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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

OF

RAMSAY.

ALLAN RAMSAY was born, October 15, 1686, at the village of Leadhills in Lanarkshire. His father, Robert Ramsay, was the manager of the lead mines of the Earl of Hopetoun in that district; his mother, Alice Bower, was the daughter of an individual who had been brought from Derbyshire, to introduce and superintend some improvements in the management of those mines. Like many other persons in humble or middling circumstances in Scotland, the poet was inclined to boast of 66 gentle blood," his father being descended from a cadet of the Ramsays of Dalhousie, who were ennobled by the title of Earl of Dalhousie, and his grandmother on that side being a daughter of Douglas of Muthil. The death of his father in his own infancy, and the subsequent marriage of his mother to a small landholder of the district, did not prevent his receiving the full measure of an ordinary Scottish education. After spending fifteen years in his native district-a moorish and hilly one, generally reputed as the highest inhabited ground in

Scotland-where he must have become thoroughly acquainted with rural manners and usages, he was apprenticed by his step-father to a periwig-maker in Edinburgh. When he had served his time, he set up in that business for himself, and, prosecuting his calling with industry and success, he was enabled, in 1712, to marry an excellent woman, Christian Ross, the daughter of a writer or legal practitioner in the city, who bore to him, in the ensuing year, a son, who, in mature life, became portrait-painter to George III. and his queen.

It was at this time, when advanced to twenty-six years of age, and past the initiatory difficulties of life, that he first allowed himself to exercise his poetical talent. His earliest verses were written for the amusement of various clubs of gentlemen and wits, into which he was admitted. In the course of a few subsequent years, while assiduously prosecuting his humble business, he wrote various pieces, chiefly of a comic nature, which he published in little sheets or broadsides, and which were in some instances sold by hawkers in the streets. It became common, we are informed, for the wives of the citizens of Edinburgh, to send out their children with a penny to buy " Allan Ramsay's last piece." The most important of these publications was Christ's Kirk on the Green, partly consisting of a droll poem supposed to have been written by James of Scotland in the fifteenth century, and partly of two additional cantoes, in an equally humorous style, by himself. This ap peared in 1716, and with some similar works, which soon followed, established his reputation as a poet amongst his own countrymen. Being thus introduced into the business of literature, he gradually dropped his business as a wig-maker, and adopted that of a bookseller, which must have been much more suitable to his taste. His writings now bore imprints, which stated that they were sold at "the sign of the Mercury, opposite the head of Niddry's Wynd." In 1720, all his miscellaneous writings were collected into a handsome quarto volume, which, being published by subscription, and extensively patronised by the gentry of his native country, realised for him the sum of four hundred guineas.

Before this period, his acknowledged talents, and the pleasantry of his conversation, had secured for him the friendship of many persons of high rank and cultivated taste, whose society could not fail to have a considerable effect in refining his mind. He had also become conversant with the writings of Dryden, Pope, Prior, and Gay, and made some attempts, by no means despicable, to imitate their rhetorical and epigrammatic style of versification, though generally retaining ideas essentially Scottish. The Tea-Table Miscellany, a collection of Scottish songs, including many of his own, published in 1719, and the Evergreen, a collection of old Scottish poetry, published in 1724, were works which, if they did not greatly add to his fame, must have at least tended to his profit.

His Gentle Shepherd, the work which has given him a permanent place in the list of Scottish poets, appeared in its complete form in 1725. The story of this drama. is interesting, without being in the least extravagant; the characters are genuine representatives of the Scottish peasantry of the time; it contains beautiful poetical descriptions, fine sense, and elevated sentiment; and a healthy natural cheerfulness pervades the whole composition. Taken in parts, or as a whole, it is alike excellent, and it perhaps makes as near an approach to a perfect work as any composition of equal length in any form of our language. It is, indeed, so far superior, in its entire character, to any of the other poems of Ramsay, that the fact of its being his composition has been doubted. For this doubt, however, there is no real ground. It is not conceivable that any other man, who had been its concealed author, would have left Ramsay in enjoyment of its fame. Neither has it been shown that any other man of that day was more capable of composing it. No passage, moreover, of the drama is so much superior to the other undisputed writings of Ramsay, as to give the least countenance to the suspicion. But what chiefly secures to Ramsay the whole credit of this exquisite performance, is the manner in

which it was given to the world. The first two scenes appeared in the quarto of 1720 as separate poems, and in that character attracted no extraordinary share of attention. Four years after, in a familiar letter, which the present writer has seen, addressed by the poet to William Ramsay of Templehall, he thus alludes to his being employed in extending those scenes into a complete play: "I am this vacation going through with a dramatic pastoral, which I design to carry the length of five acts, verse a' the gate [way]; and if I succeed according to my plan, I hope to cope with the authors of Pastor Fido and Aminta." The entire play accordingly appeared in the ensuing year. In all these circumstances, we see conclusive reasons for believing that Ramsay was the author, and the sole author, of this very happy pastoral.

In 1726, Ramsay removed from the shop opposite the head of Niddry's Wynd, to one in the second floor of a building, also in the High Street, but which stood upon the line of the street alongside of St Giles's Church, where he had some windows which commanded a view of the place around the cross, then the resort of perhaps the most gay and the most dignified part of the population of Scotland. Here he changed the sign of the Mercury for one composed of the heads of Ben Jonson and William Drummond. He now added a circulating library to his business, being the first to set up such an establishment in his country. He continued to prosper without interruption till the year 1737. Ramsay, as may be gathered from many of his writings, was of Jacobitical principles, with all the liberality as to religion, amusements, and frankness of conversation, which distinguished that party in Scotland, as opposed to the austerity and narrowness of walk of the presbyterian whigs. He was a patron of balls, music, and theatricals, all of which had then scarcely a recognised existence in Scotland. There being no playhouse in Edinburgh, he undertook to build one, and had actually laid out a great deal of money on the work, when the licensing act of 1737 extinguished his hopes, and left him nearly a ruined man. By prudence and industry, he in time

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