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

44
FAMOUS SCOTS
his menage in a couple of small rooms above his booth-
like shop, plastered against the wall of St. Giles Church
the nursery and kitchen, however, being in a cellar under
the level of the street, where the children are said to
have rotted off like sheep. . . . The town was, neverthe-
less, a funny, familiar, compact, and not unlikable place.
Gentle and semple living within the compass of a single
close, or even a single stair, knew and took an interest
in each other.'
Such was the kind of home to which Allan Ramsay
brought his bride. Two rooms, with a closet and a
kitchen, for many a long year were the extent of their
household accommodation. Such a state of things was
not favourable to the development of the virtues purely
domestic. Hence with Ramsay, as with other men,
tavern life was accepted as a substitute for those comforts
the sterner sex could not get at home. As Grant remarks
in his Old and New Edinburgh :
' The slender house ac-
commodation in the turnpike stairs compelled the use
of taverns more than now. There the high-class advocate
received his clients, and the physician his patients
each practitioner having his peculiar howff.
— ;
There, too,
gentlemen met in the evening for supper and conversa-
tion, without much expense, a reckoning of a shilling
being a high one—so different then was the value of
money and the price of viands.'
Mr. Logie Robertson, in his graphic and admirable
introduction to the Poems of Allatt Ra77isay in the
Canterbury Series, adds :
' Business lingered on all over
the town to a much later period than is customary now,
but by eight o'clock every booth was deserted and every
shop closed, and the citizens for the most part gave