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

38
FAMOUS SCOTS
Where Bonny Heck ran fast and fierce.
It warm'd my breast
Then emulation did me pierce,
Whilk since ne'er ceast.'
There was, however, another influence at work, quite
as potent, stimulating his poetic fancy. Amid the
beauties of the ' Queen of Cities ' he lived, and the
charms of his surroundings sank deep into his impres-
sionable nature. In whatever direction he looked, from
the ridgy heights of the Castlehill, a glorious natural
picture met his eye. If to the north, his gaze caught
the gleam of the silvery estuary of the Forth, with fertile
reaches of green pasture-land intervening, and the little
villages of Picardy, Broughton, and Canonmills peeping
out from embosoming foliage, while beyond the silver
streak, beautified by the azure enchantment of distance,
glowed in the sunshine the heath-clad Lomonds and the
yellow wealth of the fields of Fife. Did the youthful
poet turn eastward, from yonder favourite lounge of his
on Arthur Seat, the mouth of the noble Firth, dotted
with sail, was full in view, with the shadowy outlines of
the May Island, peeping out like a spirit from the depth
of distance, and nearer, the conical elevation of North
Berwick Law and the black-topped precipitous mass of
the Bass ; while seemingly lying, in comparison, almost
at his feet, was the magnificent semicircular sweep of
Aberlady Bay, with its shore -fringe of whitewashed
villages gleaming like a string of glittering pearls, behind
which stretched the fertile carse of East Lothian, rolling
in gently undulating uplands back to the green Lammer-
raoors. Or if he gazed southward, did his eye not catch
the fair expanse of Midlothian, as richly cultivated as it
;