mous were ever discussed at
such length. I can remember nearly fifty years ago investigating, with
the eagerness of a child to whom books were the most precious objects in
existence, the little shelf high on the wall at the bedhead, where a
very old woman, an old nurse in her retirement, kept her treasures, and
mounted high upon a chair, finding a much-thumbed unbound copy of _The
Gentle Shepherd_ in the dim twilight, ruddy with the glimmer of the
fire, of the cottage room. In such places it was never absent; it was
the one book which held its ground by the side of the Bible and perhaps
a volume of old-world devotion, _The Crook in the Lot_, or _The Saint's
Rest_. Such a distinction is a far more true and genuine triumph than
the sale of many editions. It went straight into the heart of the
peasant, who understood and appreciated every scene and line. And it was
discussed by all the Edinburgh clubs, and by the literati who knew their
Theocritus and could write dissertations on pastoral poetry. The
greatest poet could have hoped for no more.

And pastoral poetry was the fashion of the time. Ramsay himself had made
various other attempts before he lighted upon this quite legitimate
strain. We read with a shudder of comic horror a dialogue "On the Death
of Mr. Addison," in which the interlocutors are "Richy and Sandy," to
wit, Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Alexander Pope! who bewail their loss,
which is far worse than misfortune to their flocks, or the scorn of
their lasses, being no less than this, that "Addie, that played and sang
so sweet, is dead"! The poet received, indeed, a complimentary copy of
verses upon this production, in which he is thus addressed--

"Well fare thee, Allan, who in mother tongue
So sweetly hath of breathless Addy sung:
His endless fame thy nat'ral genius fired,
And thou hast written as if he inspired.
'Richy and Sandy,' who do him survive,
Long as thy rural stanzas last, shall live."

The grotesque in poetry could scarcely go farther. Mr. Burchett, who
addressed good Allan in these rhymes, was the refined gentleman who put
the wigmaker's poems into English. "Richy and Sandy" was contained in a
volume which Ramsay published by subscription, and which brought him in,
to the immense admiration of his biographer, four hundred guineas
sterling, which no doubt was a very admirable recompense indeed for so
many foolish verses. This volume contained, among other things, Ramsay's