Andrew Ramsay

“ Ramsay thought, one thing. She must accept him, or she must refuse him. This going off after luncheon for a walk, even though Andrew was with them—what could it mean? except that she had decided, rightly, Mrs. Ramsay thought (and she was very, very fond of Minta) , to accept that good fellow, who might not be brilliant, but then, thought Mrs. Ramsay, realising that James was tugging at her, to make her go on reading aloud the Fisherman and his Wife, she did in her own heart infinitely prefer boobies to clever men who wrote dissertations; Charles Tansley, for instance. ”

“ Ramsay raised his hand and saluted her as they passed.
But what a face, she thought, immediately finding the sympathy which she had not been asked to give troubling her for expression. What had made it like that? Thinking, night after night, she supposed—about the reality of kitchen tables, she added, remembering the symbol which in her vagueness as to what Mr. Ramsay did think about Andrew had given her. (He had been killed by the splinter of a shell instantly, she bethought her.) The kitchen table was something visionary, austere; something bare, hard, not ornamental. ”

“ What was she dreaming about, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, seeing her engrossed, as she stood there, with some thought of her own, so that she had to repeat the message twice—ask Mildred if Andrew, Miss Doyle, and Mr. Rayley have come back?— The words seemed to be dropped into a well, where, if the waters were clear, they were also so extraordinarily distorting that, even as they descended, one saw them twisting about to make Heaven knows what pattern on the floor of the child’s mind. ”

“ RAMSAY, ALLAN. The Poems of. A new edition, corrected and enlarged; with a Glossary. To which are prefixed a Life of the Author, from authentic documents; and Remarks on his Poems from a large view of their merits; authentic Portrait, from an original drawing by his son, the late Allan Ramsay; fac simile of the Poet's handwriting, and copper-engraved Vignette. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 573 and 608. London, 1800.
RAMSAY, ANDREW. The Creation—the Happy Condition of Man before the Fall. Edinburgh, 1630.
RAMSAY, JOHN. Poems and Songs in the Scottish dialect. ”

“ No, sir, claret is the liquor for boys: port for men: but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy!” Most toper sentiments! But Ramsay did not stint his guests, and these were constantly of a noble order. Lord Bute, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Bath, Lord Chesterfield, and the Duke of Richmond were often at the painter’s table, discussing all sorts of political questions with him. Every man was a politician in those days, especially after dinner. But Ramsay was not content to be simply a talker upon the topics of the day—he became also a writer. ”

“ Weel, I’ll tell ye what sort o’ a being he is, that ye may be on your guard when ye gang to the Haugh the morn. Laird Ramsay has mair gear, doctor, than ony half-dozen o’ his neighbours for mony miles roond, and he’s a queer character wi’d a’. He’s unco auld-fashioned for a man in his station, an’ speaks muckle sic like as ye hear me speakin’ i’ the noo. He gets the name o’ haudin’ a gude grip o’ his siller; but I’ve nae reason to compleen, as he spends freely eneuch when he comes to the Cross-Keys, no forgettin’ the servant-lass and the ostler ”

“ His son became a distinguished painter, intimate with Johnson, Burke, and the rest of that splendid set, although now chiefly remembered from his connexion with them and with his father.
Allan Ramsay was a poet with very few of the usual poetical faults. He had an eye for nature, but he had also an eye for the main chance. He 'kept his shop, and his shop kept him.' He might sing of intrigues, and revels, and houses of indifferent reputation; but he was himself a quiet, canny, domestic man, seen regularly at kirk and market. ”

“ You might say that Ramsay was not a fine painter, but a man of real genius. The world, not comprehending the distinction, would merely come to the gross conclusion, that he was both one and the other. Thus even truth is vulgarly debased into common-place and nonsense. ”

“ Ramsay possessed all the qualities constituting a song-writer of great and varied genius. His work exhibits ease and elasticity of rhythm, liquid smoothness of assonance, sympathetic beauty of thought, with subtle skill in wedding sense to sound. Though his verse lacked the dainty finish of Herrick and Waller, the brilliant facet-like sparkle of Carew, Suckling, and Lovelace, the tender grace of Sedley, and the half-cynical, half-regretful, but wholly piquant epicureanism, of Rochester and Denham, yet Ramsay had a charm all his own. Witness the 'Lass o' Patie's Mill' ”

“ To the end of life, Ramsay remained the same kindly, genial, honourable man, whose appearance in any of the social circles he frequented, was the signal for 'quips and cranks and wreathèd smiles' to go round, and for the feast of reason and the flow of soul to commence. His squat, podgy figure waddling down the High Street on his way to his shop in the Luckenbooths, his head covered with the quaint three-cornered hat of the period, beneath which peeped his tie-wig, was one of the familiar sights of Edinburgh, to be pointed out to strangers with a pride and an affection that never diminished. ”

“ Notable among Ramsay's songs for freshness and grace are ‘The Yellow-haired Laddie,’ ‘The Lass o'Patie's Mill,’ and ‘Lochaber no more.’ During the same years (1724–7) he published in two volumes, mainly from the Bannatyne MS., ‘The Evergreen,’ which reached a second edition in 1761. This anthology, which he describes as ‘Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before 1600,’ represents the author of ‘Chrysts-Kirke,’ Dunbar, and other Scottish ‘makaris;’ and contains one remarkable political satire, ‘The Vision,’ which, though disguised, is no doubt Ramsay's own, and is his best sustained lyric. ”

“ Portraits of Ramsay by himself, Lilie, and Alexander Nasmyth are in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
Ramsay was a man of considerable culture, a traveller, an excellent linguist, and a good scholar. His literary gifts—as evidenced by the volume of essays entitled ‘The Investigator,’ 1762—were far above the average, and his love of letters was genuine. ”

“ For four years Ramsay was engaged in the southern part of Wales, after which he gradually pushed on northwards. His energy and the excellence of his work soon won the approval of his chief, and on a reorganisation of the survey, early in 1845, Ramsay was appointed ‘local director’ for Great Britain. The more northern part of Wales soon became the field of his personal work, and during the summers of 1848–51 he was engaged in the Snowdonian region.
In 1847 he was appointed professor of geology at University College, London, a post where the duties were not very heavy ”

“ But in this dumb colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained that his affection for Ramsay had in no way diminished; but there, like the body of a young man laid up in peat for a century, with the red fresh on his lips, was his friendship, in its acuteness and reality, laid up across the bay among the sandhills. ”

“ His lovableness and generosity notwithstanding, Ramsay's vanity and self-complacency meets us at every turn. To omit mentioning it would be to present an unfaithful portrait of the honest poet. On the other hand, justice compels one to state that, if vain, he was neither jealous nor ungenerous. He was{63} always ready to recognise the merits of others, and his egoism was not selfishness. Though he might not care to deny himself to his own despite for the good of others, he was perfectly ready to assist his neighbour when his own and his family's needs had been satisfied. ”

“ I have nothing for you to day." "Whaw, whew," cried Rab, in a half howl, half whining tone, "I dinna want onything the day, Maister Auld; I wanted to tell you an awsome dream I hae had. I dreamt I was deed." "Weel, what then?" said Dr. Auld. "Ou, I was carried far, far, and up, up, up, till I cam to heeven's yett, where I chappit, and chappit, and chappit, till at last an angel keekit out, and said 'Wha are ye?' 'A'm puir Rab Hamilton.' 'Whaur are ye frae?' 'Frae the wicked toun o' Ayr.' 'I dinna ken ony sic place,' said the angel. ”

“ In Christ's Kirk on the Green we have stereotyped to all time a picture of manners unsurpassed for vigour and accuracy of detail, to which antiquarians have gone, and will go, for information that is furnished in no other quarter.
In his elegies pure and simple, namely, those divested of any humorous element, Ramsay has done good work; but it is not by any means on a par with what is expected from the poet who could write The Gentle Shepherd. A painter of low life in its aspects both humorous and farcical was Ramsay's distinctive métier. ”

“ Professor Ramsay himself is a tall, rather spare man, just entering the gray stage of life, with the earnest visage of the scholar, the keen, piercing eye of the investigator—yet not without a twinkle that justifies the lineage of the "canny Scot." He is approachable, affable, genial, full of enthusiasm for his work, yet not taking it with such undue seriousness as to rob him of human interest—in a word, the type of a man of science as one would picture him in imagination, and would hope, with confident expectation, to find him in reality. ”

“ Ramsay was a successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired to a villa which he had built for himself on the Castle Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man, he enjoyed life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when his road lay down the hill. ”

“ About 1847 Ramsay left London for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with which town he appears to have been connected, possibly by birth, but he continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy, where he had another portrait of himself in 1849. He practised his art with success, and painted portraits of several members of Lord Clifford's family, James Northcote, R.A., Dr. Lardner, and many others. He died, after a protracted illness, at 40 Blackett Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on 23 June 1854, aged 68. ”

“ Peter Ramsay's face became a study in cynical reserve; he turned away. "My dear lady," he said, "haven't you been a nurse long enough to know a doctor's convenient formula, 'While there's life, there's hope.'"
To his annoyance as he moved on to the door, she moved also. "I am off duty," she remarked, as if she had not appreciated his slamming of the door in her face, "so it is no breach of rules to tell you that I have had a letter from Ned Blackborough. ”

“ Scotland honored herself when she honored her poet Ramsay. Happy is the nation that appreciates her sons who bid her people look within to find enduring treasure. To Ramsay, the prophet’s words apply: “And they that be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations and thou shalt be called ... the restorer of paths to dwell in.”
The second Allan Ramsay (1713–84) , an accomplished scholar and gentleman, was the son of the poet. Being carefully educated by his father and sent to Rome to study art, he became an able portrait-painter. ”

“ As a literary artist, Ramsay was destined to develop into a genre painter of unsurpassed fidelity to nature. As yet, however, that which was to be the distinctive characteristic of his pictures had not dawned upon his mind. But the time was rapidly approaching. Already the first glimmerings of apprehension are to be detected{65} in his tentative endeavours to realise his métier in the pastoral dialogue of Patie and Roger republished in his volume.
The quarto of 1721 contained, moreover, several pieces that had not been previously printed. ”

“ That same student, on that very day, had occasion to preach a sermon before the Doctor, for which he received a bit of severe criticism, the sting of which was in its tail: "You said my wig wasna kaimed this mornin', my lad, but I think I've redd your head to you."
The Rev. John Heugh of Stirling was one day admonishing one of his people of the sin of intemperance: "Man, John, you should never drink except when you're dry." "Weel, sir," quoth John, "that's what I'm aye doin', for I am never slocken'd." ”

“ The young minister demurred at this, and asked if he "might not introduce any other short prayer?" "Ou ay," was the Doctor's quiet reply, "gif ye can gie us onything better."
There is a story current of a sharp hit at the pretensions of a minister who required a little set down. The scene was on a Monday by a burn near Inverness. A stranger is fishing by a burn-side one Monday morning, when the parish minister accosts him from the other side of the stream thus:--"Good sport?" "Not very." "I am also an angler," but, pompously, "I am a fisher of men." "Are you always successful?" ”

“ An accident, by which he broke his thigh-bone, lamed him for life, and he resolved to take holy orders. After admission by the bishop of London, he returned to the West Indies to take charge of the livings of Christchurch, Nicolatown, and St. John's, Capisterre.
Ramsay immediately began to take a keen interest in the slaves, and differences arose between himself and the planters. In addition to his pastoral duties, he undertook the medical supervision of several plantations, and began a scheme for the religious instruction of the negroes. The opposition of the owners became more bitter. ”