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

ALLAN RAMSAY 37
were the books his son, whom he had committed to the
care of Symon, his shepherd, to be reared as his own child,
was in the habit of reading, the honest old servant replies
' When'er he drives our sheep to Edinburgh port,
He buys some books o' hist'ry, sangs, or sport
Nor does he want o' them a rowth at will,
And carries aye a poochfu' to the hill.
Aboot ane Shakspeare— an' a famous Ben,
He aften speaks, an' ca's them best o' men.
How sweetly Hawthornden an' Stirling sing,
An' ane ca'd Cowley, loyal to his king,
He kens fu' weel, an' gars their verses ring.
I sometimes thought he made owre great a phrase
About fine poems, histories, and plays.
When I reproved him ance, a book he brings,
"Wi' this," quoth he, "on braes I crack wi' kings."'
;
— ;
By the side-light thrown on Ramsay's life from this
passage we gain some idea of his own studies during
those years of germination. To the poets more exclus-
ively Scottish, whether writing in the current literary
medium of the day or in the vernacular of the country
to Robert Sempill's Life arid Death of the Piper of
Kilbarchan\ to William Cleland's Highland Host—in
addition to Drummond and the Earl of Stirling, men-
tioned in the passage quoted above ; to William
Hamilton of Gilbertfield's verses, The Dyijig Words of
Bonnie Heck, and to others of less note, he seems to
have devoted keen and enthusiastic attention. Lieu-
tenant Hamilton it was (as Ramsay admits in the
poetical correspondence maintained between them) who
first awakened within him the desire to write in the
dialect of his country
—
* When I begoud first to cun verse.
And could your "Ardry Whins" rehearse.