Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland

loo FAMOUS SCOTS
A Collection of Thii-ty Fables, Amongst them we find
some of the most delightful of all our poet's work in this
vein. Mercury in Quest of Peace, The Twa Lizards,
The Caterpillar and the Ant, and The Twa Cats and the
Cheese, possess, as Chalmers truly says, ' all the naivete of
Phsedrus and La Fontaine, with the wit and ease of Gay.'
And thus Ramsay's literary career closed, after well-nigh
two decades of incessant intellectual activity. Begun, as
Professor Masson says, ' in the last years of the reign of
Queen Anne, and continued through the whole of the
reign of George I., it had just touched the beginning of
that of George II. when it suddenly ceased. Twice or
thrice afterwards, at long intervals, he did scribble a
copy of verses ;
but in the main, from his forty-fifth year
onwards, he rested on his laurels. Henceforward he
contented himself with his bookselling, the management
of his circulating library, and the superintendence of the
numerous editions of his Collected Poems, his Gentle
Shepherd, and his Tea-Table Miscellany'
In pursuance of this determination, Ramsay, in 1731,
at the request of a number of London booksellers, edited
a complete edition of his works, wherein all the poems
published in the quartos of 1721 and 1728 were
included, in addition to The Gentle Shepherd. The
success attending this venture was so great that, in 1733,
a Dublin edition had to be prepared, which also handsomely
remunerated both author and publishers. From
the American colonies, likewise, came accounts of the
great popularity of Ramsay's poems, both among the
inhabitants of the towns and the settlers in the mighty
forests. Of the latter, many were Scotsmen, and to
them the vividly realistic scenes and felicitous character-