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

ALLAN RAMSAY 71
University of Edinburgh—and all deeply interested in
the quaint, cheery, practical - minded little man, who
combined in himself the somewhat contradictory
qualities of an excellent poet and a keen man of busi-
ness. Thus the influence was a reciprocal one. His
poetry attracted customers to his shop, while his book-
selling in turn brought him in contact with social
celebrities, whose good offices the self-complacent poet
would not suffer to be lost for lack of application.
In 1722 the proprietor of the famous John's Coffee
House and Tavern, in Parliament Close, off the High
Street,—which, by the way, "still exists,—was a man named
Balfour. The latter, who had lived for some time in
London, had acquired a smattering of hterary culture,
and conceived the idea of rendering his house the
Edinburgh counterpart of Will's or Button's. He set
himself to attract all the leading wits and men of letters
in the Scottish metropolis at the time, and speedily raised
his house to considerable celebrity during the third and
fourth decades of last century. To Allan Ramsay he
paid especial court, and the poet became a daily visitor
at the tavern. Here he would meet many of the judges
and leading lawyers, the professors from the College,
any visitors of note who might be in town ; also Clerk of
Penicuik, Sir William Bennet of Marlefield, Hamilton
of Bangour, the poet, Preston and Crawford, the rising
young song-writers of the day, as well as Beau Forrester,
the leader of fashion in Edinburgh, who is recorded to
have exhibited himself, once at least, in an open balcony
in a chintz nightgown, and been dressed and powdered
by his valet de chamhre as an object-lesson to the town
dandies how to get themselves up. There, too, among