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.'