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 RAMSAY, ALLAN, the celebrated
poet, was born at the village of Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, October 15,
1686. His parentage was highly respectable, and his ancestry even dignified.
His father, Robert Ramsay, was manager of the lead mines in Crawfordmuir,
belonging to the earl of Hopetoun; and his mother, Alice Bower, was the
daughter of a gentleman who had been brought from Derbyshire, to introduce
and oversee some improvements in the management of the mines. His
grandfather, Robert Ramsay, writer or notary in Edinburgh, was the son of
captain John Ramsay, a son of Ramsay of Cockpen, whose family was a branch
of the Ramsays of Dalhousie, afterwards ennobled. [The laird of Cockpen here
mentioned, is usually represented as a brother of Ramsay of Dalhousie; but
the branch seems to have left the main stock at a much earlier period than
that would imply. The first Ramsay of Cockpen was a son of Sir Alexander
Ramsay, who was knighted at the coronation of James I., in 1424.]
A grandmother of the poet, moreover, was Janet Douglas, daughter of Douglas
of Muthil. Though thus well descended, he was reared in the midst of
poverty. He had the misfortune to lose his father while he was yet an
infant; and his mother seems almost immediately to have married a Mr
Crighton, a small landholder in the neighbourhood. Whether this last
circumstance was an additional misfortune, as has been generally assumed by
his biographers, we think may reasonably be questioned. It is not at all
probable that his father, dying at the age of twenty-five, could have much
property; and the use and wont of even a small landholder’s house, is not
likely to have been beneath that of a poor widow’s. His mother had a number
of children to Mr Crighton; but the subject of this memoir seems to have
been cared for in the same way as those were, and to have enjoyed all the
advantages appropriate to the same station in life. He had the benefit of
the parish school till he was in his fifteenth year; an extent of education
not yet common in Scotland, except when attendance on the university is
included. Of the progress he had made in his studies, we have unfortunately
no particular account; it certainly made him acquainted with Horace, as is
abundantly evident in his poems.
In the year 1700, Ramsay lost
his mother; and in the following year his step-father carried him into
Edinburgh, and apprenticed him to a periwig-maker, which appears to have
been at that time a flourishing profession. Ramsay himself, it is said,
wished to have been a painter; and his step-father has been reflected on as
acting with niggardly sharp-sightedness, in refusing to comply with his
wishes. There is not, however, in the numerous writings of Ramsay, one
single hint that any violence was, on this occasion, done to his feelings;
and we think the reflection might well have been spared. Those who have
borne the burden of rearing a family upon limited means, know the
impossibility of indulging either their own wishes, or those of their
children in this respect, being often obliged to rest satisfied, not with
what they would have wished, but with what they have been able to attain.
There can be no doubt that Allan Ramsay served out his apprenticeship
honourably, and afterwards for a number of years practised his trade as a
master successfully; circumstances that, in our opinion, justify the
discretion and good sense of his step-father, more powerfully than any
reasoning could do. It is to be regretted that of this period of his life no
accounts have been handed down to us; and the more so, that we have no doubt
they would show his general good sense, and the steady character of his
genius, more powerfully than even the later and more flourishing periods of
his history. Unlike the greater number of men of poetical talent, Ramsay had
the most perfect command over himself; and the blind gropings of the cyclops
of ambition within, led him to no premature attempts to attain distinction.
Though he must have entertained day-dreams of immortality, he enjoyed them
with moderation; and, without indulging either despondency or dejection, he
waited with patience for their realization. Prosecuting his business with
diligence, he possessed independence; and, while, in the company of
respectable fellow citizens, he indulged and improved his social
qualities, he, by taking to wife an excellent woman, Christian Ross, the
daughter of a writer in Edinburgh, laid the foundation of a lifetime of
domestic felicity.
It was in the year 1712, and
in the twenty-sixth year of his age, that he entered into the state of
matrimony; and the earliest of his productions that can now be traced, is an
epistle to the most happy members of the Easy Club, dated the same year.
This club originated, as he himself, who was one of its members, informs us,
"in the antipathy we all seemed to have at the ill humour and contradiction
which arise from trifles, especially those that constitute Whig and Tory,
without having the grand reason for it." This club was in fact formed of
Jacobites, and the restoration of the Pretender was the "grand reason" here
alluded to. In the club every member assumed a fictitious name, generally
that of some celebrated writer. Ramsay, probably from the Tatler, which must
have been a book much to his taste, pitched upon that of Isaac Bickerstaff,
but afterwards exchanged it for that of Gawin Douglas. In the presence of
this club, Ramsay was in the habit of reading his first productions, which,
it would appear, were published by or under the patronage of the fraternity,
probably in notices of its sittings, which would tend to give it celebrity
and add to its influence. The elegy on Maggy Johnston seems to have been one
of the earliest of his productions, and is highly characteristic of his
genius. An Elegy on the death of Dr Pitcairne in 1715, was likewise,
read before, and published by, the club: but being at once political and
personal, it was rejected by the author, when he republished his
poems. Allan had this year been elected Poet Laureate of the club. But the
rising of Mar put an end to its meetings; and Ramsey, though still a keen
Jacobite, felt it to be for his interest to be so in secret. It was now,
however, that he commenced in earnest his poetical career, and speedily rose
to a degree of popularity, which had been attained by no poet in Scotland
since the days of Sir David Lindsay. For more than a century, indeed,
Scottish poetry had been under an eclipse, while such poetical genius as the
age afforded chose Latin as the medium of communication. Semple, however,
and Hamilton of Gilbertfield had of late years revived the notes of the
Doric reed; and it seems to have been some of their compositions, as
published in Watson’s Collection in 1706, that first inspired Ramsay. Maggy
Johnston’s Elegy was speedily followed by that on John Cowper, quite in the
same strain of broad humour. The publication of king James’s "Christ’s Kirk
on the Green," from an old manuscript, speedily followed, with an additional
canto by the editor, which, possessing the same broad humour, in a dialect
perfectly level to the comprehension of the vulgar, while its precursor
could not be read even by them without the aid of explanatory notes, met
with a most cordial reception. Commentators have since that period puzzled
themselves not a little to explain the language of the supposed royal bard.
Ramsay, however, saved himself the trouble, leaving every one to find it out
the best way he might, for he gave no explanations; and at the same time, to
impress his readers with admiration of his great learning, he printed his
motto, taken from Gawin Douglas, in Greek characters. A second edition of
this work was published in the year 1718, with the addition of a third
canto, which increased its popularity so much, that, in the course of the
four following years, it ran through five editions. It was previously to the
publication of this work in its extended form, that Allan Ramsey had
commenced the bookselling business, for it was "printed for the author, at
the Mercury, opposite to Niddry’s Wynd;" but the exact time when or the
manner how he changed his profession has not been recorded. At the Mercury,
opposite to the head of Niddry’s Wynd, Ramsay seems to have prosecuted his
business as an original author, editor, and bookseller, with great diligence
for a considerable number of years. His own poems he continued to print as
they were written, in single sheets or half sheets, in which shape they are
reported to have found a ready sale, the citizens being in the habit of
sending their children with a penny for "Allan Ramsey’s last piece." In this
form were first published, besides those we have already mentioned, "The
City of Edinburgh’s address to the Country," "The City of Edinburgh’s
Salutation to the marquis of Caernarvon," "Elegy on Lucky Wood," "Familiar
Epistles," &c. &c., which had been so well received by the public that in
the year 1720, he issued proposals for republishing them, with additional
poems, in one volume quarto. The estimation in which the poet was now held
was clearly demonstrated by the rapid filling up of a list of subscribers,
containing the names of all that were eminent for talents, learning, or
dignity in Scotland. The volume, handsomely printed by Ruddiman, and
ornamented by a portrait of the author, from the pencil of his friend
Smibert, was published in the succeeding year, and the fortunate poet
realized four hundred guineas by the speculation. This volume was, according
to the fashion of the times, prefaced with several copies of recommendatory
verses; and it contained the first scene of the Gentle Shepherd, under the
title of " Patie and Roger," and apparently intended as a mere pastoral
dialogue. Incited by his brilliant success, Ramsey redoubled his diligence,
and in the year 1722, produced a volume of Fables and Tales; in 1723, the
Fair Assembly; and, in I724, Health, a poem, inscribed to the earl of Stair.
In the year 1719, he had published a volume of Scottish Songs, which had
already run through two editions, by which he was encouraged to publish in
January 1724, the first volume of "The Tea Table Miscellany," a collection
of Songs, Scottish and English. This was soon followed by a second; in 1727,
by a third; and some years afterwards by a fourth. The demand for this work
was so great that, in the course of a few years, it ran through twelve
editions. In later times Ramsay has been condemned for what he seems to have
looked upon as a meritorious piece of labour. He had refitted about sixty of
the old airs with new verses, partly by himself, and partly by others; which
was perhaps absolutely necessary on account of the rudeness and indecency of
the elder ditties. Modern antiquaries, however, finding that he has thus
been the means of banishing the latter order of songs out of existence,
declaim against him for a result which he perhaps never contemplated, and
which, to say the least of it, could never have occurred, if the lost poems
had possessed the least merit. That Ramsay, in publishing a work for the
immediate use of his contemporaries, did not consult the taste or wishes of
an age a century later, was certainly very natural; and though we may regret
that the songs are lost, we cannot well see how the blame lies with him.
Ramsay, let us also recollect, was at this very time evincing his desire to
bring forward the really valuable productions of the elder muse. In the year
1724, he published the "Ever-Green, being a Collection of Scots Poems, wrote
by the Ingenious before 1600." Ramsay, however, was neither a faithful, nor
a well informed editor. He introduced into this collection, as ancient
compositions, two pieces of his own, entitled, "The Vision," and "The Eagle
and Robin Redbreast," the former being a political allegory with a reference
to the Pretender.
Ramsay had already written
and published, in his first volume of original poetry, "Patie and Roger,"
which he had followed up the following year with "Jenny and Maggy," a
pastoral, being a sequel to "Patie and Roger." These sketches were so
happily executed, as to excite in every reader a desire to see them
extended. He therefore proceeded with additional colloquies in connexion
with the former, so as to form in the end a dramatic pastoral in five acts.
In the following letter, published here for the first time, it will be seen
that he was engaged on this task in spring 1724, at a time when the duties
of life were confining him to the centre of a busy city, and when, by his
own confession, he had almost forgot the appearance of those natural scenes
which he has nevertheless so admirably described:--
ALLAN RAMSAY TO WILLIAM
RAMSAY, OF TEMPLEHALL, Esq.
"Edinburgh, April 8th,
1724;
"Sir,—These come to bear you
my very heartyest and grateful wishes. May you long enjoy your Marlefield,
see many a returning spring pregnant with new beautys; may every thing
that’s excellent in its kind continue to fill your extended soul with
pleasure. Rejoyce in the beneficence of heaven, and let all about ye rejoyce—whilst
we, alake, the laborious insects of a smoaky city, hurry about from place to
place in one eternal maze of fatiguing cares, to secure this day our daylie
bread—and something till’t. For me, I have almost forgot how springs gush
from the earth. Once, I had a notion how fragrant the fields were after a
soft shower; and often, time out of mind! the glowing blushes of the morning
have fired my breast with raptures. Then it was that the mixture of rural
music echo’d agreeable from the surrounding hills, and all nature appear’d
in gayety.
"However, what is wanting to
me of rural sweets I endeavour to make up by being continually at the acting
of some new farce, for I’m grown, I know not how, so very wise, or at least
think so (which is much about one), that the mob of mankind afford me a
continual diversion; and this place, tho’ little, is crowded with merry-andrews,
fools, and fops, of all sizes, (who) intermix’d with a few that can think,
compose the comical medley of actors.
"Receive a sang made on the
marriage of my young chief—I am, this vacation, going through with a
Dramatick Pastoral, which I design to carry the length of five acts,
in verse a’ the gate, and if I succeed according to my plan, I hope to tope
with the authors of Pastor Fido and Aminta.
"God take care of you and
yours, is the constant prayer of, sir, your faithful humble servant,
"ALLAN RAMSAY."
The poem was published in
1725, under the title of the Gentle Shepherd, and met with instant and
triumphant success. A second edition was printed by Ruddiman for the author,
who still resided at his shop opposite Niddry’s Wynd; but the same year he
removed from this his original dwelling to a house in the east end of the
Luckenbooths, which had formerly been the London Coffee house. Here, in
place of Mercury, he adopted the heads of Ben Jonson and Drummond of
Hawthornden, and in addition to his business as a bookseller, he commenced
that of a circulating library. Ramsay was the first to establish such a
business in Scotland, and it appears that he did so, not without some
opposition from the more serious part of the community, who found fault with
him for lending the loose plays of that age to persons whose morals were
liable to be tainted by them. In this shop the wits of Edinburgh continued
daily to meet for information and amusement during the days of Ramsay and
his successors in trade. In the year 1728, he published by subscription the
second volume of his poems in quarto, (including the Gentle Shepherd) which
was equally successful with the first. Of this volume a second edition was
printed in octavo in the succeeding year. In 1730, Ramsay published a
collection of thirty fables, after which, though he wrote several copies of
verses for the amusement of his friends, he gave nothing more to the public.
His fame was now at the full, and though he had continued to issue a number
of volumes every year, all equally good as those that preceded them, it
could have received no real addition. Over all the three kingdoms, and over
all their dependencies, the works of Ramsay were widely diffused, and warmly
admired. The whole were republished by the London booksellers in the year
1731, and by the Dublin booksellers in 1733, all sterling proofs of extended
popularity, to which the poet himself failed not on proper occasions to
allude.
Ramsay had now risen to
wealth and to high respectability, numbering among his familiar 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, Loudoun 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 Bennet, and Sir
Alexander Dick, he lived in the habit of daily and familiar, and friendly
intercourse. With contemporary poets his intercourse was extensive and of
the most friendly kind. The two Hamiltons, of Bangour and Gilbertfield, were
his most intimate friends. He addressed verses to Pope, to Gay, and to
Somerville, the last of whom returned his poetical salutations in kind.
Mitchell and Mallet shared also in his friendly greetings. Meston addressed
to him verses highly complimentary, and William Scott of Thirlstane wrote
Latin hexameters to his praise. Under so much good fortune he could not
escape the malignant glances of envious and disappointed poetasters, and of
morose and stern moralists. By the first he was annoyed with a "Block for
Allan Ramsay’s wig or the Poet fallen in a trance;" by the latter, "Allan
Ramsay metamorphosed to a Heather-bloter poet, in a pastoral between Algon
and Meliboea," with "The flight of religious piety from Scotland upon the
account of Ramsay’s lewd books and the hell-bred playhouse comedians, who
debauch all the faculties of the souls of the rising generation," "A
Looking-glass for Allan Ramsay," "Tbe Dying Words of Allan Ramsay," &c. The
three last of these pieces were occasioned by a speculation which he entered
into for the encouragement of the drama, to which he appears to have been
strongly attached. For this purpose, about the year 1736, he built a
playhouse in Carrubber’s close at vast expense, which, if it was ever
opened, was immediately shut up by the act for licensing the stage, which
was passed in the year 1737. Ramsay on this occasion addressed a rhyming
complaint to the court of session, which was first printed in the
Gentleman’s Magazine, and since in all the editions that have been given of
his works. It does not, however, appear that he obtained any redress, and
the pecuniary loss which he must have suffered probably affected him more
than the lampoons to which we have alluded. He had previously to this
published his "Reasons for not answering the Hackney Scribblers," which are
sufficiently biting, and with which he seems to have remained satisfied
through life. He has described himself in one of his epistles as a
"Little man that lo’ed his ease,
And never thol’d these passions lang
That rudely meant to do him wrang;"
which we think the following
letter to his old friend Smibert, the painter, who had by this time
emigrated to the western world, will abundantly confirm:—"My dear old
friend, your health and happiness are ever ane addition to my satisfaction.
God make your life easy and pleasant. Half a century of years have now rowed
o’er my pow, that begins to be lyart; yet thanks to my author I eat, drink,
and sleep as sound as I did twenty years syne, yea I laugh, heartily too,
and find as many subjects to employ that faculty upon as ever; fools, fops,
and knaves grow as rank as formerly, yet here and there are to be found good
and worthy men who are one honour to human life. We have small hopes of
seeing you again in our old world; then let us be virtuous and hope to meet
in heaven. My good auld wife is still my bedfellow. My son Allan has been
pursuing your science since he was a dozen years auld; was with Mr Hyffidg
at London for some time about two years ago; has been since at home,
painting here like a Raphael; sets out for the seat of the beast beyond the
Alps within a month hence, to be away about two years. I’m sweer to part
with him, but canna stem the current which flows from the advice of his
patrons and his own inclination. I have three daughters, one of seventeen,
one of sixteen, and one of twelve years old, and no ae wally dragle among
them—all fine girls. These six or seven years past I have not written a line
of poetry; I can give over in good time, before the coolness of fancy that
attends advanced years should make me risk the reputation I had acquired.
"Frae twenty-five to five and forty,
My muse was neither sweer nor dorty,
My Pegasus would break his tether,
E’en at the shaking of a feather;
And through ideas scour like drift,
Streking his wings up to the lift
Then, then my soul was in a low,
That gart my numbers safely row;
But eild and judgment gin to say,
Let be your sangs, and learn to pray."
It is scarcely possible to
conceive 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. He lost his wife,
Christian Ross, in the year 1743; but his three daughters, grown up to
womanhood, in some measure supplied the want of her society, and much of his
time in his latter years seems to have been spent with his friends in the
country. It appears to have been about this period, and with the view of
relinquishing his shop, the business of which still went on prosperously,
that he erected a house on the north side of the Castle Hill, where he might
spend the remainder of his days in dignified retirement. The site of this
house was selected with the taste of a poet and the judgment of a painter.
It commanded a reach of scenery probably not surpassed in Europe, extending
from the mouth of the Forth on the east to the Grampians on the west, and
stretching far across the green hills of Fife to the north; embracing in the
including space every variety of beauty, of elegance, and of grandeur. The
design for the building, however, which the poet adopted, was paltry in the
extreme, and by the wags of the city was compared to a goose pye, of which
complaining one day to lord Elibank, his lordship gayly remarked, that now
seeing him in it he thought it an exceedingly apt comparison. Fantastic
though the house was, Ramsay spent the last twelve years of his life in it,
except when he was abroad with his friends, in a state of philosophic ease,
which few literary men are able to attain. In the year 1755, he is supposed
to have relinquished business. An Epistle which he wrote this year to James
Clerk, Esq. of Pennycuick, "full of wise saws and modern instances," gives
his determination on the subject, and a picture of himself more graphic than
could be drawn by any other person:
"Tho’ born to no ae inch of ground,
I keep my conscience white and sound;
And though I ne’er was a rich keeper,
To make that up I live the cheaper;
By this ae knack I’ve made a shift
To drive ambitious care adrift;
And now in years and sense grown auld,
In ease I like my limbs to fauld.
Debts I abhor, and plan to be
From shackling trade and dangers free;
That I may, loosed frae care and strife,
With calmness view the edge of life;
And when a full ripe age shall crave
Slide easily into my grave;
Now seventy years are o’er my head,
And thirty more may lay me dead."
While he was thus planning
schemes of ease and security, Ramsay seems to save forgotten the bitter
irony of a line in one of his elegies,
The wily carl, he gathered gear,
But oh! he’s dead."
At the very time he was thus
writing, he was deeply afflicted with the scurvy in his gums, by which he
eventually lost all his teeth, and even a portion of one of his jaw bones.
He died at Edinburgh on the 7th of January, 1757, in the 73rd year of his
age. He was buried on the 9th of the month, without any particular honours,
and with him for a time was buried Scottish poetry there not being so much
as one poet found in Scotland to sing a requiem over his grave. His wife,
Christian Ross, seems to have brought him seven children, three sons and
four daughters; of these Allan, the eldest, and two daughters survived him.
Of the character of Ramsay, the outlines we presume may be drawn from the
comprehensive sketch which we have exhibited of the events of his life.
Prudent self-control seems to have been his leading characteristic, and the
acquisition of a competency the great object of his life. He was one of the
few poets to whom, in a pecuniary point of view, poetry has been really a
blessing, and who could combine poetic pursuits with those of ordinary
business.
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