David Ramsay

“ David Ramsay was a native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was educated at Princeton, studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and removed to Charleston, S. C., for the practice of his profession. He soon acquired celebrity both as a physician and as a patriot in the Revolutionary struggles. He was a member of the Council of Safety and a surgeon in the army. He was one of the forty prominent citizens who were sent as hostages to St. Augustine at the capture of Charleston in 1780 and kept for eleven months in close confinement. ”

“ RAMSAY, THOMAS KENNEDY (1826–1886) , Canadian judge and jurist, born in Ayr on 2 Sept. 1826, was third son of David Ramsay of Grimmat in the parish of Straiton, Ayrshire, and Edinburgh, writer to the signet. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Kennedy of Kirkmechan House, Ayr; she died in 1878. His father died early, and his mother went to St. John's, Maryhill, where Ramsay began his education under private tutors; later he was trained at a school at St. Andrews, then at Ayr academy, and afterwards in France. ”

“ The Tea Table Miscellany, when completed, besides containing about thirty songs contributed by “some ingenious young gentlemen” of Ramsay’s acquaintance,—among whom we can identify now Hamilton of Bangour, young David Malloch, a William Crawford, and a William Walkinshaw,—contained about sixty songs of Ramsay’s own composition. Similarly, among several mock-antiques by modern hands inserted into The Evergreen, were two by Ramsay himself, entitled The Vision and The Eagle and Robin Redbreast. ”

“ David Malloch, who had been an Edinburgh protégé of Ramsay’s, but had gone to London and Anglicised himself into “Mallet,” was about the oldest of his literary survivors into another generation; but in that generation, as Scotsmen of various ages, from sixty downwards to one-and-twenty, living, within Scotland or out of it, at the date of Ramsay’s death, we count Lord Kames, Armstrong, Reid, Hume, Lord Monboddo, Hugh Blair, George Campbell, Smollett, Wilkie, Blacklock, Robertson, John Home, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Lord Hailes, Falconer, Meikle, and Beattie. ”

“ Be this as it may, we learn that three months after Robert Ramsay was laid in his grave she married David Crichton, finding a home for herself and a stepfather for the youthful Allan at one and the same time. Crichton was a small{18} peasant-proprietor, or bonnet-laird, of the district. Though not endowed with much wealth, he seems to have been in fairly comfortable circumstances, realising his stepson's ideal in after-life, which he put into the mouth of his Patie—
'He that hath just enough can soundly sleep ”

“ David Tulloch, tenant in Drumbenan, under the second and third Dukes of Gordon, had been 'out' in the '45--or the fufteen, or both--and was a great favourite of his respective landlords. One day, having attended the young Lady Susan Gordon (afterwards Duchess of Manchester) to the 'Chapel' at Huntly, David, perceiving that her ladyship had neither hassock nor carpet to protect her garments from the earthen floor, respectfully spread his plaid for the young lady to kneel upon, and the service proceeded ”

“ Without taking into account Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw, whose noble poetic fragment of Hardyknute was made public by Ramsay, and whose influence on the subsequent course of specially Scottish literature 425by that fragment, and possibly by other unacknowledged things of the same kind, remains yet to be adequately estimated, one notes that among those juniors of Ramsay who had entered on the career of literature after him and under his observation, but who had died before him, were Robert Blair, James Thomson, and William Hamilton of Bangour. ”

“ Now, as Ramsay’s new house was a good way below this obstruction, and in that open space of the High Street where there was plenty of room to breathe, it was in an excellent position for bookselling or any similar business. There was actually a temptation for a citizen lingering in this spot to ascend Allan Ramsay’s stone stair to have a look at the books on sale, especially if he could have his wig dressed at the same time. ”

“ As examples of this class of persons possessing much of the dry humour of their more sane countrymen, and of their facility to utter sly and ready-witted sayings, I have received the two following from Mr. W. Chambers:--Daft Jock Gray, the supposed original of David Gellatley, was one day assailed by the minister of a south-country parish on the subject of his idleness. "John," said the minister, rather pompously, "you are a very idle fellow; you might surely herd a few cows." "Me hird!" replied Jock; "I dinna ken corn frae gerss." ”

“ In the same letter he speaks of Ramsay as being then a tutor in the Marchmont family, and offers him this sage and business-like advice:—"Should a living fall to the gift of the Duchess of Marlborough, or any other of your friends and patrons, 'twould have but an ill air to say that the gentleman was in the South of France, and that he should be informed of the matter. Besides, you know how necessary a man's presence is to quicken his friends, to make them unite their interests, and to save them the trouble of contriving and thinking about his affairs. ”

“ He then travelled in Italy and Switzerland, enriching with copious entries the diary which he religiously kept up through life, and storing his mind with valuable observations.
An unsuccessful but courageous contest at the general election in 1835 for one of the seats in parliament for Edinburgh, fought against such veterans as the future speaker, James Abercrombie, afterwards Lord Dunfermline, and John Campbell, future lord chancellor, was followed in 1837 by Ramsay’s return to the House of Commons as member for East Lothian. ”

“ In this double direction of Ramsay’s literary likings,—his respectful obeisance to the literary merits of his London contemporaries, and his fonder private affection for the old poets of his Scottish vernacular,—we have the key to his own literary life.
Between 1712 and 1718, or between Ramsay’s twenty-sixth and his thirty-third year, just when the reign of Queen Anne was passing into that of George I., the Edinburgh public became more and more alive to the fact that they had a poet among them in the guise of a wig-maker. ”

“ It was to recall the attention of his countrymen to that older Scottish poetry which he still thought too little regarded by furnishing selected specimens of Henryson, Dunbar, Kennedy, Scott, Montgomery, the Wedderburns, Sir Richard Maitland, and others certainly or presumably of earlier centuries than the seventeenth. The intention was creditable, and the book did good service, though the editing of the old Scotch was inaccurate and meagre. In reality, Ramsay’s exertions for the two publications were not merely editorial. ”

“ Unwilling.
[10] A feeble ill-grown person.
[11] Unwilling.
[12] Shaking.
[13] Stretching.
[14] Chambers' Scottish Biographical Dictionary.
[15] Of a dark complexion.
[16] Neat.
[17] Exchange.
[18] "According to Mr. Tytler, this supposition is founded in error; and the estate of New Hall in the parish of Pennycuik, was to a certainty the legitimate parent of the pastoral. This fact has been since farther confirmed, in a dissertation [19] from the elegant pen of Sir David Rae, Lord Justice-Clerk; a descendant of Sir David Forbes, proprietor of New Hall, and contemporary of Ramsay. ”

“ The appeal was most successful; and in July 1721 the collected edition did appear, in a handsome quarto volume, of about 400 pages, with the title Poems by Allan Ramsay, “printed by Mr. Thomas Ruddiman for the Author.” The “Alphabetical List of Subscribers” prefixed to the volume contains nearly 500 names, most of them Scotch, but with a sprinkling of English. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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' ”

“ In Willie Shakspeare's melodious numbers I forget the dark days for trade, and in auld Chaucer's Tales, and Spenser's 'Queen,' in John Milton's majestic flow, in Giles and Phineas Fletcher, in rare Ben and our ain Drummond, I tine the sorrows o' the day in the glories o' the days that are past.'
That we may accept Ramsay's account of the studies of Patie, the Gentle Shepherd, as a type of his own is warranted by something more than tradition. The internal evidence of his works throws a strong colour of probability over the theory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Amongst his last words, according to his daughter Janet, who survived until 1807, were these: 'I'm no' feared of death; the Bricht and Morning Star has risen and is shining mair and mair unto the perfect day.' And so he passed 'into the unseen' on the 7th January 1758, in the seventy-second year of his age. He was interred two days after in the Greyfriars Churchyard, where his gravestone is still visible, bearing the inscription: 'In this cemetery was interred the mortal part of an immortal poet, Allan Ramsay, author of The Gentle Shepherd and other admirable poems in the Scottish dialect. ”

“ In pursuance of this determination, Ramsay, in 1731, at the request of a number of London booksellers, edited a complete edition of his works, wherein all the poems published in the quartos of 1721 and 1728 were included, in addition to The Gentle Shepherd. The success attending this venture was so great that, in 1733, a Dublin edition had to be prepared, which also handsomely remunerated both author and publishers. From the American colonies, likewise, came accounts of the great popularity of Ramsay's poems, both among the inhabitants of the towns and the settlers in the mighty forests. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ramsay had the misfortune never to have studied the technique of his art, so that in no respect is he a master of rhythm. The majority of his longer poems, including The Gentle Shepherd, are written in the ordinary heroic measure, so popular last century because so easily manipulated. His songs for the most part are written in familiar metres, not calculated to puzzle any bonny singing Bess as she danced and lilted on the village green. As a metrist, therefore, Ramsay can claim little or no attention. ”

“ 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. ”