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

ALLAN RAMSAY 103
most notable personages in the motley crowd, and every
now and then called upon to explain some Scotticism in
his speech which reminded Gay of passages in The
Gentle Shepherd that Pope had desired him to get
explained from the author himself. And worthy Allan is
flattered yet flustered withal with the honour, for beside
them stand the famous Duchess of Queensberry—better
known as Prior's ' Kitty,' otherwise Lady Catherine
Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon—and her
miser husband, who only opened his close fist to build
such palatial piles as Queensberry House, in the Edin-
burgh Canongate, and Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries-
shire, They have brought Gay up north with them,
after his disappointment in getting his play
—
Polly^ the
continuation of the Beggars^ Opera—refused sanction for
representation by the Duke of Grafton, then Lord
how honest Allan smirks and
Chamberlain. Ah !
smiles, and becks and bows, with a backbone that will
never be as supple in kotowing to anyone else. For
does he not, like many more of us, dearly love a lord,
and imagine the sun to rise and set in the mere enjoyment
of the ducal smile ?
A pleasant visit was that paid by Gay to Scotland in
1732, before he returned to London to die, in the
December of the same year. He spent many of his
spare hours in the company of Ramsay, and that of the
two friends in whose society much of the latter's time was
now to be passed—Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and Sir
Alexander Dick of Prestonfield. By all three, Gay was
deeply regretted,—by Clerk and Dick chiefly, because he
had so much that was akin to their own genial friend,
Allan Ramsay.