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

io6 FAMOUS SCOTS
certain section of the Scottish clergy of this period. To
them everything that savoured of jollity and amusement
was specially inspired by the Evil One, for the hindrance
of their ministerial labours. The references to this matter
are manifold throughout Ramsay's poetry. Though no
one had a deeper respect for vital piety than he, no one
more bitterly reprobated that puritanic fanaticism that
saw sin and wrong -doing in innocent recreation and
relaxation. Against Ramsay the ecclesiastical thunder
had commenced to roll some years before (according to
Wodrow), when he started his circulating library. That
the works of Shakespeare, Beaumout and Fletcher, Ben
Jonson, Massinger, Dryden, Waller, and the romances of
chivalry, should be placed in the hands of the youth of
Edinburgh, was accounted a sin so grave as to merit
Presbyterial censure. Accordingly, a party, amongst
whom was the infamous Lord Grange, attempted to
suppress the library. But the cegis of the redoubtable
Dr. Webster had been thrown over him, and the pother
in time died away. It appears, however, that Ramsay, in
1736, had imported a large stock of translations of the
most celebrated French plays of the day, and had added
them to his library. Sufficient was this to blow into
a blaze the smouldering embers of clerical indignation.
From pulpit and press our poet was fulminated at. Not
that he gave the smallest sign that he cared one jot for
all their denunciations. He attended to his shop and
his library, and quaffed his claret at the Isle ofMan Arms,
at Luckie Dunbar's in Forrester's Wynd, or at the famous
John's Coffee House, with the cynical response that ' they
might e'en gang their ain gate.'
But just at this precise time Ramsay conceived the