66 Scotsmen, a more pleasing picture of ease and satisfaction than is exhibited in the above sketch; and, the affair of the theatre in Carrubber's close excepted, Ramsay seems to have filled it up to the last." In connection with this pleasing picture we may here copy his concluding determination-for it was written within little more than a year of his death-upon his past and present, from his Epistle to James Clerk, Esq., of Pennicuick, written in the year 1755,-" a picture of himself," says the above writer, more graphic than could have been drawn by any other person." 66 "Tho' born to not ae inch of ground, Now seventy years are o'er my head, And thirty mae may lay me dead." The practice of composing epigrams on individuals, the lines of which commenced with the letters in succession of their name, seems to have obtained about this time. Mr. R. Chambers mentions having heard, so late (1) Through inadvertence, or perhaps an error of the printer, in Mr. Chambers' quotation of this interesting passage, this line is printed, From shacklin trade and dangers free, which has a meaning the very opposite to Ramsay's. It is worthy of notice how appropriate and full of meaning is every vernacular word used by this great master of the Scottish language. as in the year 1823, an extremely aged but hale lady, the widow of a citizen of Montrose, recite a poem of this kind written by Beattie to whom she had been engaged in honourable affection-in her praise. In the case of that upon Miss Mary Sleigh (p. 246), and accompanying letter, now printed for the first time, it is pleasing to notice, how greatly the poet's feelings and disinterested admiration of their subject prompted to the composition. That this is the case with all or nearly all his odes, monodies, and laudatory verses, a rigorous examination of the poet's character, sympathies, and intercourse with the parties, might be made to exhibit. He had an unbounded love for the good, the beautiful, and the great in nature, and in man or woman, and an unaffected warmth in all his friendships. It would not perhaps have been necessary to refer to this, were it not that Ramsay has been represented as writing elegiac poems and panegyrics with a view to gain the notice and patronage of influential individuals, if not for still more sordid objects.(1) The (1)" He is one of the few poets who have thriven by poetry—who could combine poetic habits with those of ordinary business; nor can any name in literature be quoted, which may better serve to point the moral, that prudence is the way to wealth. Even at those periods of his life, when he might be supposed to be absorbed by literary labour, he never failed to bestow due attention on that unpoetical, but more surely productive object, the shop. His very poetry, indeed, Ramsay made a matter of business. Of this, the systematic discrimination with which he lavished his praises, and the skill with which, though really a man of strong party feelings, he contrived to steer through life, without incurring the dislike of any party, afford ample proof Nor was Ramsay slow to avow the worldly wisdom which regulated the inspirations of his muse; as may be seen in his Answer to an Epistle on the Poverty of Poets, which begins with the following question: Dear Allan, with your leave allow me His answer overflows with sincerity: That many a thriftless poet's poor objects of his praises have disappeared from the scene, and their merit and fascinations have passed into oblivion; but we are not therefore warranted in assuming such excellencies as he ascribes to them did not exist. VII. THE POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION OF RAMSAY AND ITS ASSAILANTS. THE success which accompanied Ramsay through life, as well in literature as in trade, did not secure for him a permanent or an unsullied reputation after his death. "He had experienced a felicity reserved for few individuals: by the vigour of mental exertion he had gradually raised himself from his original obscurity, and had found himself capable of securing the reputation which attached itself to his name."(1) "He had risen to wealth and high respectability, (2) numbering among his familiar 'Cause aft their muse turns common And flatters fools that let them starve. That Ramsay's poetry gained any thing by this wondrous degree of discretion, it would be difficult to affirm."-Lives of Eminent Scotsmen. London. 1821. Part I. p. 105. This is too bad. Ramsay's own language is, by quoting only a part of his answer, and giving to that a false interpretation, made to convict him of the charge. See page 108. Ramsay says, the bad success of most poets is attrituable to the prostitution of their pens to flatter unworthy objects. Stanza 1st; and to their idleness. S. 2. He advises them rather to toil at the hod than to panegyrise unworthy objects. S. 3. He recommends to them economy, cheerfulness, and industry. S. 4. He describes his own determination to keep out of debt by observing these precepts. And he adds Lucky for me I never sang Fause praises to a worthless wight; (1) Irving's Life, p. 318. (2) He was selected, and says Irving (Life, p. 326) with sufficient propriety, as a pleasing exemplification of the Poet's fate. "But things may mend, and poets yet may hope In better times to charm and thrive like Pope, Or Allan Ramsay, that harmonious Scot: Now to fare ill is but the poet's lot." friends the best and the wisest men in the nation. By the greater part of the Scottish nobility he was caressed, and at the houses of some of the most distinguished of them, Hamilton palace, Loudon castle, &c., was a frequent visitor. With Duncan Forbes, lord advocate, afterwards lord president, and the first of Scottish patriots, Sir John Clerk, Sir William Bennett, and Sir Alexander Dick, he lived in the habit of daily and familiar, and friendly intercourse."(1) He was generally regarded as a man whose genius reflected honour on his native country. He was one of the few poets to whom poetry was really a blessing, at once a source of pleasure and pecuniary advantage, and who could combine poetic pursuits with those of ordinary business. Although like his more illustrious successor, Sir Walter Scott, his generosity of disposition exhibited itself towards contemporary poets in kindly intercourse, in friendly offices and in poetic salutations, and his ready pen poured out disinterested and touching lamentations over the deaths of Prior(2) (1) Chambers' Lives of Illustrious Scotsmen. (2) We presume it is to the Pastoral upon the death of Prior that Dr. Irving refers when he says, (Life, p. 317) One of his Pastorals has been reprinted in London, with a recommendatory preface, by Dr. Sewel.' At least we know of no other-except that upon the death of Addison, which it was not to which it is so likely to apply. The following lines will show the fine taste and moral feeling of Ramsay, and the happy faculty he possessed of recommending serious subjects as well as merry ones to the homeliest of his countrymen. Would he had given us more of such. "And when he had a mind to be mair grave, A minister nae better could behave. Far out of sight of sic he aften flew, When he of haly wonders took a view; Wha guides us when we're waking or asleep, With thousand times mair care than we our sheep. and of Addison,(1) yet, on the occasion of his own death, say nearly all his biographers, there was not found so (1) The pastoral on the death of Addison may be regarded as not the least happy of his efforts. The very name is pastoral: "Adie, that played and sang sae sweet." Keeping up with perfect consistency the idea of the mourned one being a sage and tuneful yet still a rural swain, with what felicity and simplicity does he make the imaginary rustics refer to his papers in the Spectator on the immortality of the soul? "Kindly he'd laugh when sae he saw me dwine, And talk of happiness like a divine," or to his exquisite criticism in the same work upon the Paradise Lost of Milton: "Blind John, ye mind, wha sang wi' 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." No wonder Sweet Adie's funeral sang' was "By Luckie Reid and Ballat singers" surreptitiously published and hawked about in Scotland, although "being" (as he complains in Address to the Town Council, vol, i p. 176) on ugly paper and full of errors." "They spoiled his sense, and staw his cash His muse's pride murgully'd ;" no wonder that in England too, although by many inaccuracies, His gleg eyed friends, through the disguise, For a' it was sae hav'ren; Gart Linton tak it to his press, Syne took it to the Tavern ;" or that his friend Mr. Burchell, for Ramsay's sake, enabled the typographer, from a correct version, to reprint a second impression of it. It has been well remarked, by a writer in a periodical of a respectable and religious character, (Hogg's Weekly Instructor, Dec. 5th, 1845,) "that it was those frequeut allusions to the classical writers and poets of his day that made Ramsay's own pieces so serviceable to the common people." The same writer further remarks,-that "the enlightenment of the then grovelling illiterate masses of Scotland, had been, from the outset, a grand project in his mind. By his exertions the literary torpor which had distinguished the common orders of his country for upwards of a century was broken in upon and disturbed." By the "tens of thousands of copies of his publications which he issued forth himself, in addition to those circulated by means of piracy, he was imparting to the masses of Caledonia, not merely a thirst for his own writings, but |