ctions in _The Gentle Shepherd_. He had written
some years before "A Pastoral Dialogue between Patie and Roger,"
published as usual in a sheet for a penny, and no doubt affording much
pleasure to the great popular audience to whom the "new piece" was as
the daily _feuilleton_, that friendly dole of fiction which sweetens
existence. It was evidently so successful that after a while the poet
composed a pendant--a dialogue between Jenny and Peggy. These two
fragments pleased the fancy of both the learned and the simple, and no
doubt called forth many a flattering inquiry after the two rustic pairs
and demands for the rest of their simple history, which inspired the
author to weave the lovers into the web of a continuous story, adding
the rural background, so fresh and true to nature, and the rustic and
humorous characters which were wanted for the perfection of the pastoral
drama. Few poems ever have attained so great and so immediate a success.
It went from end to end of Scotland, everywhere welcomed, read, conned
over, got by heart. Such a fame would be indeed worth living for. The
fat little citizen in his shop became at once the poet of his country,
as he had been of the Edinburgh streets. It was nearly two centuries
since Dunbar and Davie Lyndsay had celebrated their romantic town: and
though the name of the latter was still a household word ("You'll no
find that in Davie Lyndsay" being the popular scornful dismissal of any
incredible tale), yet their works had fallen into forgetfulness. The new
poet was received accordingly with acclamation. People did not talk of
sales and profits in those days, and we have no information as to the
numbers issued, or the time they took to find a home in every cottage,
as well as to receive the distinction of illustration and critical
discussion, which proved that it was not only the people who interested
themselves in the new poet, but a more highly trained and difficult
audience as well. We have before us two goodly octavos in which the
little rustical comedy is enshrined in hundreds of pages of notes; and
where the argument as to its localities, identifying every spot,
occupies chapter after chapter of earnest discussion, proving exactly
where every cottage is situated, and that New Hall, the home of the
Forbeses, was the mansion of the poem, with its little farm-steading
round. Shakspeare could not have been more closely followed, and we
doubt if the localities which he has made fa