of the nuptials of James, Duke of Hamilton, and the Lady
Ann Cochrane. In this form of poetry Ramsay revived a good old type very
popular amongst the Elizabethan poets and dramatists, and even
descending down to the days of Milton, whose _Masque of Comus_ is the
noblest specimen of this kind of composition in modern literature.
Ramsay's _dramatis personae_ are rather a motley crew, but on the whole
he succeeds in managing the dialogue of his gods, and goddesses very
creditably, though any admirer of his genius can see it moves on stilts
under such circumstances. _The Pastoral Epithalamium_ upon the marriage
of George Lord Ramsay and Lady Jean Maule is of a less ambitious cast,
both as regards form and thought; the consequence being, that the poet
succeeds admirably in expressing the ideas proper to the occasion, when
he was not bound by the fetters of an unfamiliar rhythm.

Ramsay's later poems had in turn attained, numerically speaking, to such
bulk as fairly entitled him to consider the practicability of issuing a
second quarto volume, containing all of value he had written between
1721 and 1728. From all quarters came requests for him so to do.
Therefore, towards the close of 1728 he issued his second volume of
collected poems. The interest awakened by _The Gentle Shepherd_ still
burned with a clear and steady glow. From this fact, gratifying, indeed,
as regards the proximate success of the individual book, but prophetic
also in an ultimate sense of the stability of reputation to be his lot
in the republic of letters, he concluded, as he says in one of his
letters to the Clerks of Penicuik, 'to regard himself as ane o' the
national bards of Scotland.' That he was justified in doing so, the
future amply testified.

The realisation that he had now won for himself a permanent place in the
literature of his land operated, however, rather injuriously upon the
continued fecundity of his genius. He became timorous of further appeals
to the public, lest he should injure his fame. Allan Ramsay, in his own
eyes, became Ramsay's most dreaded rival. At length he deliberately
adopted the resolution that the better part of valour was discretion,
and that he would tempt fortune in verse no more. With the exception of
his poetical epistle to the Lords of Session, and his volume of metrical
_Fables_, Ramsay's poetical career was completed. Henceforth he was
occupied in preparing the successive editions of his _Works_ and of the
_Te