Phoebus, and his imaginary nine With me have lost the title of divine; To no such shadows will I homage pay, These to my real muses shall give way. And again, protesting against the narrowness of poetic rules and customs, he said, With more of Nature than of art From stated rules I often start,-- Rules never studied yet by me. My muse is British, bold and free, And loves at large to frisk and bound,[236] and he called a wide, wild garden where all sorts of plants grew in wanton confusion, a paradise made by Nature herself. Even more emphatic is his Preface to “The Evergreen” in 1724. In commendation of the poems he had collected he said, The morning rises as she does in the _Scottish_ horizon. We are not carried to _Greece_ or _Italy_ for a shade, a Stream, or a Breeze.... I find not Fault with these Things, as they are in _Greece_ or _Italy_: But with a Northern Poet for fetching his Materials from these Places, in a Poem, of which his own Country is the Scene; as our _Hymners_ to the _Spring_ and _Makers of Pastorals_ frequently do. Ramsay’s use of external Nature is more charming than Gay’s. Scottish poetry had never, in its attitude toward the out-door world, passed through so barren and arid a period as that of the pseudo-classicism in England, nor had the Scottish people ever lost their sense of the beauty and especially of the mysterious power of glens and braes and burns. So Ramsay’s love of Nature was not without a considerable background in the way of national poetic spirit. He spoke out in fresh, true words what everybody knew, and described scenes familiar to every eye. There are, however, distinct limitations in Ramsay’s knowledge of Nature and his power of sympathetic representation. His recognition of colors is fresh and charming, but elementary, like that shown in ballads. “Caledonian hills are green,” “beneath a green shade,” “the simmer green,” “a green meadow,” “my native green plains,” are characteristic phrases. When corn-riggs wav’d yellow, and blue heather bells,[237] and To pu’ the rashes green with roots sae white,[238] are almost the only instances of any other color than green. Such phrases as “scented meadows,” “sweet scented rucks,” “new blown scents,” “sweetest briar,” “blooming fragrance,” show the same simple, undifferentiated recognition of odors. A few lines as, How fast the westlin winds sough through the reeds,[239]