smart things,
though he could depict a humorous episode or situation as felicitously
as anyone of his age. Like Rabelais, he was a humorist, not a wit, and
his satires suffered accordingly. Perhaps the best of his satires is
_The Last Speech of a Wretched Miser_, wherein his humour becomes
bitingly sardonic. The wretch's address to his pelf is very powerful--

'O dool! and am I forced to dee,
And nae mair my dear siller see,
That glanced sae sweetly in my e'e!
It breaks my heart!
My gold! my bonds! alackanie
That we should part.

Like Tantalus, I lang have stood,
Chin-deep into a siller flood;
Yet ne'er was able for my blood,
But pain and strife,
To ware ae drap on claiths or food,
To cherish life.'

Different, indeed, is the case when we come to consider Ramsay as a
song-writer and a lyrist. To him the former title rather than the latter
is best applicable. This is not the place to note the resemblances and
the differences between the French _chanson_, the German _lied_, the
Italian _canzone_, and the English song or lyric. But as indicating a
distinction between the two last terms, Mr. F. T. Palgrave, in the
introduction to his invaluable _Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics_,
regards a 'lyric' as a poem turning on 'some single thought, feeling, or
situation'; Mr. H. M. Posnett, in his thoughtful volume on _Comparative
Literature_, remarks that the lyric has varied from sacred or magical
hymns and odes of priest bards, only fulfilling their purpose when sung,
and perhaps never consigned to writing at all, down to written
expressions of individual feeling from which all accompaniments of dance
or music have been severed. But approximately defined, a lyric may be
said to be a poem--short, vivid, and expressive of a definite emotion,
appealing more to the eye than with any ultimate view of being set to
music; a song, as a composition appealing more to the ear, wherein the
sentiments are more leisurely expressed, with the intention of being
accompanied by music. Mr. E. H. Stoddard, in the preface to his _English
Madrigals_, defines a lyric 'as a simple, unstudied expression of
thought, sentiment, or passion; a song, its expression according to the
mode of the day.' The essence of a lyric is point, grace, and symmetry;
of a song, fluency, freedom, and the expression of sympathetic emotions.

Ramsay, according to this ba