(_Remarks on Ramsay's miscellaneous poems are here omitted._) In the year 1725, _Ramsay_ published his pastoral comedy of _The Gentle Shepherd_, the noblest and most permanent monument of his fame. A few years before, he had published, in a single sheet, _A Pastoral Dialogue between Patie and Roger_, which was reprinted in the first collection of his poems, in 1721. This composition being much admired, his literary friends urged him to extend his plan to a regular drama: and to this fortunate suggestion the literary world is indebted for one of the most perfect pastoral poems that has ever appeared.[42] [Footnote 42: In the quarto of 1728, the following note is subjoined to the first scene of the Gentle Shepherd:--"This first scene is the only piece in this volume that was printed in the first: having carried the pastoral the length of five acts, at the desire of some persons of distinction, I was obliged to print this preluding scene with the rest."] The _pastoral drama_ is an invention of the moderns. The first who attempted this species of poetry was _Agostino de Beccari_, in his _Sacrificio Favola Pastorale_, printed in 1553. _Tasso_ is supposed to have taken the hint from him; and is allowed, in his _Aminta_, published in 1573, to have far surpassed his master. _Guarini_ followed, whose _Pastor Fido_ contends for the palm with the _Aminta_, and, in the general opinion of the Italians, is judged to have obtained it. _Tasso_ himself is said to have confessed the superior merit of his rival's work; but to have added, in his own defence, that had _Guarini_ never seen his _Aminta_, he never would have surpassed it. Yet, I think, there is little doubt, that this preference is ill-founded. Both these compositions have resplendent beauties, with glaring defects and improprieties. I am, however, much mistaken, if the latter are not more abundant in the _Pastor Fido_, as the former are predominant in the _Aminta_. Both will ever be admired, for beauty of poetical expression, for rich imagery, and for detached sentiments of equal delicacy and tenderness: but the fable, both of the _Aminta_, and _Pastor Fido_, errs against all probability; and the general language and sentiments of the characters are utterly remote from nature. The fable of the _Aminta_ is not dramatic; for it is such, that the principal incidents, on which the plot turns, are incapable of representation: the beautiful _Silvia_, stripped naked, and bound by her hair to a tree by a brutal satyr, and released by her lover _Amyntas_;--her flight from the wolves;--the precipitation of _Amyntas_ from a high rock, who narrowly escapes being dashed in pieces, by having his fall broken by the stump of a tree;--are all incidents, incapable of being represented to the eye; and must therefore be thrown into narration. The whole of the last act is narrative, and is taken up entirely with the history of _Amyntas's_ fall, and the happy change produced in the heart of the rigorous