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

ALLAN RAMSAY 157
and he asks his correspondent how, under these
conditions,
' What sprightly tale in verse can Yarde
Expect frae a cauld Scottish bard,
With brose and bannocks poorly fed,
In hodden gray right hashly clad,
Skelping o'er frozen hags with pingle,
Picking up peats to beet his ingle,
While sleet that freezes as it fa's,
Theeks as with glass the divot wa's
Of a laigh hut, where sax thegither
Lie heads and thraws on craps of heather?'
—this being a humorous allusion to the prevalent
idea in England at the time, that the Scots were
only a little better off than the savages of the South
Seas.
Finally, in his translations, or rather paraphrases, from
Horace, Ramsay was exceedingly happy. He made no
pretensions to accuracy in his rendering of the precise
words of the text. While preserving an approximation
to the ideas of his original, he changes the local atmo-
sphere and scene, and applies Horace's lines to the
district around Edinburgh, wherewith he was so familiar.
With rare skill this is achieved ; and while any lover of
Horace can easily follow the ideas of the original, the non-
classical reader is brought face to face with associations
drawn from his own land as illustrative, by comparison
and contrast, of the text of the great Roman. Few
could have executed the task with greater truth
fewer still with more felicity. Already I have cited a
portion of Ramsay's rendering of Horace's famous Ode,
Vtdes ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte. There are
two other stanzas well worthy of quotation. Ramsay's
;