THE DISCOVERY. .... AN ODE. Vir bonus est quis?-HOR. TAKE wing, my muse! from shore to shore Where Virtue deigns to dwell; Not there, where wine and frantic mirth In Pleasure's thoughtless train : Her social heart alike disowns The race, who, shunning crowds and thrones, With these she shuns the factious tribe, On anarchy to power! Ye wits, who boast from ancient times No. Int'rest, slander are your views, There was a time, I heard her say, To Love and her unknown. From these th' indignant goddess flies, And pois'ning every spring. Long through the sky's wide pathless way And mark'd her last retreat; On Esher's peaceful seat. THE HAPPY MARRIAGE. How blest has my time been! what joys have I known, Since wedlock's soft bondage made Jessy my own! 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, Ye shepherds so gay, who make love to ensnare, JOHN DYER. [Born, 1700. Died, 1758.] 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! GRONGAR HILL. Draw the landscape bright and strong; [* In Lewis' Miscellanies, 1726.] While stray'd my eyes o'er Towy's flood, From house to house, from hill to hill, About his chequer'd sides I wind, Still the prospect wider spreads, Now I gain the mountain's brow, 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. On which a dark hill, steep and high, His sides are clothed with waving wood, "Tis now the raven's bleak abode; And see the rivers how they run, To disperse our cares away 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, See on the mountain's southern side, As on the mountain-turf I lie; Be full, ye courts; be great who will; Seek her on the marble floor; In vain you search, she is not there; [* Lord Byron asks, (vol. vi. p. 366,) Is not this the original of Mr. Campbell's far-famed, 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, We answer for Mr. Campbell, decidedly not!] ALLAN RAMSAY. [Born, 1686. Died, 1757.] 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 segetés."-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 VITÆ," &c. BY ALLAN RAMSAY, JUN. A man of no base (John) life or conversation, 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, By me that son's Turk (I not frighted) our Kirk- And sure more horrid monster in the torrid- Should I by hap land on the coast of Lapland, Place me where tea grows, or where sooty negroes, 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, Its wimplings led by nature's hand; Compared to prime cut plots and nice, Where nature has to art resign'd, And all looks stiff, mean, and confined. 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 original poets he says, in one expressive of his poetry breathes the subdued aspirations of couplet : The native bards first plunged the deep, 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. 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 |