t of the great Edinburgh Sosii that were yet to include
the Constables, the Blackwoods, the Chambers, the Blacks, and others of
renown in their day. With the Luckenbooths' premises it is that _The
Gentle Shepherd_ is always associated. From them Ramsay dated all his
editions subsequent to the first two, and there he reaped all the
gratifying results of its success.

The poem, which takes its name from the 12th eclogue of Spenser's
_Shepherds' Calendar_, whose opening runs as follows--

'The Gentle Shepherd satte beside a spring,
All in the shadow of a bushy brere,'--

may certainly be ranked in the same category with the _Idylls_ of
Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, the _Aminta_ of Tasso, the _Pastor Fido_
(faithful shepherd) of Guarini, and Spenser's great poem referred to
above. In _The Gentle Shepherd_ Ramsay rises to a level of poetic
strength, united to a harmony between conception and execution, so
immeasurably superior to anything else he accomplished, that it has
furnished matter for speculation to his rivals and his enemies, whether
in reality the poem were his own handiwork, or had been merely fathered
by him. Lord Hailes, however, pricks this bubble, when dealing with the
ill-natured hypothesis raised by Alexander Pennecuik--the doggerel poet,
not the doctor--that Sir John Clerk and Sir William Bennet had written
_The Gentle Shepherd_, when he remarks, 'that they who attempt to
depreciate Ramsay's fame, by insinuating that his friends and patrons
composed the works which pass under his name, ought first to prove that
his friends and patrons were capable of composing _The Gentle
Shepherd_.' Not for a moment can the argument be esteemed to possess
logical cogency that, because he never equalled the poem in question in
any of his other writings, he was therefore intellectually incapable of
composing that masterpiece which will be read after his other
productions are forgotten, as long, in fact, as Scots poetry has a niche
in the great temple of English literature.

To define pastoral poetry, as Ramsay understood it, without at the same
time citing examples lying to hand in the works of our author, is a
somewhat difficult task. But as reasons of space will not permit us to
duplicate extracts, and as it is proposed to relegate all criticism to
the closing chapters of the book, we shall, at present, only glance in
passing at the great principles of composition Ramsay kept in view while
writing his pastoral