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

ALLAN RAMSAY 95
(great-grandson of the doctor), in his Life of Ramsay^
states that the poet appeared to have been indebted to
Dr. Pennecuik for the Story of the Knight^ but to have
drawn the character from that of his friend Sir David
Forbes.
The issue of the successive editions of The Getitle
Shepherd^ though occupying a large share of his time not
engrossed by the cares of business, did not altogether
preclude him from writing some fresh pieces when
occasion arose. In 1727 appeared a 'Masque,' which
was performed at the celebration of the nuptials of
James, Duke of Hamilton, and the Lady Ann Cochrane.
In this form of poetry Ramsay revived a good old
type very popular amongst the Elizabethan poets and
dramatists, and even descending down to the days of
Milton, whose Masque of Comiis is the noblest specimen
of this kind of composition in modern literature.
Ramsay's dramatis personce are rather a motley crew,
but on the whole he succeeds in managing the dialogue
of his gods, and goddesses very creditably, though any
admirer of his genius can see it moves on stilts under
such circumstances. The Pastoral Epithalamium upon
the marriage of George Lord Ramsay and Lady Jean
Maule is of a less ambitious cast, both as regards form
and thought ; the consequence being, that the poet
succeeds admirably in expressing the ideas proper to the
occasion, when he was not bound by the fetters of an
unfamiliar rhythm.
Ramsay's later poems had in turn attained, numerically
speaking, to such bulk as fairly entitled him to consider
the practicability of issuing a second quarto volume,
containing all of value he had written between 1721 and