SCOTTISH POETRY. 183 



fifth James, we find lost in the verse of his immediate successors, 

 Alexander Scott and Montgomery ; tenderness and sweetness ap- 

 pear to have taken the place of broad graphic humour, and feebleness 

 stept forward instead of strength. 



As yet the Scottish muse had given us but small expectations of 

 our ever seeing a lofty noble-minded spirit step from the plough, and 

 astonish us with his enchanting ditties ; we had been taught to look 

 for life and glee in the high born and courtly. The rustic poetic maid 

 frequented the courts and palaces of the great more than the plough- 

 tail and the village ingle. It was not a love of low life that excited 

 the royal bards to give their composition the pure breath of the coun- 

 try. The exploits and night adventures in which the fifth James was 

 frequently engaged, were entered into rather for the love of seeing the 

 happiness of his subjects, and releasing his mind from the gorgeous 

 splendour of his courts, than a real effection for low ill-bred company ; 

 his " gauding wi' the lassies" was more imaginary than real ; the first 

 James Stuart probably observed the superiority of nature over art, 

 home-born truth to mere affectation, the " reaper and the waving corn" 

 to the tinselled glitter of tournaments and camps. 



With William Drummond, of Hawthornden, a taste for the polish 

 of the Italian school of poetry entered into the Scottish literature ; 

 like our English Howard, of Surrey, he had, by travelling much 

 abroad, became acquainted with the writings of Petrarch, Dante, and 

 Ariosto ; many of the sonnets which have been left to us clearly show 

 an extensive knowledge of Petrarch's art, and the refinement of versi- 

 fication in his noble panegyric, " The Forth Feasting," entitles him 

 to be considered as an early cultivator of melodious lines. Waller in- 

 formed Dryden that he owed whatever harmony his numbers had to 

 the translation of Tasso by Fairfax, so that in our Elizabethian poets 

 much of the smoothness of Denham and Waller may be traced on 

 very good authority. 



In Ramsay and Fergusson we have too well known forerunners of 

 Burns; lyrics were poured out by the former equally good, and in 

 greater profusion than before ; but it is not in the songs of Ramsay 

 that we see much of Burns the " Gentle Shepherd" was the Ayr- 

 shire Bard's great favourite ; in this the only true pastoral of nature 

 is found that poetic beauty of expression, and glowing flow of lan- 

 guage, to attain which was all along Burns' greatest ambition an 

 end he not only gained but surpassed. But to Fergusson, 



" Whose glorious parts 

 111 suited law's dry musty arts," 



we are chiefly indebted for many hints to the rustic muse of his noble 

 successor. 



Burns rose like a sun on a winter morning, to cheer the hearts of 

 the noble and the humble. The " luckless star that ruled his lot" 

 forced him to come before the world as an author ; compelled, not so 

 much to gratify his love of ambition, as with the hope that the publica- 

 tion would bring money enough to convey him over the Atlantic. 

 Thus, Burns was given to his country at a time when 



" Hungry ruin had him in the wind ;" 



