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

ALLAN RAMSAY 83
conclusion of Dunbar's noble elegy, Ramsay must needs
tack on three stanzas, as a prophecy by Dunbar himself,
wherein the vanity-full poet is introduced as ' a lad frae
Hethermuirs.' What censure could be too strong for
inappropriate fooling like the following, coming in to
mar the solemn close of Dunbar's almost inspired lines ?
' Suthe I forsie, if spaecraft had,
Frae Hether-muirs sail rise a lad,
Aftir two Gentries pas, sail he
Revive our fame and memorie :
Then sal we flourish evirgrene ;
All thanks to careful Bannatyne,
And to the patron kind and frie
Wha lends the lad baith them and me.
Far sail we fare baith eist and west,
Owre ilka clime by Scots possest
Then sen our warks sail never dee,
Timor mortis 7ioii turbat me.''
In the Evergreen Ramsay published two of his own
poems, The Vision (in which the author bewails the
Union and the banishment of the Stuarts) and TJie
Eagle and the Robin Reid-hreist (likewise a Jacobite
poem), wilfully altering the spelling in both, and intro-
ducing archaicisms into the thought, so as to pass them
off as 'written by the ingenious before 1600.' He also
inserted Hardyknufe, a fragment, which subsequent
research has proved to have been written by Lady
Elizabeth Wardlaw, a contemporary of Ramsay's.
Although the Evergreen did much to revive popular
interest in early Scottish poetry, and thus prepare the
way for Lord Hailes and Bishop Percy, from a critical
point of view it was worse than worthless, inasmuch as
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