's observances of
the Cottar, but was capable of Holy Willie and the Holy Fair. But Ramsay
had no gainsayer, and _The Gentle Shepherd_ was the first of books in
most Lowland homes. Its construction, its language and sentiments, are
all as commonplace as could be imagined, but it is a wholesome, natural,
pure, and unvarnished tale, and the mind that brought it forth (well
aware of what pleased his public) and the public who relished and bought
it, give us a better view of the honest tastes and morals of the period
than anything else which has come to us from that time. There has always
been a good deal of drinking, and other vices still less consistent with
purity of heart, in Scotland. Now and then we are frightened by
statistics that give us a very ill name; but it is difficult to believe
that if the national heart had been corrupt _The Gentle Shepherd_ could
have afforded it such universal and wholesome delight.

It is curious to find two very ordinary and prosaic tradesmen thus in
the front of popular literature in the beginning of the eighteenth
century. There is no comparison between Allan Ramsay and Samuel
Richardson in respect to genius. That humdrum old bookseller evoked by
some miraculous art the most delicate and lovely of creations out of the
midst of revolting and disgusting circumstances. Fielding was a far
finer gentleman, a much more accomplished writer, even a greater genius;
but there are none of his women who are fit to tie the shoes of Clarissa
Harlowe, to whom indeed there exists no fit companion out of Shakspeare.
Our good-humoured Allan had no such gift, but he had the art of
producing one spotless and lifelike tale, absolutely true to nature and
within the power of verification by any reader, which was accepted by a
whole country with enthusiasm as the best rendering of its rural life.
We doubt if there ever was a greater literary triumph.

Ramsay would not have been the true man he was to every tradition and
inheritance of his class had he not shown a modest complacency in his
own success. He was assailed, we are told, by nameless critics, who put
forth "A Block for Allan Ramsay's Wigs," "Remarks on Ramsay's Writings,"
and so forth--and retaliated, not without dignity: "Dull foes," he says,
"nought at my hand deserve."

"The blundering fellows ne'er forget,
About my trade to sport their fancies,
As if, forsooth, I would look blate,
At what my honour most advances.

"A