CHAPTER XI
RAMSAY AS A SATIRIST AND A SONG-WRITER
Difficult it is to make any exact classification of Ramsay's works, inasmuch as he frequently applied class-names to poems to which they were utterly inapplicable. Thus many of his elegies and epistles were really satires, while more than one of those poems he styled satires were rather of an epic character than anything else. By the reader, therefore, certain shortcomings in classification must be overlooked, as Ramsay's poetical terminology (if the phrase be permissible) was far from being exact.
As I have previously remarked, Ramsay's studies in poetry, in addition to the earlier Scottish verse, had lain largely in the later Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline periods. In these, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, and Pope were his favourites, and their influence is to be traced throughout his satires. To Boileau he had paid some attention, though his acquaintance with French literature was more through the medium of translations, than by drawing directly from the fountainhead. Ramsay's satires exhibit all the virtues of correct mediocrity. Their versification is smooth, and they generally scan accurately: the ideas are expressed pithily, at times epigrammatically and wittily. The faults and foibles satirised in most cases are those that richly merited the satiric lash. Yet, all these merits granted, the reader feels something to be lacking. The reason is not far to seek. Ramsay never felt at home in what may be termed 'polished satire.' He was as much out of place as would a low comedian on being suddenly called upon to undertake 'drawing-room comedy.' Perpetually would he feel the inclination to rap out one of the rousing, though vulgar, jokes that inevitably evoked a roar of applause from the gallery, and sooner or later he would give way to it. Ramsay was in precisely the same position. The consequence is that in the Morning Interview, professedly an imitation of Pope's Rape of the Lock, there are incongruous images introduced, for the purpose of relieving the piece by humorous comparisons, which offend the taste even of the most cursory reader. Such allusions as that to 'soft fifteen on her feet-washing night,' and others of a cognate character, are entirely out of place in 'polished satire.' If he attempted the type of composition, he ought to have conformed to its rules.
Of course, Ramsay wrote certain satires, The Last Speech of a Wretched Miser and the like, in the Scots vernacular, and addressed to the lower classes in the community, where his genius is seen at its best, because dealing with 'low-life satire' and the types of character he loved most of all to paint. But his Wealth or the Woody, his Health—a poem addressed to Lord Stair, his Scribblers Lashed, The General Mistake, The Epistle to Lord Ramsay, and the Rise and Fall of Stocks in 1720, exhibit Ramsay's genius moving in fetters. His touch lacks piquancy and epigrammatic incisiveness,—lacks, too, that determinate deftness so characteristic of Horace, as well as those subtle nuances of double-meaning wherein Pope and Arbuthnot excelled, and of which the latter's terrible 'Epitaph on Colonel Chartres' is a favourable example. Ramsay hits with the hammer of Thor, when he should tap as lightly as 'twere reproof administered by a fair one with her fan. Witness his portrait of Talpo in Health—a poem in many respects one of Ramsay's best. With what airy satiric touches Pope or Gay would have dashed off the character. Note the laboured strokes wherewith Ramsay produces his picture—
'But Talpo sighs with matrimonial cares,
His cheeks wear wrinkles, silver grow his hairs,
Before old age his health decays apace,
And very rarely smiles clear up his face.
Talpo's a fool, there's hardly help for that,
He scarcely knows himself what he'd be at.
He's avaricious to the last degree,
And thinks his wife and children make too free
With his dear idol; this creates his pain,
And breeds convulsions in his narrow brain.
He's always startled at approaching fate,
And often jealous of his virtuous mate;
Is ever anxious, shuns his friends to save:
Thus soon he'll fret himself into a grave;
There let him rot'—
But Ramsay's distinguishing and saving characteristic in satire was the breadth and felicity of his humour. To satire, however, humour is less adapted than wit, and of wit Ramsay had, in a comparative sense, but a scanty endowment. He was not one of those who could say smart things, though he could depict a humorous episode or situation as felicitously as anyone of his age. Like Rabelais, he was a humorist, not a wit, and his satires suffered accordingly. Perhaps the best of his satires is The Last Speech of a Wretched Miser, wherein his humour becomes bitingly sardonic. The wretch's address to his pelf is very powerful—
'O dool! and am I forced to dee,
And nae mair my dear siller see,
That glanced sae sweetly in my e'e!
It breaks my heart!
My gold! my bonds! alackanie
That we should part.
Like Tantalus, I lang have stood,
Chin-deep into a siller flood;
Yet ne'er was able for my blood,
But pain and strife,
To ware ae drap on claiths or food,
To cherish life.'
Different, indeed, is the case when we come to consider Ramsay as a song-writer and a lyrist. To him the former title rather than the latter is best applicable. This is not the place to note the resemblances and the differences between the French chanson, the German lied, the Italian canzóne, and the English song or lyric. But as indicating a distinction between the two last terms, Mr. F. T. Palgrave, in the introduction to his invaluable Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics, regards a 'lyric' as a poem turning on 'some single thought, feeling, or situation'; Mr. H. M. Posnett, in his thoughtful volume on Comparative Literature, remarks that the lyric has varied from sacred or magical hymns and odes of priest bards, only fulfilling their purpose when sung, and perhaps never consigned to writing at all, down to written expressions of individual feeling from which all accompaniments of dance or music have been severed. But approximately defined, a lyric may be said to be a poem—short, vivid, and expressive of a definite emotion, appealing more to the eye than with any ultimate view of being set to music; a song, as a composition appealing more to the ear, wherein the sentiments are more leisurely expressed, with the intention of being accompanied by music. Mr. E. H. Stoddard, in the preface to his English Madrigals, defines a lyric 'as a simple, unstudied expression of thought, sentiment, or passion; a song, its expression according to the mode of the day.' The essence of a lyric is point, grace, and symmetry; of a song, fluency, freedom, and the expression of sympathetic emotions.