The Gentle Shepherd. Allan Ramsay
He now therefore intermeddled no longer with the anxieties of authorship, but sat down in the easy chair of his celebrity to enjoy his laurels and his profits. After a lapse of six years of silence, and of happiness, his ardour for dramatic exhibitions involved him in some circumstances of perplexity, attended, it is believed, with pecuniary loss. As Edinburgh possessed as yet no fixed place for the exhibition of the drama, he endeavoured to supply that deficiency to the citizens, by building, at his own expense a theatre in Carrubber's-close. Shortly after, the Act for licensing the stage was passed, which at once blasted all his hopes of pleasure and advantage; for, the Magistrates availing themselves of the power entrusted to them by the Act, shewed no indulgence to the author of the Gentle Shepherd, but, in the true spirit of that puritanism which reckons as ungodly all jollity of heart, and relaxation of countenance, they shut up his theatre, leaving the citizens without exhilaration, and our poet without redress. This was not all; he was assailed with the satirical mockery of his laughter-hating enemies, who turned against him his own weapons of poetical raillery. Pamphlets appeared, entitled, "The flight of religious piety from Scotland, upon the account of Ramsay's lewd books, and the hell-bred playhouse comedians, who debauch all the faculties of the soul of our rising generation;"—"A looking-glass for Allan Ramsay;"—"The dying words of Allan Ramsay." These maligners, in the bitterness of their sanctimonious resentments, reproached him with "having acquired wealth,"—with "possessing a fine house,"—with "having raised his kin to high degree;" all which vilifications must have carried along with them some secret and sweet consolations into the bosom of our bard. Amid the perplexities caused by the suppression of his theatre, he applied by a poetical petition to his friend the Honourable Duncan Forbes, then Lord President of the Court of Session, in order that he might obtain some compensation for his expenses; but with what success is not recorded by any of his biographers.
His theatrical adventure being thus unexpectedly crushed, he devoted himself to the duties of his shop, and the education of his children. He sent in 1736 his son Allan to Rome, there to study that art by which he rose to such eminence. In the year 1743 he lost his wife, who was buried on the 28th of March in the cemetery of the Greyfriars. He built, probably about this time, a whimsical house of an octagon form, on the north side of the Castle-hill, where his residence is still known by the name of Ramsay-Garden. [The site of this house was selected with the taste of a poet and the judgment of a painter. It commanded a reach of scenery probably not surpassed in Europe, extending from the mouth of the Forth on the east to the Grampians on the west, and stretching far across the green hills of Fife to the north; embracing in the including space every variety of beauty, of elegance, and of grandeur.[14]] This house he deemed a paragon of architectural invention. He showed it with exultation to the late Lord Elibank, telling his Lordship at the same time, that the wags of the town likened it to a "goose-pye:" "Indeed, Allan," replied his Lordship, "now that I see you in it, I think it is well named."
Having for several years before his death retired from business, he gave himself up in this fantastical dwelling to the varied amusements of reading, conversation, and the cultivation of his garden. Being now "loose frae care and strife," he enjoyed, in the calmness and happiness of a philosophical old age, all the fruits of his many and well rewarded labours. A considerable part of every summer was spent in the country with his friends, of whom he had many, distinguished both for talents and rank. The chief of these were, Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, and Sir John Clerk of Pennycuik, one of the Barons of Exchequer, a gentleman who united taste to scholarship, and had patronized and befriended Ramsay from the beginning. This amiable gentleman died in 1756, a loss which must have been severely felt by our Poet, and which he himself did not long survive. He had been afflicted for some time with a scorbutic complaint in his gums, which after depriving him of his teeth, and consuming part of the jaw-bone, at last put an end to his sufferings and his existence on the 7th of January, 1758, in the 72d year of his age. He was interred in the cemetery of Greyfriars' church on the 9th of that month, and in the record of mortality he is simply called, "Allan Ramsay, Poet, who died of old age."
Of his person, Ramsay has given us a minute and pleasant description. He was about five feet four inches high,
"A blackavic'd[15] snod[16] dapper fallow, Nor lean, nor overlaid with tallow."
He is described by those who knew him towards the latter part of his life, as a squat man, with a belly rather portly, and a countenance full of smiles and good humour. He wore a round goodly wig rather short. His disposition may be easily collected from his writings. He possessed that happy Horatian temperament of mind, that forbids, for its own ease, all entrance to the painful and irascible passions. He was a man rather of pleasantry and laughter, than of resentment and moody malignancy. His enemies, of whom he had some, he did not deem so important as on their account to ruffle his peace of mind, by indulging any reciprocal hostility, by which they would have been flattered. He was kind, benevolent, cheerful; possessing, like Burns, great susceptibility for social joys, but regulating his indulgences more by prudence, and less impetuous and ungovernable than the impassioned poet of Ayrshire. By his genius he elevated himself to the notice of all those of his countrymen who possessed either rank or talents; but these attentions proceeded spontaneously from their admiration of his talents, and were not courted by any servilities or unworthy adulations. Never drawn from business by the seductions of the bowl, or the invitations of the great, he consulted his own respect, and the comfort of his family, by attending to the duties of his shop, which so faithfully and liberally rewarded him. His vanity (that constitutional failing of all bards) is apparent in many of his writings, but it is seasoned with playfulness and good humour. He considered, indeed, that "pride in poets is nae sin," and on one occasion jocularly challenges superiority in the temple of Fame, even to Peter the Great of Russia, by saying, "But haud, proud Czar, I wadna niffer[17] fame."—He is called by Mr. William Tytler, who enjoyed his familiarity, "an honest man, and of great pleasantry."
Of learning he had but little, yet he understood Horace faintly in the original; a congenial author, with whom he seems to have been much delighted, and in the perusal of whose writings he was assisted by Ruddiman. He read French, but knew nothing of Greek. He did not, however, like Burns, make an appearance of vilifying that learning of which he was so medium a partaker; he bewailed his "own little knowledge of it;" and, like the Ayrshire bard, he was sufficiently ostentatious and pedantic in the display of what little he possessed.
He composed his verses with little effort or labour; his poetry seems to have evaporated lightly and airily from the surface of a mind always jocose and at its ease. And as it lightly came, he was wont to say, so it lightly went; for after composition, he dismissed it from his mind without further care or anxiety.
In 1759 an elegant obelisk was erected to the memory of Ramsay, by Sir James Clerk, at his family-seat of Pennycuik, containing the following inscription:
Allano Ramsay, Poetae egregio,
Qui Fatis concessit VII. Jan. MDCCLVIII.
Amico paterno et suo,
Monumentum inscribi jussit
D. Jacobus Clerk.
Anno MDCCLIX.
At Woodhouselee, near the [supposed] scene of the Gentle Shepherd,[18] a rustic temple was dedicated, by the late learned and accomplished Lord Woodhouselee, with the Inscription
Allano Ramsay, et Genio Loci.
REMARKS ON THE WRITINGS OF ALLAN RAMSAY.
BY W. TENNANT.
Of Ramsay's Poems, the largest, and that on which his fame chiefly rests, is his Gentle Shepherd. Though some of his mediumer poems contain passages of greater smartness, yet its more general interest as a whole, and the uniformity of talent visible in its scenes,