the orgies, and when
they proceed to the bridegroom's house to offer gifts. The skill
wherewith Ramsay dovetailed his work into that of his royal predecessor,
and developed the king's characters along lines fully in accord with
their inception, is very remarkable. There is a Rabelaisian element in
the headlong fun and broad rough-and-tumble humour Ramsay introduces
into his portion of the poem, but it is not discordant with the king's
ideas. The whole piece is almost photographic in the vividness of the
several portraits; the 'moment' of delineation selected for each being
that best calculated to afford a clue to the type of character. The
following picture of the 'reader,' or church precentor in Roman
Catholic times, has often been admired, as almost Chaucerian, for its
force and truth--

'The latter-gae of haly rhime,
Sat up at the boord head,
And a' he said 'twas thought a crime
To contradict indeed.
For in clerk lear he was right prime,
And could baith write and read,
And drank sae firm till ne'er a styme
He could keek on a bead
Or book that day.'

The coarseness of the pieces cannot be denied. Still, withal, there is a
robust, manly strength in the ideas and a picturesque force in the
vocabulary that covers a multitude of sins. His picture of morning has
often been compared with that of Butler in _Hudibras_, but the advantage
undoubtedly lies with Ramsay. Butler describes the dawn as follows--

'The sun had long since in the lap
Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn.'

Ramsay, in his description, says--

'Now frae th' east neuk o' Fife the dawn
Speel'd westlines up the lift;
Carles wha heard the cock had crawn,
Begoud to rax and rift;
And greedy wives, wi' girning thrawn,
Cry'd "Lasses, up to thrift";
Dogs barked, and the lads frae hand
Bang'd to their breeks like drift,
Be break o' day.'

It must be remembered, the poem was addressed to rustics, who would
neither have understood nor appreciated anything of a higher or less
broadly Hogarthian nature. In _Christ's Kirk on the Green_ we have
stereotyped to all time a picture of manners unsurpassed for vigour and
accuracy of detail, to which antiquarians have gone, and will go, for
information that is furnished in no other quarter.

In his elegies pure