In the chapter on _The Gentle Shepherd_, we noted the distinctive constituents of pastoral poetry, as currently defined, and also wherein Ramsay's principles, as exemplified in practice, differ from those of other writers of pastoral. To furnish examples illustrative of our contention is now all that remains to be done. Early in his poetical career, as soon, in fact, as he had completed his first tentative efforts, Ramsay seems to have become conscious, with that rare gift of prevision always distinguishing him, that his strength lay in a picturesque yet truthful delineation of rural life. His earliest pieces, although termed elegies, exhibit, rather, many of the characteristics of pastorals, in the broad humour and in the graphic and vivid colouring wherewith he depicts the scenes at Maggy Johnston's tavern at Morningside, or the incidents in the life of Luckie Wood or of Patie Birnie. But, as he has termed them _elegies_, under that heading let them be considered, though a humorous or mock elegy is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. Roughly classified, Ramsay's pastorals may be stated as follows:--the dialogues between _Richy_ (Sir Rich. Steele) _and Sandy_ (Alex. Pope), on the death of Mr. Addison; between _Robert, Richy, and Sandy_, on the death of Matthew Prior; _Keitha_, on the death of the Countess of Wigton; an _Ode with a Pastoral Recitative_, on the marriage of James Earl of Wemyss to Miss Janet Charteris; _A Masque_, performed at the celebration of the nuptials of James Duke of Hamilton and Lady Ann Cochrane; _A Pastoral Epithalamium_, on the marriage of George Lord Ramsay and Lady Jean Maule; _Betty and Kate_, a pastoral farewell to Mr. Aikman; and finally, _The Gentle Shepherd_. Of Ramsay's less important pastorals, the distinguishing characteristics are their simplicity, their tenderness, and their freedom from aught didactic. In conforming to the conventional idea of pastoral,--the idea, that is, of the shepherd state being a condition of perfect peace and Arcadian felicity and propriety,--in place of copying direct from nature, they one and all differ from _The Gentle Shepherd_. The picture of burly Sir Richard Steele and of crooked little Alexander Pope, clad in shepherd's weeds, and masquerading with dogs and pipes and what not, savours somewhat of the ludicrous. Then, in _Richy and Sandy_, he makes Pope bewail the death of Addison, with whom he had been on anything but friendly terms for years previous; while the following picture of the deceased grave-visaged Secretary of State, in such a position as described in the following lines, tends to induce us profane Philistines of these latter days, to smile, if not to sneer-- 'A better lad ne'er leaned out o'er a kent, Nor hounded collie o'er the mossy bent: Blythe at the bughts how oft hae we three been, Heartsome on hills, and gay upon the green.'