s, which offend the taste even of the most cursory
reader. Such allusions as that to 'soft fifteen on her feet-washing
night,' and others of a cognate character, are entirely out of place in
'polished satire.' If he attempted the type of composition, he ought to
have conformed to its rules.

Of course, Ramsay wrote certain satires, _The Last Speech of a Wretched
Miser_ and the like, in the Scots vernacular, and addressed to the lower
classes in the community, where his genius is seen at its best, because
dealing with 'low-life satire' and the types of character he loved most
of all to paint. But his _Wealth or the Woody_, his _Health_--a poem
addressed to Lord Stair, his _Scribblers Lashed_, _The General Mistake_,
_The Epistle to Lord Ramsay_, and the _Rise and Fall of Stocks in 1720_,
exhibit Ramsay's genius moving in fetters. His touch lacks piquancy and
epigrammatic incisiveness,--lacks, too, that determinate deftness so
characteristic of Horace, as well as those subtle _nuances_ of
double-meaning wherein Pope and Arbuthnot excelled, and of which the
latter's terrible 'Epitaph on Colonel Chartres' is a favourable example.
Ramsay hits with the hammer of Thor, when he should tap as lightly as
'twere reproof administered by a fair one with her fan. Witness his
portrait of Talpo in _Health_--a poem in many respects one of Ramsay's
best. With what airy satiric touches Pope or Gay would have dashed off
the character. Note the laboured strokes wherewith Ramsay produces his
picture--

'But Talpo sighs with matrimonial cares,
His cheeks wear wrinkles, silver grow his hairs,
Before old age his health decays apace,
And very rarely smiles clear up his face.
Talpo's a fool, there's hardly help for that,
He scarcely knows himself what he'd be at.
He's avaricious to the last degree,
And thinks his wife and children make too free
With his dear idol; this creates his pain,
And breeds convulsions in his narrow brain.
He's always startled at approaching fate,
And often jealous of his virtuous mate;
Is ever anxious, shuns his friends to save:
Thus soon he'll fret himself into a grave;
There let him rot'--

But Ramsay's distinguishing and saving characteristic in satire was the
breadth and felicity of his humour. To satire, however, humour is less
adapted than wit, and of wit Ramsay had, in a comparative sense, but a
scanty endowment. He was not one of those who could say