RAMSAY'S "RICHY AND SANDY."1

ON THE DEATH OF MR. ADDISON.

RICHY.

That's true indeed! But now thae days are gane, And, with him, a' that's pleasant on the plain. A summer day I never thought it lang,

To hear him make a roundel or a sang.

How sweet he sung where vines and myrtles grow,
Of wimbling waters which in Latium flow. 2
Titry the Mantuan herd, wha lang sinsyne
Best sung on aeten reed the lover's pine,
Had he been to the fore now in our days,
Wi' Adie he had frankly dealt his bays.
As lang's the warld shall Amaryllis ken,
His Rosamond 3 shall echo through the glen ;
While on burn banks the yellow gowan grows,
Or wand'ring lambs rin bleating after ewes,
His fame shall last; last shall his sang of weirs,4
While British bairns brag of their bauld forbears.
We'll meikle miss his blyth and witty jest,
At spaining time, or at our Lambmass feast.

1 Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Alexander Pope.

2 His poetic epistle from Italy to the Earl of Halifax.

3 An opera written by him. His Campaign,' a poem.

O, Richy! but 't is hard that Death aye reaves
Away the best fowk, and the ill anes leaves !
Hing down yer heads, ye hills; greet out, ye springs;
Upon yer edge na mair the shepherd sings!

RICHY.

Then he had aye a good advice to gie, And kend my thoughts amaist as well as me. Had I been thowless, vext, or oughtlins sour, He wad have made me blyth in half an hour; Had Rosie ta'en the dorts, or had the tod Worry'd my lambs, or were my feet ill-shod, Kindly he'd laugh when sae he saw me dwine, And talk of happiness like a divine. Of ilka thing he had an unco' skill; He kend by moonlight how tides ebb and fill ; He kend (what kend he no?) e'en to a hair He'd tell or night gin neist day wad be fair. Blind John, ye mind, wha sung in kittle phrase, How the ill sp'rit did the first mischief raise ; Mony a time, beneath the auld birk-tree, What's bonny in that sang he loot me see. The lasses aft flung down their rakes and pails, And held their tongues, O strange ! to hear his tales.

SANDY.

Sound be his sleep, and saft his wak'ning be! He's in a better case than thee or me.

He was o'er good for us; the gods hae ta'en
Their ain but back, he was a borrowed len.
Let us be good, gin virtue be our drift,
Then we may yet forgether 'boon the lift.

But see, the sheep are wysing to the cleugh; Thomas has loos'd his ousen frae the pleugh; Maggy by this has bewk the supper-scones; And muckle kye stand rowting in the loans; Come, Richy, let us truse and hame o'er bend, And make the best of what we canna mend.

1 The famous Milton; he was blind.

GLOSSARY. Gars, causes; dowf, dull; aboon, above; mane, moan; aught, eight; unco, very; jo, sweetheart; bogle-bo, bugbear spirit; glowrin, staring; fleg, fright; dauted, fondled; wedder, wether; eith, easily; meikle mair, much more; remead, remedy; had, hold; laids, loads; feckless, feeble; wyt, shun, remove; kent, shepherd's staff; coly, shepherd's dog; bent, open field; bught, sheepfold, pen; roundel, roundelay; wimbling, winding; sinsyne, since; aeten, oaten; to the fore, still remaining, surviving, unspent ; ken, know; burn, stream; gowan, daisy; rin, run; weirs, wars; bairns, children; forbears, forefathers; meikle, much; spaining, weaning; reaves, robs; greet, weep; gie, give; thowless, inactive; oughtlins, any little; wad, would; dorts, dumps; tod, fox; dwine, cause to languish; ilka, every; or, ere; gin, if; neist, next; kittle, enlivening; birk, birch; bonny, good; loot, let; ain, own; forgether aboon the lift, come together above the sky; wysing, tending; cleugh, cliff, hollow be tween precipices, nook; ousen, oxen; bewk, baked; scones, cakes; muckle kye, many cows; rowting, bellowing; loans, openings between fields, through which cattle come up; truse, leave off; canna, cannot; bend, field. See p. 186.

EXERCISE.

APOLOGETIC; THE DIFFICULTY OF THE SUBJECT. NICE RULES ARE FOR THE DELICATE, NOT THE STRONG. THROUGH Various toils th' adventurous Muse has

past;

But half the toil, and more than half, remains.
Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for song ;
Plain and of little ornament; and I
But little practised in the Aonian arts :
Yet not in vain such labors have we tried,
If aught these lays the fickle Health confirm.
To you, ye delicate! I write; for you
I tame my youth to philosophic cares,
And grow still paler by the midnight lamp.
Not to debilitate with timorous rules

A hardy frame; nor needlessly to brave
Inglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength,
Is all the lesson that in wholesome years
Concerns the strong. His care were ill bestowed
Who would with warm effeminacy nurse

The thriving oak which, on the mountain's brow,
Bears all the blasts that sweep the wintry heaven.

HEALTH OF THE LABORER. INDIFFERENT TO CHANGES.

Behold the laborer of the glebe who toils
In dust, in rain, in cold and sultry skies:
Save but the grain from mildews and the flood,
Naught anxious he what sickly stars ascend.
He knows no laws by Esculapius given;
He studies none. Yet him nor midnight fogs
Infest, nor those envenomed shafts that fly
When rapid Sirius fires the autumnal noon.
His habit pure with plain and temperate meals,
Robust with labor, and by custom steeled
To every casualty of varied life;
Serene he bears the peevish eastern blast,
And uninfected breathes the mortal south.

THE REWARDS OF SIMPLICITY, SOBRIETY, AND EXERCISE.
Such the reward of rude and sober life;
Of labor such. By health the peasant's toil
Is well repaid; if exercise were pain
Indeed, and temperance pain. By arts like these
Laconia nursed of old her hardy sons;
And Rome's unconquered legions urged their way,
Unhurt, through every toil in every clime.

TOIL, AND BE STRONG. —VARIOUS EXERCISE. Toil, and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone; The greener juices are by toil subdued, Mellowed, and subtilized; the vapid old Expelled, and all the rancor of the blood.

Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms
Of nature and the year; come, let us stray
Where chance or fancy leads our roving walk :
Come, while the soft voluptuous breezes fan
The fleecy heavens, enwrap the limbs in balm,
And shed a charming languor o'er the soul.
Nor when bright Winter sows with prickly frost
The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth
Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus' blasts
This way and that convolve the laboring woods.
My liberal walks, save when the skies in rain
Or fogs relent, no season should confine
Or to the cloistered gallery or arcade.

Go, climb the mountain; from the ethereal source
Imbibe the recent gale. The cheerful morn
Beams o'er the hills; go, mount the exulting steed.
Already, see, the deep-mouthed beagles catch
The tainted mazes; and, on eager sport
Intent, with emulous impatience try
Each doubtful trace. Or, if a nobler prey
Delight you more, go chase the desperate deer;
And through its deepest solitudes awake
The vocal forest with the jovial horn.

[bounds

ANGLING RECOMMENDED FOR GENTLER EXERCISE. — TRENT;
EDEN; ESK. LIDDAL, AND THE AUTHOR'S CHILDHOOD.
But if the breathless chase o'er hill and dale
Exceed your strength, a sport of less fatigue,
Nor less delightful, the prolific stream
Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o'er
A stony channel rolls its rapid maze,
Swarms with the silver fry. Such, through the
Of pastoral Stafford, runs the brawling Trent ;
Such Eden, sprung from Cumbrian mountains; such
The Esk, o'erhung with woods; and such the stream
On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air,
Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays
Tuned to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in song: though not a purer stream,
Through meads more flowery, more romantic groves,
Rolls towards the western main. Hail, sacred flood!
May still thy hospitable swains be blest
In rural innocence; thy mountains still
Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods
Forever flourish; and thy vales look gay
With painted meadows, and the golden grain !
Oft, with thy blooming sons, when life was new,
Sportive and petulant, and charmed with toys,
In thy transparent eddies have I laved:
Oft traced with patient steps thy fairy banks,

With the well-imitated fly to hook
The eager trout, and with the slender line
And yielding rod solicit to the shore

His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.
But if, through genuine tenderness of heart,
Or secret want of relish for the game,
You shun the glories of the chase, nor care

To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields
A soft amusement, an humane delight.
To raise the insipid nature of the ground;
Or tame its savage genius to the grace
Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems
The amiable result of happy chance,
Is to create; and gives a godlike joy,

Which every year improves. Nor thou disdain
To check the lawless riot of the trees,

To plant the grove, or turn the barren mould.

HAPPINESS OF THE GARDENER, RETIRED, WITH FRIENDS AND MEANS. FRIENDLY RIVALRY IN GARDENING.

O happy he! whom, when his years decline (His fortune and his fame by worthy means Attained, and equal to his moderate mind; His life approved by all the wise and good, Even envied by the vain), the peaceful groves Of Epicurus, from this stormy world, Receive to rest; of all ungrateful cares Absolved, and sacred from the selfish crowd. Happiest of men! if the same soil invites A chosen few, companions of his youth, Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends; With whom, in easy commerce, to pursue Nature's free charms, and vie for sylvan fame : A fair ambition; void of strife or guile, Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone. Who plans th' enchanted garden, who directs The visto best, and best conducts the stream; Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend; Who first the welcome Spring salutes; who shows The earliest bloom, the sweetest, proudest charms Of Flora; who best gives Pomona's juice To match the sprightly genius of Champagne.

EVENINGS OF WINTER SPENT SENSIBLY.

Thrice happy days! in rural business past;
Blest winter nights! when, as the genial fire
Cheers the wide hall, his cordial family
With soft domestic arts the hours beguile,
And pleasing talk that starts no timorous fame,
With witless wantonness to hunt it down:
Or through the fairy-land of tale or song,
Delighted, wander, in fictitious fates
Engaged, and all that strikes humanity :
Till, lost in fable, they the stealing hour
Of timely rest forget. Sometimes, at eve,

12 Pythagoras of Samos was a vegetarian, and so the Bramins.

His neighbors lift the latch, and bless unbid
His festal roof; while, o'er the light repast,
And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy;
And, through the maze of conversation, trace
Whate'er amuses or improves the mind.
Sometimes at eve (for I delight to taste
The native zest and flavor of the fruit,

Where sense grows wild and takes of no manure),
The decent, honest, cheerful husbandman
Should drown his labor in my friendly bowl;
And at my table find himself at home.

CHOOSE THAT KIND OF EXERCISE THAT IS MOST AGREEABLE.

Whate'er you study, in whate'er you sweat,
Indulge your taste. Some love the manly foils;
The tennis some; and some the graceful dance.
Others, more hardy, range the purple heath,
Or naked stubble; where from field to field
The sounding coveys urge their laboring flight:
Eager amid the rising cloud to pour

The gun's unerring thunder; and there are
Whom still the meed of the green archer charms.
He chooses best, whose labor entertains

His vacant fancy most: the toil you hate
Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs.

DIRECTING HOW GRADUALLY TO STRENGTHEN WEAKER MEM-
BERS OR ORGANS. THE RACER.

As beauty still has blemish; and the mind
The most accomplished its imperfect side;
Few bodies are there of that happy mould
But some one part is weaker than the rest :
The legs, perhaps, or arms, refuse their load,
Or the chest labors. These assiduously,
But gently, in their proper arts employed,
Acquire a vigor and elastic spring

To which they were not born. But weaker parts
Abhor fatigue and violent discipline.

Begin with gentle toils; and, as your nerves Grow firm, to hardier by just steps aspire. The prudent, even in every moderate walk, At first but saunter; and by slow degrees Increase their pace. This doctrine of the wise Well knows the master of the flying steed. First from the goal the managed coursers play On bended reins; as yet the skilful youth Repress their foamy pride; but every breath The race grows warmer, and the tempest swells; Till all the fiery mettle has its way, And the thick thunder hurries o'er the plain.

EFFECTS OF TOO SUDDEN EXERCISE.—COUGH. — ASTHMA.PNEUMONIA, ETC.

When all at once from indolence to toil You spring, the fibres by the hasty shock Are tired and cracked, before their unctuous coats, Compressed, can pour the lubricating balm. Besides, collected in the passive veins,

The purple mass a sudden torrent rolls,

1 This word is much used by some of the old English poets, and signifies reward or prize.

O'erpowers the heart, and deluges the lungs
With dangerous inundation: oft the source
Of fatal woes; a cough that foams with blood,
Asthma, and feller Peripneumony,1

Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.

AVOID TOURS DE FORCE.'- TAKE EXERCISE MODERATELY.
Th' athletic fool, to whom what heaven denied
Of soul is well compensated in limbs,
Oft from his rage, or brainless frolic, feels
His vegetative and brute force decay.
The men of better clay and finer mould
Know nature, feel the human dignity;
And scorn to vie with oxen and with apes.
Pursued prolixly, even the gentlest toil
Is waste of health repose by small fatigue
Is earned; and (where your habit is not prone
To thaw) by the first moisture of the brows.
The fine and subtle spirits cost too much
To be profused, too much the roscid balm.

AVOID SUDDEN DRINKING OF WATER AFTER SWEATING.

But when the hard varieties of life

You toil to learn; or try the dusty chase,
Or the warm deeds of some important day;
Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs
In wished repose; nor court the fanning gale,
Nor taste the spring. O! by the sacred tears
Of widows, orphans, mothers, sisters, sires,
Forbear! No other pestilence has driven
Such myriads o'er the irremeable deep.
Why this so fatal, the sagacious muse
Through Nature's cunning labyrinths could trace:
But there are secrets which who knows not now,
Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps
Of science; and devote seven years to toil.

GENERAL PRECEPTS SUFFICE AS TO HEALTH.

Besides, I would not stun your patient ears
With what it little boots you to attain.

He knows enough, the mariner, who knows [boil;
Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools
What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds
He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause
Charybdis rages in the Ionian wave;
Whence those impetuous currents in the main
Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why
The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure
As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven.

ROMAN BATHING; ANOINTING. — WHY NORTHERN NATIONS SHOULD NOT CULTIVATE TOO SOFT A SKIN.

In ancient times, when Rome with Athens vied For polished luxury and useful arts; All hot and reeking from the Olympic strife, And warm palæstra, in the tepid bath The athletic youth relaxed their weary limbs. Soft oils bedewed them, with the grateful powers Of nard and cassia fraught, to soothe and heal The cherished nerves. Our less voluptuous clime Not much invites us to such arts as these.

1 The inflammation of the lungs.

"T is not for those whom gelid skies embrace,
And chilling fogs; whose perspiration feels
Such frequent bars from Eurus and the North;
"T is not for those to cultivate a skin
Too soft; or teach the recremental fume
Too fast to crowd through such precarious ways.
For through the small arterial mouths, that pierce
In endless millions the close-woven skin,
The baser fluids in a constant stream
Escape, and viewless melt into the winds.

EVILS OF CHECKED PERSPIRATION.

While this eternal, this most copious waste
Of blood, degenerate into vapid brine,
Maintains its wonted measure, all the powers
Of health befriend you, all the wheels of life
With ease and pleasure move; but this restrained
Or more or less, so more or less you feel
The functions labor : from this fatal source
What woes descend is never to be sung.

To take their numbers were to count the sands
That ride in whirlwind the parched Libyan air;
Or waves that, when the blustering North embroils
The Baltic, thunder on the German shore.

MAKE NOT THE SKIN TOO DELICATE. THE SCYTH AND PICT.

Subject not, then, by soft emollient arts,

This grand expanse, on which your fates depend,
To every caprice of the sky; nor thwart
The genius of your clime for from the blood
Least fickle rise the recremental steams,
And least obnoxious to the styptic air,
Which breathe thro' straiter and more callous pores.
The tempered Scythian hence, half naked, treads
His boundless snows, nor rues th' inclement heaven;
And hence our painted ancestors defied
The East nor cursed, like us, their fickle sky.

ADAPT YOUR HABIT OF BODY TO YOUR CLIMATE.-
TOUGHENING.

The body, moulded by the clime, endures The Equator heats or Hyperborean frost : Except by habits foreign to its turn, Unwise, you counteract its forming power. Rude at the first, the Winter shocks you less By long acquaintance; study, then, your sky, Form to its manners your obsequious frame, And learn to suffer what you cannot shun. Against the rigors of a damp, cold heaven To fortify their bodies, some frequent The gelid cistern; and, where naught forbids, I praise their dauntless heart: a frame so steeled Dreads not the cough, nor those ungenial blasts That breathe the tertian or fell rheumatism: The nerves so tempered never quit their tone, No chronic languors haunt such hardy breasts.

BE NOT ENSLAVED TO A DELICATE REGIMEN.

But all things have their bounds: and he who By daily use, the kindest regimen [makes, Essential to his health, should never mix With humankind, nor art nor trade pursue.

He not the safe vicissitudes of life
Without some shock endures; ill-fitted he
To want the known or bear unusual things.
Besides, the powerful remedies of pain
(Since pain in spite of all our care will come)
Should never with your prosperous days of health
Grow too familiar for by frequent use
The strongest medicines lose their healing power,
And even the surest poisons theirs to kill.

NORTHERNERS VISITING A SOUTHERN CLIME SHOULD BATHE
FREELY.

Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach Parched Mauritania, or the sultry West, Or the wide flood through rich Indostan rolled, Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave Untwist their stubborn pores; that full and free The evaporation through the softened skin May bear proportion to the swelling blood. So shall they 'scape the fever's rapid flames; So feel untainted the hot breath of hell.

WARM BATHS.-CLEANLINESS ENFORCED.

With us, the man of no complaint demands
The warm ablution just enough to clear
The sluices of the skin, enough to keep
The body sacred from indecent soil.
Still to be pure, even did it not conduce

(As much it does) to health, were greatly worth
Your daily pains. "T is this adorns the rich;
The want of this is poverty's worst woe;
With this external virtue age maintains
A decent grace; without it youth and charms
Are loathsome. This the venal graces know;
So doubtless do your wives: for married sires,
As well as lovers, still pretend to taste;
Nor is it less (all prudent wives can tell)
To lose a husband's than a lover's heart.

You hurried, with untimely exercise,
A half-concocted chyle into the blood.
The body overcharged with unctuous phlegm
Much toil demands: the lean elastic less.

WINTER DEMANDS MUCH, SUMMER LITTLE EXERCISE. —— RHEUMATISM.

While Winter chills the blood, and binds the veins, No labors are too hard by those you 'scape The slow diseases of the torpid year;

Endless to name; to one of which alone,

To that which tears the nerves, the toil of slaves
Is pleasure: 0! from such inhuman pains
May all be free who merit not the wheel!
But from the burning Lion when the sun
Pours down his sultry wrath; now while the blood
Too much already maddens in the veins,
And all the finer fluids through the skin
Explore their flight; me, near the cool cascade
Reclined, or sauntering in the leafy grove,
No needless, slight occasion should engage
To pant and sweat beneath the fiery noon.

THE COOL OF A SUMMER MORNING AND EVENING IS THE TIME
FOR ACTIVITY. AVOID THE CHILLING DEWS.

Now the fresh morn alone and mellow eve
To shady walks and active rural sports
Invite. But, while the chilling dews descend,
May nothing tempt you to the cold embrace
Of humid skies; though 't is no vulgar joy
To trace the horrors of the solemn wood
While the soft evening saddens into night :
Though the sweet poet of the vernal groves
Melts all the night in strains of am'rous woe.

EXERCISE PROMOTES HEALTHFUL AND REFRESHING SLEEP.

The shades descend, and midnight o'er the world Expands her sable wings. Great Nature droops Through all her works. How happy he whose toil Has o'er his languid, powerless limbs diffused A pleasing lassitude: he not in vain Invokes the gentle Deity of Dreams. His powers the most voluptuously dissolve In soft repose: on him the balmy dews Of sleep with double nutriment descend.

AVOID EATING LATE AT NIGHT.-SLEEP ON FOOD HALFDIGESTED, AT LEAST. BAD DREAMS. But would you sweetly waste the blank of night In deep oblivion; or on fancy's wings Visit the paradise of happy dreams, And waken cheerful as the lively morn; Oppress not Nature sinking down to rest With feasts too late, too solid, or too full: But be the first concoction half-matured Ere you to mighty indolence resign Your passive faculties. He from the toils And troubles of the day to heavier toil Retires, whom trembling from the tower that rocks Amid the clouds, or Calpe's hideous height, The busy demons hurl; or in the main O'erwhelm; or bury struggling under ground.