Does he delight to hear bold seraphs tell
How Michael battled, and the dragon fell;
Or, mixed with milder cherubim, to glow
In hymns of love, not ill essayed below?
Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind,
A task well suited to thy gentle mind?
Oh! if sometimes thy spotless form descend,
To me thy aid, thou guardian genius, lend!
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms,
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms,
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart,
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart :
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before,
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more.
That awful form, which, so the heavens decree,
Must still be loved and still deplored by me,
In nightly visions seldom fails to rise,

Or, roused by fancy, meets my waking eyes.
If business calls, or crowded courts invite,

Th' unblemished statesman seems to strike my sight;

If in the stage I seek to soothe my care,

I meet his soul which breathes in Cato there ;
If pensive to the rural shades I rove,

His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;
'Twas there of just and good he reasoned strong,
Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song:
There patient shewed us the wise course to steer,
A candid censor, and a friend severe ;
There taught us how to live; and-oh! too high
The price for knowledge-taught us how to die.

Thou hill whose brow the antique structures grace,
Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race,
Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears,
O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears?
How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,
Thy sloping walks, and unpolluted air!
How sweet the glooms beneath thy aged trees,
Thy noontide shadow, and thy evening breeze!
His image thy forsaken bowers restore;
Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more;
No more the summer in thy glooms allayed,
Thy evening breezes, and thy noonday shade.

Colin and Lucy.-A Ballad.

Of Leinster, famed for maidens fair,
Bright Lucy was the grace,
Nor e'er did Liffey's limpid stream
Reflect so sweet a face;

Till luckless love and pining care
Impaired her rosy hue,

Her coral lips and damask cheeks,
And eyes of glossy blue.
Oh! have you seen a lily pale

When beating rains descend?

So drooped the slow-consuming maid,
Her life now near its end.

By Lucy warned, of flattering swains
Take heed, ye easy fair!
Of vengeance due to broken vows,
Ye perjured swains! beware.

Three times all in the dead of night
A bell was heard to ring,
And shrieking, at her window thrice
The raven flapped his wing.

Too well the love-lorn maiden knew
The solemn boding sound,
And thus in dying words bespoke
The virgins weeping round:
'I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.

'By a false heart and broken vows

In early youth I die.

Was I to blame because his bride
Was thrice as rich as I?

'Ah, Colin! give not her thy vows,
Vows due to me alone;

Nor thou, fond maid! receive his kiss,
Nor think him all thy own.
'To-morrow in the church to wed,
Impatient both prepare;

But know, fond maid! and know, false man! That Lucy will be there.

'Then bear my corpse, my comrades! bear, This bridegroom blithe to meet;

He in his wedding trim so gay,

I in my winding-sheet.'

She spoke; she died. Her corpse was borne The bridegroom blithe to meet ;

He in his wedding trim so gay,

She in her winding-sheet.

Then what were perjured Colin's thoughts?
How were these nuptials kept?
The bridesmen flocked round Lucy dead,
And all the village wept.

Confusion, shame, remorse, despair,

At once his bosom swell;

The damps of death bedewed his brow;
He shook-he groaned—he fell!
From the vain bride-ah! bride no more!—
The varying crimson fled,

When stretched before her rival's corpse
She saw her husband dead.

Then to his Lucy's new-made grave
Conveyed by trembling swains,
One mould with her, beneath one sod,
For ever he remains.

Oft at this grave the constant hind
And plighted maid are seen;
With garlands gay and true-love knots
They deck the sacred green.

But, swain forsworn! whoe'er thou art,
This hallowed spot forbear;
Remember Colin's dreadful fate,

And fear to meet him there.

Tickell occasionally tried satire, and the following piece shews a stronger and bolder hand than the bulk of his verses. It was written to ridicule the Jacobite Earl of Mar and his rash enterprise in 1715-16 in favour of the Chevalier.

An Imitation of the Prophecy of Nereus.
From Horace, Book iii. Ode 25.

As Mar his round one morning took-
Whom some call earl, and some call duke-
And his new brethren of the blade,
Shivering with fear and frost, surveyed,
On Perth's bleak hills he chanced to spy
An aged wizard six foot high,

With bristled hair and visage blighted,
Wall-eyed, bare haunched, and second-sighted.
The grisly sage in thought profound
Beheld the chief with back so round,
Then rolled his eyeballs to and fro

O'er his paternal hills of snow,

And into these tremendous speeches
Brake forth the prophet without breeches:
'Into what ills betrayed by thee

This ancient kingdom do I see !

Her realms unpeopled and forlorn—
Wae's me! that ever thou wert born!
Proud English loons-our clans o'ercome-
On Scottish pads shall amble home;
I see them dressed in bonnet blue-
The spoils of thy rebellious crew-
I see the target cast away,

And checkered plaid become their prey-
The checkered plaid to make a gown
For many a lass in London town.

'In vain the hungry mountaineers
Come forth in all their warlike gears-
The shield, the pistol, dirk, and dagger,
In which they daily wont to swagger,
And oft have sallied out to pillage
The hen-roosts of some peaceful village;
Or, while their neighbours were asleep,
Have carried off a Lowland sheep.

'What boots thy high-born host of beggars,
Macleans, Mackenzies, and Macgregors?
Inflamed with bagpipe and with brandy,
In vain thy lads around thee bandy.
Doth not bold Sutherland the trusty,
With heart so true, and voice so rusty-
A loyal soul!-thy troops affright
While hoarsely he demands the fight?
Dost thou not generous Islay dread,
The bravest hand, the wisest head;
Undaunted dost thou hear th' alarms
Of hoary Athole sheathed in arms?

'Douglas, who draws his lineage down
From thanes and peers of high renown,
Fiery and young, and uncontrolled,
With knights and squires and barons bold-
His noble household band-advances
And on his milk-white courser prances.
Thee Forfar to the combat dares,
Grown swarthy in Iberian wars,
And Monro kindled into rage,
Sourly defies thee to engage ;

He'll rout thy foot, though ne'er so many,
And horse to boot-if thou hadst any!

'But see, Argyle, with watchful eyes,
Lodged in his deep intrenchments lies;
Couched like a lion in thy way,
He waits to spring upon his prey;
While, like a herd of timorous deer,
Thy army shakes and pants with fear,
Led by their doughty general's skill
From frith to frith, and hill to hill.

Is this thy haughty promise paid
That to the Chevalier was made,
When thou didst oaths and duty barter
For dukedom, generalship, and garter?
Three moons thy Jamie shall command,
With Highland sceptre in his hand,
Too good for his pretended birth-
Then down shall fall the King of Perth!
"Tis so decreed, for George shall reign,
And traitors be forsworn in vain.
Heaven shall for ever on him smile,
And bless him still with an Argyle ;
While thou, pursued by vengeful foes,
Condemned to barren rocks and snows,
And hindered passing Inverlochy,

Shall burn thy clan, and curse poor Jocky!'

AMBROSE PHILIPS.

Among the poets of the day whom Addison's friendship and Pope's enmity raised to temporary importance, was AMBROSE PHILIPS (1671-1749). He was a native of Shropshire, and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. He made his appearance as a poet in the same year and in the same volume as Pope-the Pastorals of Philips

being the first poem, and the Pastorals of Pope the last in Tonson's Miscellany for 1709. They had been printed the year previous. Tickell injudiciously praised Philips's Pastorals as the finest in the language, and Pope resented this unjust depreciation of his own poetry by an ironical paper in the Guardian, calculated to make Philips appear ridiculous. Pretending to criticise the rival Pastorals, and compare them, Pope gives the preference to Philips, but quotes all his worst passages as his best, and places by the side of them his own finest lines, which he says want rusticity and deviate into downright poetry. Philips felt the satire keenly, and even vowed to take personal vengeance on his adversary, by whipping him with a rod, which he hung up for the purpose in Button's Coffee-house. Pope -faithful to the maxim that a man never forgives another whom he has injured-continued to pursue Philips with his hatred and satire to the close of his life. The pastoral poet had the good sense not to enter the lists with his formidable assailant, and his character and talents soon procured him public employment. In 1715, he was appointed paymaster of the Lottery; he afterwards was selected by Archbishop Boulter, primate of Ireland, as his secretary, and sat for the county of Armagh in the Irish parliament. In 1734, he was made registrar of the Prerogative Court. From these appointments, Philips was able to purchase an annuity of £400 per annum, with which he hoped, as Johnson says, 'to pass some years of life (in England) in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope deceived him he was struck with a palsy, and died, June 18, 1749.' The Pastorals of Philips are certainly poor productions; but he was an elegant versifier, and Goldsmith has eulogised the opening of his Epistle to the Earl of Dorset as 'incomparably fine.' A fragment of Sappho, translated by Philips, is a poetical gem so brilliant, that it is thought Addi-son must have assisted in its composition :

Fragment from Sappho.

Blessed as the immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears and sees thee all the while,
Softly speak and sweetly smile.

'Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
And raised such tumults in my breast;
For while I gazed in transport tossed,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost;
My bosom glowed; the subtle flame
Ran quick through all my vital frame;
O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung;
My ears with hollow murmurs rung.

In dewy damps my limbs were chilled,
My blood with gentle horrors thrilled;
My feeble pulse forgot to play;

I fainted, sunk, and died away.

Philips produced three tragedies, but only one -The Distressed Mother, from the Andromaque of Racine-was successful; he wrote in the Whig journal the Freethinker (1718-19), and he translated some Persian tales. Certain short complimentary pieces, by which Philips paid court, as Johnson says, to all ages and characters, from Walpole, the steerer of the realm, to Miss Pulteney in the nursery,' procured him the nickname of

Namby Pamby; first given, it is said, by Harry Carey, the dramatist and song-writer, and cordially adopted by Pope as suited to Philips's 'eminence in the infantile style.' The following is a specimen of this style :

To Miss Charlotte Pulteney, in her Mother's Arms,
May 1, 1724.

Timely blossom, infant fair,
Fondling of a happy pair,
Every morn, and every night,
Their solicitous delight,
Sleeping, waking, still at ease,
Pleasing, without skill to please;
Little gossip, blithe and hale,
Tattling many a broken tale,
Singing many a tuneless song,
Lavish of a heedless tongue.
Simple maiden, void of art,
Babbling out the very heart,
Yet abandoned to thy will,
Yet imagining no ill,
Yet too innocent to blush,
Like the linnet in the bush,
To the mother linnet's note
Moduling her slender throat,
Chirping forth thy petty joys,
Wanton in the change of toys,
Like the linnet green, in May,
Flitting to each bloomy spray.
Wearied then, and glad of rest,
Like the linnet in the nest.
This thy present happy lot,
This, in time, will be forgot:
Other pleasures, other cares,
Ever busy Time prepares;
And thou shalt in thy daughter see
This picture once resembled thee.

Epistle to the Earl of Dorset.
COPENHAGEN, March 9, 1709.
From frozen climes, and endless tracts of snow,
From streams which northern winds forbid to flow,
What present shall the Muse to Dorset bring,
Or how, so near the pole, attempt to sing?
The hoary winter here conceals from sight
All pleasing objects which to verse invite.
The hills and dales, and the delightful woods,
The flowery plains, and silver-streaming floods,
By snow disguised, in bright confusion lie,
And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye.
No gentle-breathing breeze prepares the spring,
No birds within the desert region sing.
The ships, unmoved, the boisterous winds defy,
While rattling chariots o'er the ocean fly.
The vast leviathan wants room to play,
And spout his waters in the face of day.
The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
And to the moon in icy valleys howl.
O'er many a shining league the level main
Here spreads itself into a glassy plain :
There solid billows of enormous size,
Alps of green ice, in wild disorder rise.

And yet but lately have I seen, even here,
The winter in a lovely dress appear,
Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasured snow,
Or winds begun through hazy skies to blow:
At evening a keen eastern breeze arose,
And the descending rain unsullied froze.
Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew,
The ruddy morn disclosed at once to view
The face of nature in a rich disguise,
And brightened every object to my eyes:
For every shrub, and every blade of grass,

And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in glass;

In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns shew,
While through the ice the crimson berries glow.
The thick-sprung reeds, which watery marshes yield,
Seemed polished lances in a hostile field.

The stag, in limpid currents, with surprise
Sees crystal branches on his forehead rise:
The spreading oak, the beech, and towering pine
Glazed over, in the freezing ether shine.

The frighted birds the rattling branches shun,
Which wave and glitter in the distant sun.
When, if a sudden gust of wind arise,
The brittle forest into atoms flies;

The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends,
And in a spangled shower the prospect ends :
Or, if a southern gale the region warm,

And by degrees unbind the wintry charm,
The traveller a miry country sees,

And journeys sad beneath the dropping trees :
Like some deluded peasant, Merlin leads

Through fragrant bowers, and through delicious

meads;

While here enchanted gardens to him rise,

And airy fabrics there attract his eyes,

His wandering feet the magic paths pursue,
And, while he thinks the fair illusion true,
The trackless scenes disperse in fluid air,
And woods, and wilds, and thorny ways appear:
A tedious road the weary wretch returns,
And, as he goes, the transient vision mourns.

From the First Pastoral-Lobbin.

If we, O Dorset ! quit the city throng,
To meditate in shades the rural song,
By your command, be present; and, O bring
The Muse along! The Muse to you shall sing.
Her influence, Buckhurst, let me there obtain,
And I forgive the famed Sicilian swain.

Begin. In unluxurious times of yore,
When flocks and herds were no inglorious store,
Lobbin, a shepherd boy, one evening fair,
As western winds had cooled the sultry air,
His numbered sheep within the fold now pent,
Thus plained him of his dreary discontent;
Beneath a hoary poplar's whispering boughs,
He, solitary, sat, to breathe his vows.
Venting the tender anguish of his heart,
As passion taught, in accents free of art;
And little did he hope, while, night by night,
His sighs were lavished thus on Lucy bright.

'Ah! well-a-day, how long must I endure This pining pain? Or who shall speed my cure? Fond love no cure will have, seek no repose, Delights in grief, nor any measure knows : And now the moon begins in clouds to rise; The brightening stars increase within the skies; The winds are hushed; the dews distil; and sleep Hath closed the eyelids of my weary sheep; I only, with the prowling wolf, constrained All night to wake: with hunger he is pained, And I with love. His hunger he may tame; But who can quench, O cruel love! thy flame? Whilome did I, all as this poplar fair, Upraise my heedless head, then void of care, 'Mong rustic routs the chief for wanton game; Nor could they merry make, till Lobbin came. Who better seen than I in shepherd's arts, To please the lads, and win the lasses' hearts? How deftly, to mine oaten reed so sweet, Wont they upon the green to shift their feet! And, wearied in the dance, how would they yearn Some well-devisèd tale from me to learn! For many songs and tales of mirth had I, To chase the loitering sun adown the sky : But ah! since Lucy coy deep-wrought her spite Within my heart, unmindful of delight,

The jolly grooms I fly, and, all alone,

To rocks and woods pour forth my fruitless moan.
Oh! quit thy wonted scorn, relentless fair,
Ere, lingering long, I perish through despair.
Had Rosalind been mistress of my mind,

Though not so fair, she would have proved more kind.
O think, unwitting maid, while yet is time,
How flying years impair thy youthful prime!
Thy virgin bloom will not for ever stay,
And flowers, though left ungathered, will decay:
The flowers, anew, returning seasons bring,
But beauty faded has no second spring.

My words are wind! She, deaf to all my cries,
Takes pleasure in the mischief of her eyes.
Like frisking heifer, loose in flowery meads,
She gads where'er her roving fancy leads;
Yet still from me. Ah me! the tiresome chase!
Shy as the fawn, she flies my fond embrace.
She flies, indeed, but ever leaves behind,
Fly where she will, her likeness in my mind.'

GEORGE GRANVILLE, LORD LANSDOWNE. Pope has commemorated among his early friends and patrons Granville the polite.' He was early distinguished and commended by Waller, of whom he was an imitator. His poems

in praise of 'Mira'-the Countess of Newburghwere popular at the time of their production, and he was the author of several dramatic pieces now forgotten. He stood high in the favour of Queen Anne, was elevated to the peerage in 1711, and was successively comptroller and treasurer of the household. In the reign of George I. he fell into disgrace, and was committed to the Tower, on a charge of disloyalty to the Hanover succession. He was released after a confinement of about a year and a half, and was restored to his seat in parliament. In 1732, he published his works in two volumes. He died January 30, 1734-35, aged about seventy. Though occasionally a pleasing versifier, Granville cannot be considered a poet.

ANNE, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA.

'It is remarkable,' says Wordsworth, 'that excepting the Nocturnal Reverie, and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of Paradise Lost and the Seasons, does not contain a single new image of external nature.' The Nocturnal Reverie was written by ANNE, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA, the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill, Southampton, who died in 1720, aged about sixty. Her lines are smoothly versified, and possess a tone of calm and contemplative observation.

A Nocturnal Reverie.

In such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined,
And only gentle zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel still waking sings;
Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight,
She, holloaing clear, directs the wanderer right:
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heaven's mysterious face;
When in some river overhung with green,
The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen;
When freshened grass now bears itself upright,
And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,
Whence springs the woodbine, and the bramble rose,
And where the sleepy cowslip sheltered grows;

Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes,
Yet checkers still with red the dusky brakes;
When scattered glowworms, but in twilight fine,
Shew trivial beauties watch their hour to shine;
Whilst Salisbury stands the test of every light,
In perfect charms and perfect virtue bright:
When odours which declined repelling day,
Through temperate air uninterrupted stray;
When darkened groves their softest shadows wear,
And falling waters we distinctly hear;
When through the gloom more venerable shews
Some ancient fabric, awful in repose;
While sunburnt hills their swarthy looks conceal,
And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale:
When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads,
Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,
Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
And to her straggling brood the partridge calls;
Their short-lived jubilee the creatures keep,
Which but endures whilst tyrant man does sleep;
When a sedate content the spirit feels,
And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals ;
But silent musings urge the mind to seek
Something too high for syllables to speak;
Till the free soul to a composedness charmed,
Finding the elements of rage disarmed,
O'er all below a solemn quiet grown,
Joys in the inferior world, and thinks it like her own :
In such a night let me abroad remain,
Till morning breaks, and all's confused again;
Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renewed,
Or pleasures, seldom reached, again pursued.

and smooth versification of the countess, and The following is another specimen of the correct seems to us superior to the Nocturnal Reverie:

Life's Progress.

How gaily is at first begun

Our life's uncertain race!
Whilst yet that sprightly morning sun,
With which we just set out to run,
Enlightens all the place.

How smiling the world's prospect lies!
How tempting to go through!

Not Canaan to that prophet's eyes,
From Pisgah, with a sweet surprise,
Did more inviting shew.
How soft the first ideas prove

Which wander through our minds!
How full the joys, how free the love,
Which does that early season move,
As flowers the western winds!
Our sighs are then but vernal air,
But April drops our tears,
Which swiftly passing, all grows fair,
Whilst beauty compensates our care,
And youth each vapour clears.

But oh, too soon, alas! we climb,
Scarce feeling we ascend

The gently rising hill of Time,
From whence with grief we see that prime,
And all its sweetness end.

The die now cast, our station known,

Fond expectation past:

The thorns which former days had sown, To crops of late repentance grown, Through which we toil at last.

519

SCOTTISH POETS.

FRANCIS SEMPILL of Beltrees (son of Robert Sempill, see ante, p. 312), who died between 1680 and 1685, wrote some excellent rustic songs-Fy, let us a to the Bridal, She raise and loot me in, and Maggie Lauder.

In the years 1706, 1709, and 1711, was published in Edinburgh, in three parts, A Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, both Ancient and Modern, by James Watson. In this collection appeared the oldest known version of Auld Langsyne, though probably founded on one of earlier date. The following is the first stanza :

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And never thought upon?

The flames of love extinguished,

And freely past and gone?

Is thy kind heart now grown so cold,
In that loving breast of thine,
That thou canst never once reflect
On old longsyne?

Another stanza seems to fix the date of the song to the time of the civil war, about the middle of the 17th century:

If e'er I have a house, my dear,

That truly is called mine,
And can afford but country cheer,
Or ought that's good therein;

Though thou wert rebel to the king,
And beat with wind and rain,
Assure thyself of welcome, love,
For old longsyne.

This poem or song of 'Old Longsyne' has been ascribed (though only from supposed internal evidence) to Sir Robert Ayton (see ante, p. 123) and also to Francis Sempill, but we have no doubt it is of later date. Another version (also ascribed to Francis Sempill) is given in Herd's collection. 1776. It begins:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
Though they return with scars?

These are the noble heroes' lot

Obtained in glorious wars.

Welcome, my Varo, to my breast;
Thy arms about me twine,

And mak me ance again as blest,

As I was langsyne.

It is needless to point out how immeasurably superior is Burns's Auld Langsyne. James Watson, in 1719, gave to the world a pretended fragment of an old heroic ballad entitled Hardyknute. This imitation was greatly admired by Gray and Percy-who believed it to be ancient, though retouched by some modern hand-and by Sir Walter Scott, who said it was the first poem he ever learned, the last he should forget. It is understood to have been written by ELIZABETH, daughter of SIR CHARLES HALKET, Bart. of Pitferran, who was married in 1696 to SIR HENRY WARDLAW, Bart. of Pitreavie, in Fife. Lady Wardlaw died in 1727, aged fifty. Hardyknute

is a fine martial and pathetic ballad, though irreconcilable, as Scott acknowledged, with all chronology; a chief with a Norwegian name is strangely introduced as the first of the nobles brought to resist a Norse invasion at the battle of Largs.' The ballad extends to forty-two stanzas, and opens thus picturesquely :

Stately stept he east the wa',
And stately stept he west,
Full seventy years he now had seen,
With scarce seven years of rest.
He lived when Britons' breach of faith
Wrought Scotland mickle wae;
And aye his sword tauld to their cost,
He was their deadly fae.

High on a hill his castle stood,

With ha's and towers a height,
And goodly chambers fair to see,

Where he lodged mony a knight.
His dame sae peerless ance and fair,
For chaste and beauty deemed,
Nae marrow had in all the land,
Save Eleanor the Queen.

The following also is very spirited:

Puffed up with

The king of Norse in summer tide,
power and might,
Landed in fair Scotland the isle
With mony a hardy knight.
The tidings to our good Scots king
Came, as he sat at dine,

With noble chiefs in brave array,
Drinking the bluid-red wine.

'To horse, to horse, my royal liege,
Your faes stand on the strand,

Full twenty thousand glittering spears
The king of Norse commands.'

'Bring me my steed Madge dapple gray,'
Our good king rose and cried;
'A trustier beast in a' the land,
A Scots king never tried.

'Go, little page, tell Hardyknute,
That lives on hill sae hie,

To draw his sword, the dread of faes,
And haste and follow me.'

The little page flew swift as dart

Flung by his master's arm :

'Come down, come down, Lord Hardyknute,

And rid your king frae harm.'

Then red, red grew his dark-brown cheeks,

Sae did his dark-brown brow;

His looks grew keen, as they were wont

In dangers great to do ;

He's ta'en a horn as green as glass,

And gi'en five sounds sae shrill,
That trees in greenwood shook thereat,
Sae loud rang ilka hill.

ALLAN RAMSAY.

The genius of the country was at length revived in all its force and nationality, its comic dialogue, Doric simplicity, and tenderness, by ALLAN RAMSAY, whose very name is now an impersonation of Scottish scenery and character. The religious austerity of the Covenanters still hung over Scotland, and damped the efforts of poets and dramatists; but a freer spirit found its way into the towns, along with the increase of trade and commerce. The higher classes were in the habit