is employed, to recal to their minds the interesting scenes of infancy and youth, to awaken many pleasing, many tender recollections. Literary men, residing in Edinburgh or Aberdeen, cannot judge on this point for one hundred and fifty thousand of their expatriated countrymen."

With such sentiments relative to the Scotish dialect, it may be wondered at by some that the language of the following Pastoral approximates so nearly to the English. One reason for this was, that I had, for a considerable time, associated with people who spoke a different dialect: Besides I began and finished this Pastoral without having read any Scotish composition, except some songs, the Gentle Shepherd, and a few of the poems of Ramsay and of Burns *. Hence I have

* Since I finished my Pastoral, I have read over the works of both thefe writers. Perhaps in the writings of few poets, who have gained fo much reputation as Ramsay, are there fo many "verfus inopes rerum nugaeque canorae," if indeed they always deferve this laft epithet. But in his better productions (I speak not at present of his admirable pastoral) there is much ease, much good fenfe, and a certain auld farrendness, if I may apply that Scotish word to a Scotish poet. Never was a finer piece of comic painting than his two cantos of Christ's Kirk on the Green; nor could a higher teftimony be given to his powers of ludicrous description than the compliment paid him by Hogarth, who, though the language of Ramfay must have been scarcely intelligible to him, and the humour such as none but a Scots man can perfectly perceive and relish, dedicated his twelve plates of Hudibras to Allan Ramfay of Edinburgh, and William Wood of Great Houghton in Northamptonshire.

Ramfay feems to have had a prodigious deal of vanity, and always Speaks of bestowing immortality on whom he pleased. But he was a poet; he had raised himself to distinction by his talents; and it is a remark of Le Sage, "Les Barbiers ne font pas les gens du monde le moins

lost the recollection of a great number of Scotish words and phrases, and I was too indolent, or too much occupied, to endeavour to recover them.

44

fufceptibles de vanité."

to the greatest man who Great:

In one place he confiders himself as fuperior perhaps ever exifted, the Czar Peter the

Stand yon't proud Czar, I wadna niffer fame,
Wi' thee, for a' thy furs, an' paughty name.

With a great deal

Burns had much more of the acer vis et fpiritus. of fire he united a deep fenfibility, almost as exceffive as that of Rouffeau. He described the emotions of his own feeling heart; he painted exactly the scenery of nature, and manners of rustic life; and confequently the charm of his writings will be always felt by him who has an observing eye, and a sympathising mind. But, though Burns was a great genius, I do not think that his fancy had much range, that he belonged to the fame class, that he was moulded, if I may fay fo, in the fame model with a Homer, a Virgil, a Milton, or an Ariofto, Fitted to delineate the strong, but fleeting, emotion of the hour, 1 know not if he could have formed a large plan, and kept it steadily in his imagination, foaring, in order to enrich it, from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. The high poetical Spirit does not perhaps confift in the Sybilline fury, in the agitation of an hour; it has much fenfibility indeed, but its fenfibility is calm and dignified, and subjected to the underfunding. Newton is faid to have declared, that his power of dif covery confifted chiefly in his patience, in his ftrength and steadiness of thought, which never loft fight of an object once fixed before it. Thus it was not carried away in the current of ideas; thus the object, which at first was scarcely feen by the dawnings of a faint light, shone more and more, till it was illuminated by the glories of the perfect day. Such too feems to have been the genius of Milton; the fcene which his imagination painted as lovely, and his understanding had approved, he could keep before him, undisturbed by the violence of paffionate tranfport; and when it was fketched in immortal verfe, he

But there was another and stronger reason, which induced me often to adopt an English term or phrase, even when a Scotish one, which pleased me better, presented itself, or, though fading in my memory, might easily have been revived. It is extremely dis agreeable to read a work only by help of a glossary, and hence I resolved not to write such pure Scotish as Allan Ramsay had done in his Gentle Shepherd. In the passage already quoted, where Quintilian judiciously advises a sprinkling of old words, he adds, “Sed utendum modo, nec ex ultimis tenebris repetenda ;" and he perhaps would not add much to the popularity of his book who studiously searched for antiquated terms in the works of Gawin Douglas and of Thomas the Rhymer. The writings of Robert Burns, especially his more elevated compositions, seem upon the whole to be in a happy medium. The language of the following Pastoral is perhaps even less Scoticised than his, and is at the same time somewhat different, as the language of the district where the scene of the piece is laid is that of the east, not of the west country. "The dialect of the upper ward of Clydesdale (says a very intelligent writer, who gives the notice of the parish of Lanark in the Statistical Account) as to pronunciation, is the same with that spoken in Edinburgh, differing materially from that of the middle and lower wards."

In the characters of Adam and Catharine (the gudeman and the gudewife) I have painted what Martial calls therus verum et barbarum.” Their language is of

could calmly, or at least only with dignified and pleasing emotion, cre

ate a new one.

course more rusticated than that of the others, some of whom had been refined by education. The scenes in which these good people appear are however my own favourites. They are the scenes which I have read most frequently, and with the greatest pleasure.

DISSERTATION

DISSERTATION III.

Remarks on the general difesteem for paftoral poetry-Charms of that fpecies of writing, to what owing-Theocritus-Short account of pastoral poetry-The false notions of it generally entertained by poets and critics-This attributed chiefly to the character of the genius of Virgil-Of Sannazaro and Fracaftoro-Superiority of the Gentle Shepherd to the Italian pastorals-Remarks on the Drama of the Falls of Clyde; of the manners of its perfons, of the songs, &c. Of the great impropriety of fatirical criticism.

Ils ne font formés fur le brillant modelle

De ces pafteurs galants, qu'a chantés Fontenelle.

Voltaire.

It is observed by Virgil, that the groves (by which he means pastoral poetry) delight not every person : did he live at present, he might say they give delight to nobody. We have heard so much of the gambols of lambkins, of murmuring rills, of the wings of Cupid, Flora, and the Zephyrs, that the very name of a pastoral poem leads us to expect a disgusting repetition of common place description, and of trivial and unnatural

E