y of Habbie's Howe--in which the eager critics
identified every scene, and the sensible poet enhanced his art by a
perfect truth to nature. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is perhaps the only
so-called Pastoral of which this can be said, and it must have required
no small amount of self-denial to dispense with all those accustomed
auxiliaries. Even the sentiments are not too highflown for the locality.
If they are perhaps more completely purified from everything gross or
fleshly than would have been the case in fact, the poet has not been
afraid to temper passion with those considerations which naturally rise
to the mind of the young farmer in choosing his mate. His Peggy, though
she has beauty enough to make up for every deficiency, has also "with
innocence the wale of sense."

"In better sense without a flaw,
As in her beauty, far excels them a'."

She, on her part, anticipates not raptures and blisses in her marriage,
but the hallowed usages of life.

"I'll employ with pleasure all my art
To keep him cheerful, and secure his heart.
At e'en, when he comes weary frae the hill,
I'll have a' things made ready to his will;
In winter when he toils through wind and rain,
A bleezin' ingle, and a clean hearth-stane;
And soon as he's flung by his plaid and staff,
The seething pot's be ready to tak' aff."

Ramsay's sobriety here shines in comparison with all the fables and
idylls of his age. It is entirely natural, living, and of his time.
Patie plays upon a flute of "plum-tree made with ivory virls round,"
which he bought from the proceeds of "sax good fat lambs" sold at the
West Port, instead of the rustic pipe or oaten reed, which in his heart
of hearts no doubt our wigmaker thought much finer. Thus he secured his
audience, who knew nothing about oaten reeds, and instead of the
plaudits of the dilettanti secured the true fame of popular
comprehension and knowledge. Burns was far higher and nobler in genius,
and the worship awarded to him by his countrymen is one of the favourite
subjects of gibe and jest among writers on the other side of the Tweed.
But even Burns had not the universal acceptance, the absolute command of
his audience, which belonged to honest Allan. There were politicians and
there were ecclesiastics, and good people neither one nor the other, who
shook their troubled heads over the ploughman who would not confine
himself to the daisy of the field or the Saturday night