In his elegies pure and simple, namely, those divested of any humorous element, Ramsay has done good work; but it is not by any means on a par with what is expected from the poet who could write The Gentle Shepherd. A painter of low life in its aspects both humorous and farcical was Ramsay's distinctive métier. Pity it was his vanity and ambition ever induced him to turn aside from the path wherein he was supreme. His 'Ode to the Memory of Lady Mary Anstruther,' that to 'the Memory of Lady Garlies,' the one to Sir John Clerk on the death of his son James Clerk, and the 'Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Forbes of Newhall,' are his best elegies. The versification is correct, the ideas expressed are sympathetically tender, poetic propriety and the modesty of nature are not infringed by any exaggerated expressions of grief, but the glow of genius is lacking, and the subtle union of sentiment and expression that are so prominent features in his greater poem.
His two finest efforts as an elegist were his Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Forbes, beginning—
'Ah, life! thou short uncertain blaze,
Scarce worthy to be wished or loved,
Why by strict death so many ways,
So soon, the sweetest are removed!
If outward charms and temper sweet,
The cheerful smile, the thought sublime,
Could have preserved, she ne'er had met
A change till death had sunk with time;'
also the one on the Death of Sir Isaac Newton, wherein occur two memorable stanzas—
'Great Newton's dead!—full ripe his fame;
Cease vulgar grief, to cloud our song:
We thank the Author of our frame,
Who lent him to the earth so long.
For none with greater strength of soul
Could rise to more divine a height,
Or range the orbs from pole to pole,
And more improve the human sight.'
His 'humorous elegies,' written in a mock heroic strain, and sometimes upon persons still living, though, for the purposes of his art, he represented them as dead, as in the case of John Cowper, are instinct with broad, rollicking, Rabelaisian fun. Their vivid portrayal of the manners and customs of the time renders them invaluable. What better description of the convivial habits of Edinburgh society early last century could be desired, than the graphic pictures in Luckie Wood's Elegy, particularly the stanza—
'To the sma' hours we aft sat still,
Nick'd round our toasts and sneeshin'-mill;
Good cakes we wanted ne'er at will,
The best of bread;
Which aften cost us mony a gill
To Aitkenhead.'
Than his elegies on Luckie Spence, John Cowper, and Patie Birnie, no more realistic presentation of low-life manners could be desired. They are pictures such as Hogarth would have revelled in, and to which he alone could have done justice in reproduction.