coats were kiltit, and did sweetly shaw
Her straight bare legs, that whiter were than snaw.
Her cockernony snooded up fu' sleek,
Her haffet locks hang waving on her cheek;
Her cheeks sae ruddy, and her een sae clear;
And oh! her mouth's like ony hinny pear.
Neat, neat she was, in bustine waistcoat clean,
As she came skiffing o'er the dewy green.
Blithsome, I cried: 'My bonny Meg, come here,
I ferly wherefore ye're so soon asteer;

But I can guess; ye 're gaun to gather dew.'
She scoured away, and said: 'What's that to you?"
'Then, fare-ye-well, Meg Dorts, and e'en 's ye like,
I careless cried, and lap in o'er the dike.

I trow, when that she saw, within a crack,
She came with a right thieveless errand back.
Misca'd me first; then bade me hound my dog,
To wear up three waff ewes strayed on the bog.
I leugh; and sae did she; then wi' great haste
I clasped my arms about her neck and waist;
About her yielding waist, and took a fouth
O' sweetest kisses frae her glowing mouth.
While hard and fast I held her in my grips,
My very saul came louping to my lips.
Sair, sair she flet wi' me 'tween ilka smack,
But weel I kend she meant nae as she spak.
Dear Roger, when your jo puts on her gloom,
Do ye sae too, and never fash your thumb.
Seem to forsake her, soon she 'll change her mood;
Gae woo anither, and she 'll gang clean wud.

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Peggy. Gae far'er up the burn to Habbie's How, There a' the sweets o' spring and summer grow: There 'tween twa birks, out ower a little linn, The water fa's and maks a singin' din; A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass, Kisses wi' easy whirls the bordering grass. We 're far frae ony road, and out o' sight; The lads they're feeding far beyont the height. But tell me, now, dear Jenny, we 're our lane, What gars ye plague your wooer wi' disdain? The neebours a' tent this as weel as I, That Roger lo'es ye, yet ye carena by. What ails ye at him? Troth, between us twa, He's worthy 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 kend.
He kames his hair, indeed, and gaes right snug,
Wi' ribbon knots at his blue bannet lug,
Whilk pensily he wears a thought a-jee,

And spreads his gartens diced beneath his knee;
He falds his o'erlay down his breast wi' care,
And few gang trigger to the kirk or fair:
For a' that, he can neither sing nor say,
Except, How d' ye?'-or, There's a bonny day.'
Peggy. Ye dash the lad wi' constant slighting pride,
Hatred for love is unco sair to bide:

But ye 'll repent ye, if his love grow cauld-
What like 's a dorty maiden when she 's auld?...
Jenny. I never thought a single life a crime.
Peggy. Nor I: but love in whispers lets us ken,
That men were made for us, and we for men. . . .
Yes, it's a heartsome thing to be a wife,
When round the ingle-edge young sprouts are rife.
Gif I'm sae happy, I shall hae delight

To hear their little plaints, and keep them right.
Wow! Jenny, can there greater pleasure be,
Than see sic wee tots toolying at your knee;
When a' they ettle at-their greatest wish,
Is to be made o', and obtain a kiss?

Can there be toil in tending day and night
The like o' them, when love maks care delight?

Jenny. But poortith, Peggy, is the warst o' a';
Gif o'er your heads ill-chance should begg'ry draw,
But little love or canty cheer can come
Frae duddy doublets, and a pantry toom.
Your nowt may die-the spate may bear away
Frae aff the holms your dainty rucks o' hay.
The thick-blawn wreaths o' snaw, or blashy thows,
May smoor your wethers, and may rot your ewes.
A dyvour buys your butter, woo, and cheese,
But, or the day o' payment, breaks, and flees.
Wi' gloomin' brow, the laird seeks in his rent;
It's no to gie; your merchant's to the bent.

His honour maunna want-he poinds your gear;

Jenny. But what if some young giglet on the green, Wi' dimpled cheeks and twa bewitching een, Should gar your Patie think his half-worn Meg, And her kenned kisses, hardly worth a feg?

Peggy. Nae mair o' that-Dear Jenny, to be free, There's some men constanter in love than we : Nor is the ferly great, when nature kind Has blest them wi' solidity o' mind. They'll reason calmly, and wi' kindness smile, When our short passions wad our peace beguile : Sae, whensoe'er they slight their maiks at hame, It's ten to ane the wives are maist to blame. Then I'll employ wi' pleasure a' my art To keep him cheerfu', and secure his heart. At e'en, when he comes weary frae the hill, I'll ha'e a' things made ready to his will; In winter, when he toils through wind and rain, A bleezing ingle, and a clean hearthstane; And soon as he flings by his plaid and staff, The seething pat's be ready to tak aff; Clean hag-a-bag I'll spread upon his board, And serve him wi' the best we can afford ; Good-humour and white bigonets shall be Guards to my face, to keep his love for me. Jenny. A dish o' married love right soon grows cauld,

And dosens down to nane, as fouk grow auld.

Peggy. But we'll grow auld thegither, and ne'er find
The loss o' youth, when love grows on the mind.
Bairns and their bairns mak sure a firmer tie,
Than aught in love the like of us can spy.
See yon twa elms that grow up side by side,
Suppose them some years syne bridegroom and bride;
Nearer and nearer ilka year they've prest,

Till wide their spreading branches are increast,
And in their mixture now are fully blest :
This shields the ither frae the eastlin blast,

That, in return, defends it frae the wast.

Sic as stand single-a state sae liked by you!-
Beneath ilk storm, frae every airt, maun bow.

Jenny. I've done-I yield, dear lassie; I maun yield;

Your better sense has fairly won the field.

DRAMATISTS.

The dramatic literature of this period was, like its general poetry, polished and artificial. In tragedy, the highest name is that of Southerne, who may claim, with Otway, the power of touching the passions, yet his language is feeble compared with that of the great dramatists, and his general

Syne, driven frae house and hald, where will ye style low and unimpressive. Addison's Cato is

steer?

Dear Meg, be wise, and live a single life;
Troth, it's nae mows to be a married wife.
Peggy. May sic ill-luck befa' that silly she
Wha has sic fears, for that was never me.
Let fouk bode weel, and strive to do their best ;
Nae mair's required; let Heaven mak out the rest.
I've heard my honest uncle aften say,

That lads should a' for wives that's virtuous pray;
For the maist thrifty man could never get
A weel-stored room, unless his wife wad let :
Wherefore nocht shall be wanting on my part,
To gather wealth to raise my shepherd's heart:
Whate'er he wins, I'll guide wi' canny care,
And win the vogue at market, tron, or fair,
For halesome, clean, cheap, and sufficient ware.
A flock o' lambs, cheese, butter, and some woo,
Shall first be sald to pay the laird his due ;
Syne a' behind 's our ain. Thus without fear,
Wi' love and rowth, we through the warld will steer;
And when my Pate in bairns and gear grows rife,
He'll bless the day he gat me for his wife.

more properly a classical poem than a dramaas cold and less vigorous than the tragedies of Jonson. In comedy, the national taste is apparent in its faithful and witty delineations of polished life, of which Wycherley and Congreve had set the example, and which was well continued by Farquhar and Vanbrugh. Beaumont and Fletcher first introduced what may be called comedies of intrigue, borrowed from the Spanish drama; and the innovation appears to have been congenial to the English taste, for it still pervades our comic literature. The vigorous exposure of the immorality of the stage by Jeremy Collier, and the essays of Steele and Addison, improving the taste and moral feeling of the public, a partial reformation took place of those nuisances of the drama which the Restoration had introduced. The Master of the Revels, by whom all plays had to be licensed, also aided in this work of retrenchment; but a glance at even those improved plays

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