besieged the cellar, intending to execute Jeddart justice or Lynch law on those they esteemed traitors to their country. Fortunately there was another means of egress; the party hastily took flight to an arbour in the garden of Moray House, where the remaining signatures were appended, and whence all the Commissioners fled post-haste to England, bearing with them the signed copy of the Treaty.

That stirring time, so pregnant with mighty issues, a time when the weal or the woe of the future British Empire trembled in the balance,—for what of achievement could England alone have accomplished, with Scotland as a hostile neighbour dogging her heels?—must of itself have been an education to young Ramsay. It both confirmed his patriotism and widened his political outlook.

Yet when the play was over, the curtain rung down, and the lights gone out, the lapse of time must to him, as to other observers of the period, have driven home with stunning force the conviction that the Union spelled ruin for Scotland as a nation and Edinburgh as a city. For five decades to come a listless apathy, born of despair, strangled Scottish enterprise in its birth. The immediate effect of the Union was a serious diminution in the national trade and commerce. The jealousy of English merchants, as it had frustrated the Darien Scheme in the previous century, now closed every possible avenue of commercial activity for the renumerative utilisation of Scottish capital. 'We are dying by inches,' wrote James, Earl of Bute, to a friend. And the signs of the times did not seem to belie the assertion.

In Edinburgh, also, the change was severely felt. The removal of the Court to London, a hundred and four years before, had drawn a large number of the Scottish nobility to the vortex of fashion. The money they were wont to spend during their stay in Edinburgh, while the Court season lasted, was diverted into another channel. The town houses which they had been forced to maintain in the Scottish metropolis, were in many cases relinquished, and the place that so long had known them knew them no more. At that time Scottish merchants and shopkeepers had suffered severely, yet they had the satisfaction of knowing that the seat of Scottish government remained north of the Tweed.

But now a change even more radical was inaugurated. The national Parliament, whose sittings had always necessitated the attendance of a considerable proportion of the nobility and gentry of the country, during a certain part of the year, was merged in that of the larger country. Those of the purely Scottish peerage, whom choice or political duties had retained in Scotland, now found no need to maintain their costly Edinburgh establishments. Many a noble ancestral home, that for three or four hundred years had sheltered the household and retainers of families, whose deeds were interwoven with the historic records of Scotland's most glorious epochs, was now advertised for sale. An exodus to London on a vast scale set in, and the capital of Scotland ere long settled down, in the apathy of despair, to play the rôle of a provincial centre. Henceforward her 'paper lords,' otherwise Judges of the Court of Session, were to represent her titled magnates.

The bitterness of spirit which such a course of action as this migration inspired in the minds of the residents of the Scottish capital, Ramsay, as a young journeyman, or as a master craftsman who had only newly commenced business for himself, would fervently reciprocate. In two places at least in his works he pathetically, yet vigorously, protests against the cream of Scottish youth being sent away out of the country.

In one of the most suggestively beautiful of his minor pastorals, Betty and Kate, he thus writes—

And in The Gentle Shepherd, after the discovery has been made of Patie's noble birth, his fellow-herd, Roger, remarks—

The five intercalary years between Ramsay's commencing in business on his own account and his marriage, were those which may properly be designated his intellectual seedtime. That he was exercised over any of the deeper and more complex problems of life, death and futurity; that he was hagridden by doubt, or appalled by the vision of man's motelike finitude when viewed against the deep background of infinity and eternity, we have no reason to suppose. Never at any epoch of his life a 'thinker,' in the true sense of the word, he was inclined, with the genial insouciant Hedonism always characteristic of him, to slip contentedly into the Pantheism of Pope, to regard humanity and the world without as

—the superficial, ethical principle permeating which is summed up in the dictum, Whatever is, is right. Though he had no sympathy with the Puritanic austerity of Presbyterianism, albeit a regular attendant on the ministrations of Dr. Webster of the Tolbooth Church, one of the sections whereinto the magnificent cathedral of St. Giles was of old divided, he was tinctured neither with French scepticism nor with the fashionable doubts which the earlier deistical writers of the century, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Shaftesbury, Toland, and Blount, were sowing broadcast over Great Britain. In his Gentle Shepherd he makes Jenny, when Glaud, her father, had remarked, with respect to the prevailing disregard of religion and morality among the youth of the better classes,

make the following reply, which savours strongly of the slippered orthodoxy of The Essay on Man—

But though he appears to have given a wide berth to the ponderous theology, the narrow ethics, and the hair-splitting metaphysics of the time, his whole nature seems to have been stirred and awakened more deeply than ever by his study of the elder poets in English literature. Not that their music tended to make him discontented with his lot, or unhinged the lid of his resolution to become a thoroughly efficient man of business. Ramsay, unlike many of his brethren of the lyre, was of an eminently practical temperament. Rumour says that in earlier boyhood he cherished a desire of becoming an artist. But his stepfather not possessing the means to furnish him with the necessary training, he wisely sloughed all such unreasonable dreams, and aimed at independence through wig-making.

Wisdom as commendable was displayed now. Though his studies must have kindled poetic emulation in him; though the vague unexpressed longings of a richly-gifted nature were doubtless daily present with him, no thought ever seems to have entered his mind of relinquishing trade for poetry. On his ambition, also, he kept a steady curb, determining to publish nothing but what his more matured judgment would approve. Not to him in after years would the regret come that he had cursed his fame by immaturity.

From 1707 until 1711, during the dreary depression of the time immediately succeeding the Union, when Scotsmen preferred apathy to action, Ramsay sought surcease from his pangs of wounded patriotism by plunging into studies of various kinds, but principally of English poetry. In a letter, hitherto unpublished, addressed to his friend Andrew Gibb, who appears to have resided at or near West Linton, he remarks: 'I have rowth of good reading to wile my heart from grieving o'er what cannot be mended now,—the sale o' our unhappy country to the Southron alliance by a wheen traitors, who thought more o' Lord Somers' gold than Scotland's rights. In Willie Shakspeare's melodious numbers I forget the dark days for trade, and in auld Chaucer's Tales, and Spenser's 'Queen,' in John Milton's majestic flow, in Giles and Phineas Fletcher, in rare Ben and our ain Drummond, I tine the sorrows o' the day in the glories o' the days that are past.'

That we may accept Ramsay's account of the studies of Patie, the Gentle Shepherd, as a type of his own is warranted by something more than tradition. The internal evidence of his works throws a strong colour of probability over the theory. When Sir William Worthy, who as a Royalist had been compelled to flee into exile during the times of the Commonwealth, inquires what were the books his son, whom he had committed to the care of Symon, his shepherd, to be reared as his own child, was in the habit of reading, the honest old servant replies—

By the side-light thrown on Ramsay's life from this passage we gain some idea of his own studies during those years of germination. To the poets more exclusively Scottish, whether writing in the current literary medium of the day or in the vernacular of the country; to Robert Sempill's Life and Death of the Piper of Kilbarchan; to William Cleland's Highland Host—in addition to Drummond and the Earl of Stirling, mentioned in the passage quoted above; to William Hamilton of Gilbertfield's verses, The Dying Words of Bonnie Heck, and to others of less note, he seems to have devoted keen and enthusiastic attention. Lieutenant Hamilton it was (as Ramsay admits in the poetical correspondence maintained between them) who first awakened within him the desire to write in the dialect of his country—

There was, however, another influence at work, quite as potent, stimulating his poetic fancy. Amid the beauties of the 'Queen of Cities' he lived, and the charms of his surroundings sank deep into his impressionable nature. In whatever direction he looked, from the ridgy heights of the Castlehill, a glorious natural picture met his eye. If to the north, his gaze caught the gleam of the silvery estuary of the Forth, with fertile reaches of green pasture-land intervening, and the little villages of Picardy, Broughton, and Canonmills peeping out from embosoming foliage, while beyond the silver streak, beautified by the azure enchantment of distance, glowed in the sunshine the heath-clad Lomonds and the yellow wealth of the fields of Fife. Did the youthful poet turn eastward, from yonder favourite lounge of his on Arthur Seat, the mouth of the noble Firth, dotted with sail, was full in view, with the shadowy outlines of the May Island, peeping out like a spirit from the depth of distance, and nearer, the conical elevation of North Berwick Law and the black-topped precipitous mass of the Bass; while seemingly lying, in comparison, almost at his feet, was the magnificent semicircular sweep of Aberlady Bay, with its shore-fringe of whitewashed villages gleaming like a string of glittering pearls, behind which stretched the fertile carse of East Lothian, rolling in gently undulating uplands back to the green Lammermoors. Or if he gazed southward, did his eye not catch the fair expanse of Midlothian, as richly cultivated as it was richly wooded, extending before him like a matchless picture, dotted with homesteads, hamlets, and villages, past Dalkeith—'which all the virtues love,' past Lasswade, past Roslin's castled rock, past Dryden's groves of oak, past caverned Hawthornden, until earth and sky seemed to meet in the misty horizon line of the Moorfoots? And westward, was not the eye guided by the grassy grandeur of the Pentland Range, until beauty was merged in indefiniteness across the wide strath lying like a painted scroll from Edinburgh to Linlithgow?

Fairer scene never nurtured poet in 'the fine frenzy of his art'; and in long excursions during his spare hours, amidst the silent glens and frowning cleughs of the Pentlands, amidst the romantic scenery clothing the banks of both the Esks, by Almond's gentle flow, and by the wimpling waters of the Water of Leith, our Caledonian Theocritus fed his germing genius on food that was destined to render him at once the greatest and the most breezily objective of British pastoral poets.

From 1707 to 1711 thus did Allan Ramsay 'live and learn,'—a youth whose nature, fired by the memories of Scotland's greatness in years gone by, already longed to add something of value to the cairn of his country's literature. Such, too, were the facts of which, at his request, the worthy lawyer, Mr. James Ross, was placed in possession when he was called on to decide whether his friend, the 'poetically-minded wigmaker,' should be regarded as a persona grata from the point of view of a prospective son-in-law. That the 'pedigree' of the young aspirant was accepted as satisfactory may be regarded as certain from the fact that the marriage of Allan Ramsay and Christian Ross was celebrated during the New Year festivities of 1712. A woman, at once of considerable personal attractions, sound common sense and practical knowledge of the world, a capital housewife withal, and though not devoid of a certain modicum of literary appreciation, by no means a blue-stocking, such, in brief, was the lady who for thirty years was to be the faithful partner of Ramsay's fortunes, rejoicing with him in success, sympathising with him in reverse—one who merited to the full the glowing lines wherein he described her. The song of 'Bonny Chirsty' was written after nearly seven years of wedded life. The sentiments therein expressed speak better than comment as to the happiness of Ramsay's marriage. One verse of it may be quoted—

About a year before his marriage, Ramsay had left the shop in the Grassmarket, where he had commenced business in 1707, and had established himself in the High Street in premises already described, and which exist to this day. There, under his sign of the 'Flying Mercury,' he toiled and sang, and chatted and cracked jokes with all and sundry, from sunrise to sunset, his wit and his humour, and, as time rolled on, his poetic genius, bringing many customers to his shop. Verily, a sunny-souled man, in whom 'life with its carking cares' could never extinguish his cheery bonhomie and self-confidence.

CHAPTER IV

THE EASY CLUB; EARLY POEMS; EDINBURGH OF LAST CENTURY—1712-16

But for another reason the year 1712 is as interesting to us as students of his career as it was important to him. In the early months of it he was introduced to the 'Easy Club,' one of those politico-convivial societies that sprang into existence early in the century, and were conspicuous features in the social customs of the period, until its eighth and ninth decades, when, consequent upon the expansion of the city north and south, the tavern conviviality of 1740 was succeeded by the domestic hospitality of 1790.

At the time of which we write, the capital of Scotland was virtually represented by the one long street called the High Street, or 'Edinburgh Street,' which crowned the summit of the ridge extending from the Castle to Holyrood Palace, the ancient home of the Stuarts. From this main artery of traffic, smaller veins, in the shape of narrow darksome closes, branched out, leading to a second artery in the Cowgate, and to yet a third one in the Grassmarket. During the panic that prevailed after the Battle of Flodden, a wall of defence was drawn around the town. By it the area of Edinburgh was grievously circumscribed. Only what might be termed the heart of the city was included, all lying beyond falling within the anomalous designation of suburbs. For two hundred years this seemingly impassable girdle sternly checked the natural overflow of the city's life. To reside outside the ports or gates was not only considered dangerous—it was unfashionable. And as there was not accommodation for a tenth part of the inhabitants in the houses of two, or at most three, storeys which prevailed about the time of the Reformation, the architects of the Restoration period commenced the erection of those towering tenements, or lands,—twelve, fourteen, and even sixteen storeys high,—for which Edinburgh has been celebrated among the cities of Europe. Thus the families of the Scottish metropolis were packed together, one on the top of the other, like herrings in a barrel, in those quaint old houses, with their grim timber fronts, their crow-stepped gables and dormer windows, that remain even until to-day to show us the circumstances under which our fathers lived and loved.

In circumstances such as these, domestic comfort and the sweet seclusion of home were out of the question. So criminally overcrowded was the town that well-born gentlemen and their households were content with two or three rooms, wherein all the manifold duties of social and domestic life had to be performed. Robert Chambers, in his charming Traditions of Edinburgh, relates how the family of Mr. Bruce of Kennet, a leading lawyer, afterwards raised to the Bench, lived in a house of three rooms and a kitchen—a parlour, a consulting-room for Mr. Bruce, and a bedroom. The children, with their maid, had beds laid down for them at night in their father's room, the housemaid slept under the kitchen dresser, and the one man-servant was turned at night out of the house. Even a more striking example of the lack of accommodation was to be found in connection with the household arrangements of Mr. Kerr, the eminent goldsmith of Parliament Square, who 'stowed his ménage in a couple of small rooms above his booth-like shop, plastered against the wall of St. Giles Church; the nursery and kitchen, however, being in a cellar under the level of the street, where the children are said to have rotted off like sheep.... The town was, nevertheless, a funny, familiar, compact, and not unlikable place. Gentle and semple living within the compass of a single close, or even a single stair, knew and took an interest in each other.'

Such was the kind of home to which Allan Ramsay brought his bride. Two rooms, with a closet and a kitchen, for many a long year were the extent of their household accommodation. Such a state of things was not favourable to the development of the virtues purely domestic. Hence with Ramsay, as with other men, tavern life was accepted as a substitute for those comforts the sterner sex could not get at home. As Grant remarks in his Old and New Edinburgh: 'The slender house accommodation in the turnpike stairs compelled the use of taverns more than now. There the high-class advocate received his clients, and the physician his patients—each practitioner having his peculiar howff. There, too, gentlemen met in the evening for supper and conversation, without much expense, a reckoning of a shilling being a high one—so different then was the value of money and the price of viands.'

Mr. Logie Robertson, in his graphic and admirable introduction to the Poems of Allan Ramsay in the Canterbury Series, adds: 'Business lingered on all over the town to a much later period than is customary now, but by eight o'clock every booth was deserted and every shop closed, and the citizens for the most part gave themselves up to cheap conviviality and pastime for the next hour or two. Almost every tradesman had his favourite place in his favourite tavern, where, night after night, he cracked a quiet bottle and a canny joke before going home to his family. It was first business, then friendship; and the claims of family after that.'

Out of this general spirit of conviviality arose those numberless Clubs wherein, upon the convivial stem, were graffed politics, literature, sport, science, as well as many other pursuits less worthy and less beneficial. No custom, no usage, no jest, in fact, seemed too trivial to be seized upon as the pretext to give a colour of excuse for founding a Club. Some of them were witty, others wise, others degrading. Such designations as the Cape Club,—so called from doubling the Cape of Leith Wynd, when half-seas over, to get home to the burgh of Low Calton, where several of the members lived; the Pious Club, because the brethren met regularly to consume pies; the Spendthrift Club, because no habitué was permitted to spend more than fourpence halfpenny, and others, were harmless in their way, and promoted a cheap bonhomie without leading the burghers into disgraceful excesses. But the Hell-fire Club, the Sweating Club, the Dirty Club, and others of a kindred order, were either founded to afford an opportunity for indulgence in riot and licence of every kind, or were intended to encourage habits as disgusting as they were brutal.

Not to be supposed is it that Ramsay had lived six-and-twenty years of his life without having practised, and we have no doubt enjoyed, the widespread conviviality of the period. Hence, though the Easy Club was the first of the social gatherings wherewith he actually informs us he was connected, we have no reason to doubt he had been associated with several of them before. In fact, in that poetical 'Essay' of his which stands first in the chronological order of composition, though not of publication, the Elegy on Maggy Johnston, who died anno 1711—an alewife whose little farm and hotel were situated in the village of Morningside, just beyond the Bruntsfield Links,—he seems to imply that a club of some kind met there. The third stanza runs as follows—

But to the Easy Club[1] must be assigned the honour of having stimulated the nascent genius of the poet to achieve something that would convey to its members the fact that it was no ordinary tradesman who solicited admission into the charmed circle of the Society. James Ross, whose zeal for the poetic young wigmaker's social recognition was now materially increased, used all his influence to obtain for his son-in-law an entrée into the Club of which he was himself a member. Questionable, indeed, it is, when we consider the exclusive character of the association in question, the high social position of its members, and their avowed Jacobitical tenets, if even the influence of James Ross, powerful though it was, would alone have secured for Ramsay admission. But an inspiration, as happy as it was original, prompted him to embody his petition for admission into the Club in a poetical address. Such a course was of itself sufficient to recommend him to men like Dr. Ruddiman and Dr. Pitcairn. The poem, addressed to 'The Most Happy Members of the Easy Club,' proceeded, in a felicitous strain of gentle satire, blended with genial humour not unlike Gay at his best, to plead his own cause why he should be admitted as 'an Easy fellow.' His application was successful, and he was duly enrolled as a member. The following lines extracted from it will exhibit the character of the piece, which takes rank as the earliest of his published poems—

The benefits received by the self-confident young poet were not alone of an intangible character. Praise is an excellent thing of itself, but a modicum of pudding along with it is infinitely better. To Ramsay the Easy Club was the means of securing both. The rôle of his literary patrons was at once assumed by its members. They printed and published his Address at their own expense, appointed him, within a few months' time, their 'Poet Laureate,' and manifested, both by counsel and the exercise of influence, the liveliest interest in his welfare. No trivial service this to the youthful poet on the part of his kindly club brethren. How great it was, and how decisive the effect of their generous championship in establishing Ramsay's reputation on a sure basis, will best be understood by glancing for a moment at the character of the Easy Club and the personnel of its membership.

Originally founded, under a different name, as a means of frustrating, and afterwards of protesting against, the Union, the Club, after its reconstruction in 1711, became a Jacobite organisation pure and simple. As Ramsay himself stated in after years: 'It originated in the antipathy we all of that day seemed to have at the ill-humour and contradiction which arise from trifles, especially those which constitute Whig and Tory, without having the grand reason for it.' The grand reason in question was the restoration of the Stuarts. To give a soupçon of mystery to their proceedings, as well as to veil their identity when thus plotting against the 'powers that be,' each member assumed a fictitious name, generally that of some celebrated writer. The poet, as he himself relates, at first selected Isaac Beckerstaff, suggestive of Steele and the Tatler. Eventually, however, he altered his nom-de-guerre to Gawain Douglas, one more in accordance with his patriotic sentiments.

The membership was limited to twelve, but at the time when Ramsay made his application we only know the names of five of those who belonged to it. Hepburn of Keith, in East Lothian, an antiquarian of no mean standing; Professor Pitcairn, late of Leyden, but at that time in the enjoyment of one of the largest practices as a physician in the Edinburgh of the period; Dr. Patrick Abercrombie, the eminent historian and antiquarian, author of The Martial Achievements of the Scottish Nation; Dr. Thomas Ruddiman, philologist, grammarian, printer, and librarian of the Advocates' Library,—one of the few Scottish polymaths over and above the Admirable Crichton and George Buchanan,—and James Ross the lawyer. Tradition has stated that Hamilton of Gilbertfield was also one of the 'Easy fellows,' as they dubbed themselves, but no confirmation of this fact could be discovered.

We reach now the commencement of Ramsay's literary career. For four years—in fact, until the breaking up of the Society after the Rebellion of 1715—all he wrote was issued with the imprimatur of the Easy Club upon it. That they were proud of him is evident from the statement made by Dr. Ruddiman in a letter to a friend: 'Our Easy Club has been increased by the admission of a young man, Ramsay by name, sib to the Ramsays of Dalhousie, and married to a daughter of Ross the writer. He will be heard tell o' yet, I'm thinking, or I am much out of my reckoning.'

The next pieces which our poet read to his patrons were two he had written some time previous—to wit, a little Ode on the preservation from death by drowning of the son of his friend John Bruce, on August 19, 1710; and the Elegy on Maggy Johnston, the alewife, to which reference has already been made. The first of these bears evident traces of youth and inexperience, in both the esoteric and exoteric or technical mysteries of his art. For example, when referring to the danger wherein the lad and his companions had been placed, he remarks—

and he conjures up the following extraordinary spectacle of angelic gymnastics, whereby the rescue of the lads was effected—

Little promise was visible in that piece of future excellence, yet within eighteen months he had written the Elegy on Maggy Johnston, to which the critics of the Easy Club gave unstinted praise. For humorous description of the convivial habits of the day, and graphic word-painting, the poem is exceedingly happy. But alas! judged by our latter-day standard of refinement, good taste, and morality, it is caviare to the general. Only to antiquarians and students of by-past customs do its allusions contain much that is either interesting or edifying.

To follow Ramsay's poetic development through all his earlier pieces would simply exhaust the interest of the reader. Suffice it to say, that, at the request of the Easy Club, he wrote an Elegy on the death of Dr. Pitcairn in 1713, but the poem contained so many political references and satirical quips that he omitted it from the collected edition of his works in 1721. Pitcairn was a sort of Scottish Voltaire, a man far in advance of his time, who paid in popular suspicion and reprobation for his liberality and tolerance. What Robert Chambers remarks of him is well within the facts of the case. 'His sentiments and opinions on various subjects accord with the most enlightened views of the present day, and present a very striking and remarkable contrast to the ignorance and prejudice with which he was surrounded. Fanatics and bigots he detested, and by fanatics and bigots, as a matter of course, he was abused and calumniated. He was accused of being an atheist, a deist, a mocker and reviler of religion, ... and one who was twice drunk every day.' Ramsay, in his Elegy, rebutted those grossly malevolent falsehoods, not only clearing the memory of his patron from such foul dishonour, but with bitingly sarcastic humour he turned the tables on the calumniators, by showing, over their action in connection with the Union, who in reality were the traitors.

To the instigation of the Easy Club we also owe the piece on The Qualifications of a Gentleman, published in 1715, subsequent to a debate in the Society on the subject. Ramsay versified the arguments used by the various speakers, executing the task in a manner at once so graceful and witty that the Club formally declared him to be 'a gentleman by merit.' Only a periphrastic method of signifying their approbation of his work was this, and did not imply any reflection upon his birth, as might at first glance be supposed. For in the concluding lines of the poem Ramsay, with his genial bonhomie and humour had said—

In 1715, also, he amused the members of the Club, and after them the wits of Edinburgh, with some lines on the current predictions regarding The Great Eclipse of the Sun, foretold to take place during April 1715. The following picture, descriptive of the awe and terror produced on ignorant minds and on the brute creation by the occurrence of the eclipse, is as pithily effective in its simplicity and fidelity to life and nature as anything in Crabbe's Tales in Verse or Shenstone's Schoolmistress—

The years 1715-16 were evidently periods of great activity on Ramsay's part, for at least five other notable productions of his pen are to be assigned to that date. To him the revelation of his life's métier had at last come, and his enthusiasm in its prosecution was intense. Henceforward poetry was to represent to him the supreme aim of existence. But like the canny Scot he was, he preferred to regard its emoluments as a crutch rather than a staff; nay, on the other hand, the determination to discharge his daily duties in his trade, as he executed his literary labours, con amore, seems to have been ever present with him. On this point, and referring to his dual pursuits as a wigmaker and a poet, he writes to his friend Arbuckle—

During the years in question Ramsay produced in rapid succession his poem On Wit, the Club being again responsible for this clever satire; and also two humorous Elegies, one on John Cowper, the Kirk-Treasurer's-Man, whose official oversight of the nymphes de pave furnished the poet with a rollickingly ludicrous theme, of which he made the most; the other, an Elegy on Lucky Wood, alewife in the Canongate, also gave Ramsay full scope for the exercise of that broad Rabelaisian humour, of his possession of which there was now no longer to be any doubt.

Finally, in 1716, he achieved his great success, which stamped him as unquestionably one of the greatest delineators that had as yet appeared, of rural Scottish life amongst the humbler classes. As is well known, a fragment is in existence consisting of one canto of a poem entitled Christ's Kirk on the Green. Tradition and internal evidence alike point to King James I. as the author. The theme is the description of a brawl at a country wedding, which breaks out just as the dancing was commencing. 'The king,' says Ramsay, 'having painted the rustic squabble with an uncommon spirit, in a most ludicrous manner, in a stanza of verse, the most difficult to keep the sense complete, as he had done, without being forced to bring in words for crambo's sake where they return so frequently, I have presumed to imitate His Majesty in continuing the laughable scene. Ambitious to imitate so great an original, I put a stop to the war, called a congress, and made them sign a peace, that the world might have their picture in the more agreeable hours of drinking, dancing, and singing. The following cantos were written, the one in 1715 (O.S. corresponding to January 1716), the other in 1718, about three hundred years after the first. Let no worthy poet despair of immortality,—good sense will always be the same in spite of the revolutions of fashion and the change of language.'

The task was no easy one, but Ramsay succeeded with remarkable skill in dovetailing the second and third cantos into the first, so that they read as the production of one mind. For faithful portraiture of Scottish rural manners, for a fidelity, even in the minutest details, recalling Teniers and his vividly realistic pictures of Dutch rustic life, the cantos are unrivalled in Scottish literature, save by the scenes of his own Gentle Shepherd.

CHAPTER V

THE FAVOURITE AT THE 'FOUR-OORS'; FROM WIGMAKER TO BOOKSELLER; THE QUARTO OF 1721—1717-21

During the year or two immediately preceding the publication of the quarto of 1721 this custom greatly increased. Of course, a supply had to be forthcoming to meet such a demand, but of these, numberless pieces, on topics of political or merely ephemeral interest, were never republished after their appearance in broadside form. By an eminent collector of this species of literature the fact is stated, that there are considerably over two score of poems by Ramsay which have thus been allowed to slip into oblivion. Not that such a fate was undeserved. In many cases their indelicacy would debar their admission into any edition nowadays; in others, their lack of permanent general interest. Such subjects as The Flytin' of Luckie Duff and Luckie Brown, A Dookin' in the Nor' Loch, and A Whiggish Lament, were not the kind of themes his calmer and maturer judgment would care to contemplate being handed down to posterity as specimens of his work.

In 1719 Ramsay appears to have concluded, from the extensive sale his poems enjoyed even in broadside form, that the trade of a bookseller would not only be more remunerative than a wigmaker's, but would also be more in accord with his literary tastes and aspirations. For some months he had virtually carried on the two trades concurrently, his reputation undoubtedly attracting a large number of customers to his shop to have their wigs dressed by the popular poet of the day. But as his fame increased, so did his vanity. Of praise he was inordinately fond. 'Tell Allan he's as great a poet as Pope, and ye may get what ye like from him,' said the witty and outspoken Lord Elibank to a friend. The charge had more than a grain of truth in it. That man did not lack more than his share of self-complacent vanity who could write, as the vicegerent of great Apollo, as he informs us in The Scribblers Lashed, such lines as these—