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

84
FAMOUS SCOTS
many of the errors and alterations appearing in Ramsay's
specimens of our early Scots literary remains, have not
been corrected even to this day.
But though Ramsay, in the estimation of stern literary
antiquarians, has been guilty of an offence so heinous,
an offence vitiating both the Tea-Tahle Miscellany and
the Evergreejty— on the other hand, from the point of
view of the popular reader, his action in modernising
the language, at least, was not only meritorious but
necessary, if the pieces were to be intelligible to the
great mass of the people. Remembered, too, it must
be, that Ramsay lived before the development of what
may be styled the antiquarian 'conscience,' in whose
code of literary morality one of the cardinal command-
ments is, 'Thou shalt in no wise alter an ancient MS.,
that thy reputation and good faith may be unimpugned
in the land wherein thou livest, and that thou mayest
not bring a nest of critical hornets about thine ears.'
In his Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh, Dr. Daniel
Wilson thus succinctly states the case :
—
' Ramsay had
much more of the poet than the antiquary in his com-
position ; and had, moreover, a poet's idea of valuing
verse less on account of its age than its merit. He
lived in an era of literary masquerading and spurious
antiques, and had little compunction in patching and
eking an old poem to suit the taste of his Edinburgh
customers.' He was no Ritson,—and, after all, even
Plautus had, for three hundred years after the revival
of learning, to await his Ritschl
!