faction to your mind.
The maze of life sometimes looks dark and wild,
And oft when hopes are highest we're beguiled;
Oft when we stand on brinks of dark despair
Some happy turn with joy dispels our care.'

The relative proportions of the various characters have been preserved
with rare skill, and the individuality of each is as firmly and clearly
differentiated in a few rapid incisive strokes, as though he had
expended pages of description on each, like Pope and Gay. Patie's cheery
_bonhomie_ and vivacious nature, his love of learning and his wise views
of life and its duties, find an excellent foil in the slow, bashful,
phlegmatic Roger, whose very 'blateness' denies him the bliss he covets
in Jenny's love. Peggy is altogether charming,--a lovely, pure-souled,
healthful, sport-loving maiden, with enough of her sex's foibles in her
to leave her a very woman, yet with as few faults as it is possible for
faulty human nature to be without. One of the most delightful heroines
in pastoral poetry is Peggy. Jenny's prudish airs and affected dislike
to the sterner sex are delicately yet incisively portrayed, while the
staunch fidelity of Symon, the cheery chirpiness of Glaud, the bucolic
ignorance and superstition of Bauldy, the cankered impatience of
Madge--a spinster against her will, and the pathetic, age-worn weariness
of Mause, are depicted with the assured hand of a master. Many of the
lyrics interspersed throughout the pastoral are gems of rustic song;
not high-class poetry, otherwise they would have been as out of place as
would the Johnsonian minnows, talking, as Goldsmith said, like whales.

Only to one other production of Ramsay's genius will attention be called
under this head, namely, his continuation of James the First's poem,
_Christ's Kirk on the Green_. Of this, the first canto only was written
by its royal author. Ramsay, therefore, conceived the design of
completing it, as was remarked before. The king had painted with great
spirit the squabble that arose at a rustic wedding at Christ's Kirk, in
the parish of Kinnethmont, in that part of the county of Aberdeen near
Leslie called the Garioch. Ramsay seems to have mistaken it for Leslie
in Fife. Two cantos were added by our poet to the piece, in the one of
which he exhibited the company, their differences ended, as engaging in
feasting and good cheer; in the other, their appearance the following
morning, after they had slept off the effects of