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ALLAN RAMSAY 91
the beauties without the grossness of country life, should
be the aim of pastoral poetry.'
By all these critics pastoral poetry is considered in its
abstract or ideal form. They never dreamed of bidding
poets descend to the concrete, or to actual rural life, as
Beattie puts it, ' there to study that life as they found
it.' Dr. Pennecuik justly remarks, in his essay on
Ramsay and Pastoral Poetry : ' Of the ancient fanciful
division of the ages of the world into the golden^ silver^
brazen^ and iron^ the first, introduced by Saturn into Italy,
has been appropriated to the shepherd state. Virgil
added this conceit to his polished plagiarisms from
Theocritus ; and thus, as he advanced in elegance and
majesty, receded from simplicity, nature, reality, and
truth.'
To Ramsay's credit be it ascribed, that he broke away
from these rank absurdities and false ideas of pastoral
poetry, and dared to paint nature and rural Hfe as he
found it. His principles are thus stated by himself:
' The Scottish poet must paint his own country's scenes
and his own country's life, if he would be true to his
office. . . . The morning rises in the poet's description
as she does in the Scottish horizon ; we are not carried
to Greece and Italy for a shade, a stream, or a breeze ;
the groves rise in our own valleys, the rivers flow from
our own fountains, and the winds blow upon our own
hills.'
To the fact that Ramsay has painted Scotland and
Scottish rustics as they are, and has not gone to the
hermaphrodite and sexless inhabitants of a mythical
Golden Age for the characters of his great drama, the
heart of every Scot can bear testimony. Neither Burns,