A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla

by Leigh Hunt

Allan Ramsay’s poem is not only a probable and pleasing story, containing charming pictures, much knowledge of life, and a good deal of quiet humour, but in some respects it may be called classical, if by classical is meant ease, precision, and unsuperfluousness of style. Ramsay’s diction is singularly straightforward, seldom needing the assistance of inversions; and he rarely says anything for the purpose of “filling up;”—two freedoms from defect the reverse of vulgar and commonplace; nay, the reverse of a great deal of what pretends to be fine writing, and is received as such. We confess we never tire of dipping into it, “on and off,” any more than into Fletcher, or Milton, or into Theocritus himself, who, for the union of something higher with true pastoral, is unrivalled in short pieces. The Gentle Shepherd is not a forest, nor a mountainside, nor Arcady; but it is a field full of daisies, with a brook in it, and a cottage “at the sunny end;” and this we take to be no mean thing, either in the real or the ideal world. Our Jar of Honey may well lie for a few moments among its heather, albeit filled from Hybla. There are bees, “look you,” in Habbie’s How. Theocritus and Allan shake hands over a shepherd’s pipe. Take the beginning of Scene ii. Act i., both for description and dialogue:—

A flowrie howm between twa verdant braes,
Where lassies use to wash and spread their claes;
A trottin’ birnie wimplin’ through the ground,
Its channel pebbles shining smooth and round.
Here view twa barefoot beauties, clean and clear,
First please your eye, next gratify your ear,
While Jenny what she wishes discommends,
And Meg, with better sense, true love defends.
Jenny. Come, Meg, lets fa’ to work upon this green,
This shining day will bleach our linen clean:
The waters clear, the lift unclouded blue,
Will make them like a lily wet wi’ dew.
Peggy. Gae far’er up the burn to Habbie’s How,
Where a’ the sweets o’ spring and simmer grow;
There ’tween twa birks, out ower a little lin,
The water fa’s, and maks a singin’ din;
A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,
Kisses, wi’ easy whirls, the bordering grass.
We’ll end our washing while the morning’s cool,
And when the day grows het, we’ll to the pool,
There wash oursells; ’tis healthfu’ now in May,
And sweetly cauler on sae warm a day.

This is an out-door picture. Here is an indoor one quite as good—nay, better:—

While Peggy laces up her bosom fair,
With a blue snood Jenny binds up her hair;
Glaud by his morning ingle takes a beek;
The rising sun shines motty through the reek;
A pipe his mouth, the lasses please his een,
And now and then his joke maun intervene.

We would quote, if we could—only it might not look so proper, when isolated—the whole song at the close of Act the Second. The first line of it alone is worth all Pope’s pastorals put together, and (we were going to add) half of those of Virgil; but we reverence too much the great follower of the Greeks, and true lover of the country. There is more sentiment, and equal nature, in the song at the end of Act the Fourth. Peggy is taking leave of her lover, who is going abroad:—

At setting day and rising morn,
Wi’ saul that still shall love thee,
I’ll ask o’ Heaven thy safe return,
Wi’ a’ that can improve thee.
I’ll visit aft the birkin bush,
Where first thou kindly tauld me
Sweet tales of love, and hid my blush,
Whilst round thou didst infald me.
To a’ our haunts I will repair,
To greenwood, shaw, or fountain;
Or where the summer day I’d share
Wi’ thee upon yon mountain.
There will I tell the trees and flowers
Frae thoughts unfeign’d and tender,
By vows you’re mine, by love is yours
A heart that cannot wander.

The charming and (so to speak) natural flattery of the loving delicacy of this distinction—

By vows you’re mine, by love is yours,

was never surpassed by a passion the most refined. It reminds us of a like passage in the anonymous words (Shakspeare might have written them) of the fine old English madrigal by Ford, “Since first I saw your face.” Perhaps Ford himself wrote them; for the author of that music had sentiment enough in him for anything. The passage we allude to is—

What, I that loved, and you that liked,
Shall we begin to wrangle?