When after this long absence Poetry once more left the suburbs and wandered back to the fields, she took with her this great gain,—the power to describe the things of nature in a correcter diction and more beautiful style than England had before known, save only in Milton’s descriptive lyrics. It was in the Scottish poet Allan Ramsay that the sense of natural beauty first reappeared. Since his day Nature, which, even when felt and described in earlier English poetry, had held a place altogether subordinate to man, has more and more claimed to be regarded in poetry as almost coequal with man. Ramsay, whose “Gentle Shepherd” was first published in 1725, drew his inspiration in large measure from the songs and ballads of his native country, which, while full of the pathos of human incident and affection, are hardly less sensitive to the looks of earth and sky, whether stern or lovely. It was from his knowledge of rustic life and his love of the popular song that his inspiration was drawn. But his genuine and natural instincts were overlaid by some knowledge and relish of the artificial literature of his age. The result is a kind of composite poetry, in which Scotch manners, feeling, and language are strangely intermingled with a sort of Arcadian veneer, brought from the Eclogues of Virgil, or from English imitations of these. This is most seen in Ramsay’s songs, where, instead of preserving the precious old melodies, he has replaced them by insipid counterfeits of his own, in which Jock and Jenny are displaced by Damon and Chloe. Though some traces of false taste do crop out here and there, even in the dialogue of the “The Gentle Shepherd,” yet these are far fewer than in the songs. The feelings of our age may be now and then offended by a freedom of speech that borders on coarseness, but that the texture of the poem is stirring and human-hearted is proved by the hold it still retains on the Scottish peasantry. If here and there a false note mars the truth of the human manners, as when Scotch Lowland shepherds talk of playing on reeds and flutes, the scenery of “The Gentle Shepherd” is true to Nature as it is among the Pentland Hills:— “Gae farder up the burn to Habbie’s How, Where a’ the sweets o’ spring and summer grow: Between twa birks, out o’er a little linn The water fa’s an’ mak’s a singin’ din; A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass, Kisses, wi’ easy whirls, the bordering grass. We’ll end our washing while the morning’s cool. And when the day grows het we’ll to the pool, There wash oursels—it’s healthfu’ now in May, And sweetly cauler on so warm a day.” A pool in a burn among the Lowland hills could hardly be more naturally described. Again, one of the shepherds thus invites his love— “To where the saugh-tree shades the mennin-pool, I’ll frae the hill come doun, when day grows cool. —Keep tryst, and meet me there.”