Allan Ramsay Part 4

At this time, also, Sir William Scott of Thirlestane, Bart., a contemporary Latin poet, as Chalmers records, of no inconsiderable powers, hailed Ramsay as one of the genuine poets whose images adorned the temple of Apollo. In the 'Poemata D. Gulielmi Scoti de Thirlestane,'

printed along with the 'Selecta Poemata Archibaldi Pitcarnii'

(Edinburgh, 1727), the following lines occur--

'_Effigies Allani Ramsaei, Poetae Scoti, inter caeteras Poetarum Imagines in Templo Apollinis suspensa_:

Ductam Parrhasia videtis arte Allani effigiem, favente Phoebo, Qui Scotos numeros suos, novoque Priscam rest.i.tuit vigore linguam.

Hanc Phoebus tabulam, hanc novem sorores Suspendunt lepidis jocis dicatam: Gaudete, O Veneres, Cupidinesque, Omnes illecebrae, facetiaeque, Plausus edite; nunc in aede Phoebi Splendet conspicuo decore, vestri Allani referens tabella vultus.'

As much as any other, this testimony evinces how rapidly our poet's reputation had increased.

At last, in the spring of 1720, Allan Ramsay came before the public, and challenged it to endorse its favourable estimate of his fugitive pieces by subscribing to a volume of his collected poems, 'with some new, not heretofore printed.' As Chambers remarks: '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, a handsome quarto, 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 realised four hundred guineas by the speculation. Pope, Steele, Arbuthnot, and Gay were amongst his English subscribers.

The quarto of 1721 may be said to have closed the youthful period in the development of Ramsay's genius. Slow, indeed, was that development. He was now thirty-five years of age, and while he had produced many excellent pieces calculated to have made the name of any mediocre writer, he had, as yet, given the world nothing that could be cla.s.sed as a work of genius. His sketches of humble life and of ludicrous episodes occurring among the lower cla.s.ses in Edinburgh and the rustics in the country, had pleased a wide _clientele_ of readers, because they depicted with rare truth and humour, scenes happening in the everyday life of the time. But in no single instance, up to this date, had he produced a work that would live in the minds of the people as expressive of those deep, and, by them, incommunicable feelings that go to the composition of cla.s.s differences.

As a literary artist, Ramsay was destined to develop into a _genre_ painter of unsurpa.s.sed fidelity to nature. As yet, however, that which was to be the distinctive characteristic of his pictures had not dawned upon his mind. But the time was rapidly approaching. Already the first glimmerings of apprehension are to be detected in his tentative endeavours to realise his _metier_ in the pastoral dialogue of _Patie and Roger_ republished in his volume.

The quarto of 1721 contained, moreover, several pieces that had not been previously printed. These we will at present only mention _en pa.s.sant_, reserving critical a.n.a.lysis for our closing chapters. Not the least noticeable of the poems in the volume are those wherein he lays aside his panoply of strength,--the 'blythe braid Scots,' or vernacular,--and challenges criticism on what he terms 'his English poems.' These were undoubtedly the most ambitious flights in song hitherto attempted by the Scottish t.i.tyrus. To the study of Dryden, Cowley, Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, he had devoted himself,--particularly to Pope's translation of Homer's _Iliad_, and to the collected edition of the works of the great author of the _Rape of the Lock_, issued in 1717. He had been in correspondence for some years previous with several of the leading English poets of the day, and with other individuals well known both in politics and London society, such as Josiah Burchet, who, when he died in 1746, had been Secretary to the Admiralty for forty-five years, and had sat in six successive Parliaments. This was the friend whose admiration for Ramsay was so excessive as to prompt him to send (as was the custom of the time) certain recommendatory verses for insertion in the quarto, wherein he hailed honest Allan in the following terms--

'Go on, famed bard, the wonder of our days, And crown thy head with never-fading bays; While grateful Britons do thy lines revere, And value as they ought their Virgil here.'

Small wonder is it that, stimulated by such flattery, Allan should have desired to evince to his friends by the Thames, that the notes of their northern brother of the lyre were not confined to the humble strains of his own rustic reed.

In the quarto, therefore, we have a poem, _Tartana, or The Plaid_, written in heroic couplets, with the avowed desire to reinstate in popular favour the silken plaid, which, from time immemorial, had been the favourite attire of Scots ladies, but, since the Rebellion of 1715, had been somewhat discarded, in consequence of Whiggish prejudices that it was a badge of disloyalty to the reigning house. Then we have _Content_, a long piece of moral philosophy in verse, and the _Morning Interview_, a poem written under the spell of Pope's _Rape of the Lock_, wherein the very machinery of the sylphs is copied from the great English satire. Nor is the 'South Sea Bubble,' which ran its brief course from 1718 to 1720, forgotten in _Wealth, or The Woody_ (gallows), and two shorter poems ill.u.s.trative of the prevailing madness. Epigrams, Addresses, Elegies, and Odes are also included, along with one or two of his famous poetical _Epistles_, modelled on those of Horace, and br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with genial _bonhomie_ and good-humoured epicureanism. In this volume, also, we have additional evidence afforded how fondly he had become attached to Edinburgh and its environs. Scarce a poem is there in the book that lacks some reference to well-known features in the local landscape, showing that he still retained the love of wandering, in his spare hours, amid Pentland glens and by fair Eskside.

Only with one extract will the reader's patience be taxed here. It is from his _Ode to the Ph--_, and is obviously an imitation of Horace's Ode to Thaliarchus. All the sunny glow of the great Roman's genius seems reflected in this revival of his sentiments, albeit under varying physical conditions, well-nigh three hundred and fifty _l.u.s.tra_ afterwards. The lines cleave to the memory with a persistence that speaks volumes for the catholicity and appropriateness of the thoughts--

'Look up to Pentland's tow'ring tap, Buried beneath big wreaths o' snaw, O'er ilka cleugh, ilk scaur, and slap, As high as ony Roman wa'.

Driving their ba's frae whins or tee, There's no ae gowfer to be seen; Nor doucer fouk, wysing a-jee The bia.s.sed bowls on Tamson's green.

Then fling on coals, and ripe the ribs, And beek the house baith b.u.t.t and ben; That mutchkin stoup it hauds but dribs, Then let's get in the tappit hen.

Guid claret best keeps out the cauld, An' drives awa' the winter soon: It makes a man baith gash and bauld, An' heaves his saul ayont the moon.

Leave to the G.o.ds your ilka care; If that they think us worth their while, They can a rowth o' blessings spare, Which will our fashous fears beguile.'

CHAPTER VI

RAMSAY AS AN EDITOR; THE 'TEA-TABLE MISCELLANY' AND THE 'EVERGREEN'--1721-25

The popularity accruing to Ramsay from the publication of the quarto of 1721 was so great that his fame was compared, in all seriousness, with that of his celebrated English contemporaries, Pope, Swift and Addison.

No better evidence of the unfitness of contemporary opinion to gauge the real and ultimate position of any author in the hierarchy of genius could be cited than the case now before us. The critical perspective is egregiously untrue. The effect of personality and of social qualities is permitted to influence a verdict that should be given on the attribute of intellectual excellence alone. Only through the lapse of time is the personal equation eliminated from the estimate of an author's relative proportion to the aggregate of his country's genius.

Nor were his countrymen aware of the extravagance of their estimate when such a man as Ruddiman styled him 'the Horace of our days,' and when Starrat, in a poetical epistle, apostrophises him in terms like these--

'Ramsay! for ever live; for wha like you, In deathless sang, sic life-like pictures drew?

Not he wha whilome wi' his harp could ca'

The dancing stanes to big the Theban wa'; Nor he (shame fa's fool head!) as stories tell, Could whistle back an auld dead wife frae h.e.l.l.'

James Clerk of Penicuik considered Homer and Milton to be the only worthy compeers of the Caledonian bard; and Sir William Bennet of Marlefield insisted the Poet-Laureates.h.i.+p should be conferred on Ramsay, as the singer who united in himself the three great qualifications--genius, loyalty, and _respectability_! Certainly honest Allan would have been a Triton amongst such minnows as Nicholas Rowe, who held the bays from 1714-18, or Laurence Eusden, whose tenure of the office lasted from 1718 to 1730, but of whose verse scarce a sc.r.a.p remains.

Compliments reached Ramsay from all quarters of the compa.s.s. Burchet, Arbuckle, Aikman, Arbuthnot, Ambrose Philips, Tickell, and many others, put on record their appreciation of his merits as a poet. But of all the testimonies, that which reached him from Pope was the most valued, and drew from Allan the following lines, indicative of his intense gratification, while also forming a favourable example of his skill in epigram--

'Three times I've read your Iliad o'er: The first time pleased me well; New beauties un.o.bserved before, Next pleased me better still.

Again I tried to find a flaw, Examined ilka line; The third time pleased me best of a', The labour seem'd divine.

Henceforward I'll not tempt my fate, On dazzling rays to stare; Lest I should tine dear self-conceit And read and write nae mair.'

His position in Edinburgh society was greatly improved by the success of the volume. The magnates of 'Auld Reekie' who still clung to the capital their forefathers had loved,--the legal luminaries of Bench and Bar, the Professors of the University, the great medicos of the town,--all were proud to know the one man who was redeeming the Scottish poetry of that age from the charge of utter sterility. There was the Countess of Eglinton, 'the beautiful Susannah Kennedy of the house of Colzean,'

whose 'Eglinton air' and manners in society were, for half a century, regarded as the models for all young maidens to imitate. Living as she did until 1780, when she had attained the great age of ninety-one, she was visited by Dr. Johnson during his visit to Scotland in 1773. On that occasion it transpired that the Countess had been married before the lexicographer was born; whereupon, says Grant, 'she smartly and graciously said to him that she might have been his mother, and now adopted him; and at parting she embraced him, a mark of affection and condescension which made a lasting impression on the mind of the great literary bear.' She was one of Ramsay's warmest admirers. Then there were Lord Stair and his lovely lady, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, then about to become Lord Advocate: also, Laurence Dundas, Professor of Humanity; Colin Drummond, of Metaphysics; William Law, of Moral Philosophy; Alexander Monro (_primus_), of Anatomy, and George Preston, of Botany, all of the University of Edinburgh--and all deeply interested in the quaint, cheery, practical-minded little man, who combined in himself the somewhat contradictory qualities of an excellent poet and a keen man of business. Thus the influence was a reciprocal one. His poetry attracted customers to his shop, while his bookselling in turn brought him in contact with social celebrities, whose good offices the self-complacent poet would not suffer to be lost for lack of application.

In 1722 the proprietor of the famous John's Coffee House and Tavern, in Parliament Close, off the High Street,--which, by the way, still exists,--was a man named Balfour. The latter, who had lived for some time in London, had acquired a smattering of literary culture, and conceived the idea of rendering his house the Edinburgh counterpart of Will's or b.u.t.ton's. He set himself to attract all the leading wits and men of letters in the Scottish metropolis at the time, and speedily raised his house to considerable celebrity during the third and fourth decades of last century. To Allan Ramsay he paid especial court, and the poet became a daily visitor at the tavern. Here he would meet many of the judges and leading lawyers, the professors from the College, any visitors of note who might be in town; also Clerk of Penicuik, Sir William Bennet of Marlefield, Hamilton of Bangour, the poet, Preston and Crawford, the rising young song-writers of the day, as well as Beau Forrester, the leader of fas.h.i.+on in Edinburgh, who is recorded to have exhibited himself, once at least, in an open balcony in a chintz nightgown, and been dressed and powdered by his _valet de chambre_ as an object-lesson to the town dandies how to get themselves up. There, too, among many others, he probably met the famous, or rather infamous, John Law of Lauriston, banker, financier, and cheat, who was in Edinburgh in 1722, after having brought France to the verge of bankruptcy and ruined thousands by his financial schemes. A motley crowd, in good sooth; yet one whence our poet could draw many a hint for future use.

The success of the quarto encouraged Ramsay to redoubled efforts, and the next six or seven years are the period of his greatest literary fertility. In 1722 appeared his _Fables and Tales_ and _The Three Bonnets_, a poem in four cantos. In some criticisms of Ramsay the statement has been made that he owed the idea of his _Fables_ to Gay's inimitable collection. That this is an error is evident, seeing the latter did not publish his volume until 1726. In his preface to the _Fables and Tales_ the poet says: 'Some of the following are taken from Messieurs la Fontaine and La Motte, whom I have endeavoured to make speak Scots with as much ease as I can; at the same time aiming at the spirit of these eminent authors without being too servile a translator.'

Ramsay took as his prototypes in this species of composition, Phaedrus, La Fontaine, and Desbillons, rather than aesop. Many of the incidents he drew from occurrences in the everyday life around him. For example, _Jupiter's Lottery_ has obvious reference to the South Sea Bubble lotteries; while _The a.s.s and the Brock_ was thought at the time to be a sly skit on the addle-pated Commissioners Walpole had that year sent up to Scotland to nip northern Jacobitism in the bud.

Ramsay's _Tales_ in verse contain some of his daintiest though not his strongest work. He makes no claim to originality with respect to them, but admits they are drawn in many cases from La Motte and other sources.

In his preface he says: 'If my manner of expressing a design already invented have any particularity that is agreeable, good judges will allow such imitations to be originals formed upon the idea of another.

Others, who drudge at the dull verbatim, are like timorous attendants, who dare not move one pace without their master's leave.' Some of the _Tales_ are obviously modelled on those of Chaucer and Boccaccio, but in most of his, he insinuates a political or social moral, while they narrate the story for the story's sake. _The Three Bonnets_ is a satire on his countrymen for being so shortsighted, in their own interests, as to consent to the Union. Bristle, the eldest of the three brothers in the tale, was intended to represent the Tories and Scots Jacobites, who were opposed to the scheme, and he is therefore drawn as a man of great resolution and vigour of character. Bawsy, the youngest, or weak brother, shadowed forth the character of those who consented under the persuasion of the n.o.bility; while Jouk.u.m, the second eldest of the trio,--a vicious, dissipated _roue_,--stood for the portrait of those Scots n.o.blemen who accepted Lord Somers' bribes, and sold their country to the English alliance. The story ran that their father, Duniwhistle, on his deathbed, had, to each of the brothers, presented a bonnet with which they were never to part. If they did so, ruin would overtake them.

Jouk.u.m falls in love with Rosie, a saucy quean, who demands, as the price of her hand, that he should beg, borrow, or steal for her the three bonnets. Jouk.u.m proceeds to Bristle, and receives a very angry reception; he next repairs to lazy Bawsy, who, dazzled by the promises the other makes as to the good things he will receive after the wedding, surrenders his bonnet, which Jouk.u.m lays with his own at the feet of Rosie. The latter agrees to wed Jouk.u.m, and a vivid picture is drawn of the neglected state of poor Bawsy after this is accomplished. Rosie proves a harridan, leading Jouk.u.m a sorry dance; and the poem concludes with the contrasted pictures of the contented prosperity of Bristle--Scotland as she might have been had she not entered the Union--and the misery of Bawsy, representing Scotland as she then was.

Somewhat amusing is it to conjecture what Ramsay's feelings would be on this subject could he for an instant be permitted to witness the progress of Scotland during the past hundred and thirty years, and the benefits that have accrued to her from the Union.

Amongst his metrical tales, one of the finest, without question, is _The Lure_, a satirical fable or allegory, whereof the moral, as may best be stated in the poet's own words--

----'shews plainly, That carnal minds attempt but vainly Aboon this laigher warld to mount, While slaves to Satan.'

The narrative, however, though possessing many merits, is too indelicate for latter-day taste even to be sketched in outline.

In 1723 appeared his poem _The Fair a.s.sembly_, directed against the Puritanic severity of that section of the community which took exception to dancing and such pleasant amus.e.m.e.nts, alike for young and old.

Nothing reveals to us more vividly the strange contrasts in the religious life of the time, than the fact that the clergy winked at the drunkenness which was so prominent a feature in the social customs of the eighteenth century, and fulminated unceasingly against dancing.

Those who indulged in it were in many instances barred from sacramental privileges, and had such pleasant epithets as 'Herodias' and 'Jezebel'

hurled at them. As Chambers states in his _Traditions of Edinburgh_: 'Everything that could be called public or promiscuous amus.e.m.e.nt was held in abhorrence by the Presbyterians, and only struggled through a desultory and degraded existence by the favour of the Jacobites, who have always been a less strait-laced part of the community. Thus there was nothing like a conventional system of dancing in Edinburgh till the year 1710,' when at length--induced, probably, by the ridicule cast on the ascetic strictness of Scottish social functions by the English visitors who from time to time sojourned in 'the grey metropolis of the north'--a private a.s.sociation commenced weekly _reunions_, under the name of 'The a.s.sembly.' Its first rooms, according to Arnot's _History of Edinburgh_, were in a humble tenement in the West Bow (standing on the site now occupied by St. John's Free Church), where they continued to be located until 1720, when they were removed to Old a.s.sembly Close.

In the West Bow days it was, as Jackson tells us in his _History of the Stage_, that the Presbyterian abhorrence of 'promiscuous dancing' once rose to such a height that a crowd of people attacked the rooms when an 'a.s.sembly' was being held, and actually perforated the closed doors with red-hot spits.

As affording an interesting picture of the austerity of the time, a sentence or two may be quoted from a little pamphlet in the Advocates'

Library ent.i.tled, 'A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to his Friend in the City, with an Answer thereto concerning the New a.s.sembly.'

The author writes: 'I am informed there is lately a Society erected in your town which I think is called an "a.s.sembly." The speculations concerning this meeting have of late exhausted the most part of the public conversation in this countryside. Some are pleased to say 'tis only designed to cultivate polite conversation and genteel behaviour among the better sort of folks, and to give young people an opportunity of accomplis.h.i.+ng themselves in both; while others are of opinion it will have quite a different effect, and tends to vitiate and deprave the minds and inclinations of the younger sort.'

The a.s.semblies themselves must have been characterised by the most funereal solemnity, particularly during the _regime_ of the famous 'Mistress of Ceremonies,' or directress, Miss Nicky Murray. So late as 1753, when the horror at 'promiscuous dancing' might be supposed to have mitigated a little, Goldsmith, who then visited the a.s.sembly, relates that, on entering the room, he saw one end of it 'taken up by the ladies, who sat dismally in a group by themselves. On the other side stand their pensive partners that are to be, but with no more intercourse between the s.e.xes than between two countries at war. The ladies, indeed, may ogle and the gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is laid on any closer commerce.'

As might well be supposed, such bigoted austerity had no friend in Allan Ramsay. All that he could do he did to dissipate the mistaken ideas of the Scottish clergy and the stricter section of the Presbyterian Church, on the subject of dancing and the holding of the a.s.semblies. In the preface to his poem of _The Fair a.s.sembly_ he remarks: 'It is amazing to imagine that any are so dest.i.tute of good sense and manners as to drop the least unfavourable sentiment against the a.s.sembly. It is to be owned with regret, the best of things have been abused. The Church has been, and in many countries is, the chief place for a.s.signations that are not warrantable.... The beauty of the fair s.e.x, which is the great preserver of harmony and society, has been the ruin of many. So places designed for healthful and mannerly dancing have, by people of an unhappy turn, been debauched by introducing gaming, drunkenness, and indecent familiarities. But will any argue from these we must have no churches, no wine, no beauties, no literature, no dancing? Forbid it, Heaven!

whatever is under your auspicious conduct must be improving and beneficial in every respect.'

His poem is an ode in praise of dancing, and of the manner in which the a.s.semblies were conducted. Fortifying his case with Locke's well-known sentence--'Since nothing appears to me to give children so much becoming confidence and behaviour, and so raise them to the conversation of those above their age, as dancing, I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it,' he boldly avows himself as an advocate for the moderate indulgence in the amus.e.m.e.nt, both as health-giving and as tending to improve the mind and the manners, and concludes with these two spirited stanzas, which are quoted here as s.p.a.ce will not permit us to refer to the piece again--