CHAPTER V THE FAVOURITE AT THE 'FOUR-OORS'; FROM WIGMAKER TO BOOKSELLER; THE QUARTO OF 1721--1717-21

Ramsay's fame as a poet, writing in the Scots vernacular, was now thoroughly established. Though the patronage of the Easy Club could no longer be extended to him, as the Government of the Elector of Hanover—lately crowned King of England under the title of George I.—had directed its suppression, the members of it, while in a position to benefit him, had laid the basis of his reputation so broad and deep that virtually he had now only to build on their foundation.

He was distinctly the favourite of the 'auld wives' of the town. In quarto sheets, familiarly known as broadsides, and similar to what had been hawked about the country in his youth, his poems had hitherto been issued. It became the fashion, when four o'clock arrived, to send out their children, or their 'serving-lass,' with a penny to procure Allan Ramsay's latest piece, in order to increase the relish of their 'four-oors' Bohea' with the broad humour of John Cowper, or The Elegy upon Lucky Wood, or The Great Eclipse.

During the year or two immediately preceding the publication of the quarto of 1721 this custom greatly increased. Of course, a supply had to be forthcoming to meet such a demand, but of these, numberless pieces, on topics of political or merely ephemeral interest, were never republished after their appearance in broadside form. By an eminent collector of this species of literature the fact is stated, that there are considerably over two score of poems by Ramsay which have thus been allowed to slip into oblivion. Not that such a fate was undeserved. In many cases their indelicacy would debar their admission into any edition nowadays; in others, their lack of permanent general interest. Such subjects as The Flytin' of Luckie Duff and Luckie Brown, A Dookin' in the Nor' Loch, and A Whiggish Lament, were not the kind of themes his calmer and maturer judgment would care to contemplate being handed down to posterity as specimens of his work.

In 1719 Ramsay appears to have concluded, from the extensive sale his poems enjoyed even in broadside form, that the trade of a bookseller would not only be more remunerative than a wigmaker's, but would also be more in accord with his literary tastes and aspirations. For some months he had virtually carried on the two trades concurrently, his reputation undoubtedly attracting a large number of customers to his shop to have their wigs dressed by the popular poet of the day. But as his fame increased, so did his vanity. Of praise he was inordinately fond. 'Tell Allan he's as great a poet as Pope, and ye may get what ye like from him,' said the witty and outspoken Lord Elibank to a friend. The charge had more than a grain of truth in it. That man did not lack more than his share of self-complacent vanity who could write, as the vicegerent of great Apollo, as he informs us in The Scribblers Lashed, such lines as these—

Alas! Allan, 'backwardness in coming forward' was never one of thy failings!

To Allan, digito monstrari was a condition of things equivalent to the seventh heaven of felicity; but he felt it would be more to his advantage to be pointed out as a bookseller than as a wigmaker, when his reputation as a poet would cause his social status to be keenly examined. We learn that he consulted his friend Ruddiman on the step, who spoke strongly in its favour, and gave him good sound advice as to the kind of stock most likely to sell readily. The 'Flying Mercury,' therefore, which up to this date had presided over the 'theeking' of the outside of the 'pashes' (heads) of the worthy burgesses of Auld Reekie, was thereafter to preside, with even increased lustre, over the provision of material for lining the inside with learning and culture.

That the time was an anxious one for the poet there can be little doubt. He was virtually beginning the battle of life anew; and though he did so with many advantageous circumstances in his favour, none the less was the step one to be undertaken only after the gravest consideration and calculation of probabilities. But by its results the change is shown to have been a wise one. From the outset the bookselling business proved a lucrative venture. The issue of his own broadsides, week by week, was of itself a considerable source of profit. These, in addition to being sold at his shop and hawked about the country, were disposed of on the streets of Edinburgh by itinerant stallkeepers, who were wont to regard the fact as one of great moment to themselves when they could cry, 'Ane o' Maister Ramsay's new poems—price a penny.' In this manner his famous piece, The City of Edinburgh's Address to the Country, was sown broadcast over the county.

Meantime, while Ramsay's literary and commercial prosperity was being established on so firm a basis, he was becoming quite a family man. The little house opposite Niddry's Wynd was gradually getting small enough for his increasing mÉnage. Since his marriage in 1712, happiness almost idyllic, as he records, had been his lot in his domestic relations. He had experienced the pure joy that thrills through a parent's heart on hearing little toddling feet pattering through his house, and sweet childish voices lisping the name 'father.' The following entries in the Register of Births and Baptisms for the City of Edinburgh speak for themselves:—

'At Edinburgh, 6th October 1713.

'Registrate to Allan Ramsay, periwige-maker, and Christian Ross, his spouse, New Kirk Parish—a son, Allan. Witnesses, John Symer, William Mitchell, and Robert Mein, merchant, burgesses; and William Baxter.

'Registrate to Allan Ramsay, weegmaker, burges, and Christian Ross, his spouse, North East (College Kirk) Parish—a daughter named Susanna. Witnesses, John Symers, merchant, and John Morison, merchant. The child was born on the 1st instant. 3rd October 1714.

'Registrate to Allan Ramsay, weegmaker, and Christian Ross, his spouse, North East Parish—a son, Niell. Witnesses, Walter Boswell, sadler, and John Symer, merchant. 9th October 1715.

'Registrate to Allan Ramsay, weegmaker, and Christian Ross, his spouse, North East Parish—a son, Robert. Witnesses, John Symer, merchant, and Walter Boswell, sadler. The child was born on the 10th instant. 23rd November 1716.

'Registrate to Allan Ramsay, bookseller, and Christian Ross, his spouse—a daughter named Agnes. Witnesses, James Norie, painter, and George Young, chyrurgeon. Born the 9th instant. 10th August 1725.'

Besides these named above, Chalmers states that Christian Ross brought Allan Ramsay three other daughters, who were not recorded in the Register,—one born in 1719, one in 1720, and one in 1724,—who are mentioned in his letter to Smibert as 'fine girls, no ae wally-draigle among them all.'

In 1719 our poet published his first edition of 'Scots Songs,'—some original, others collected from all sources, and comprising many of the gems of Scottish lyrical poetry. The success attending the volume was instant and gratifying, and led, as we will see further on, to other publications of a cognate but more ambitious character. Almost contemporaneously was published, in a single sheet or broadside, what proved to be the germ of the Gentle Shepherd—to wit, a Pastoral Dialogue between Patie and Roger. The dialogue was reprinted in the quarto of 1721, and was much admired by all the lovers of poetry of the period.

A reliable gauge of the estimation wherein Ramsay was now held, as Scotland's great vernacular poet, is afforded in the metrical epistles sent to him during the closing months of 1719 by Lieutenant William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, to which Allan returned replies in similar terms. This was not a poetical tourney like the famous 'flyting' between Dunbar and Kennedy, two hundred and thirty years before. In the latter, the two tilters sought to say the hardest and the bitterest things of each other, though they professed to joust with pointless spears; in the former, Hamilton and Ramsay, on the contrary, vied each with the other in paying the pleasantest compliments. Gilbertfield contributed a luscious sop to his correspondent's vanity when he saluted him, in a stanza alluded to by Burns in his own familiar tribute, as—

Then he proceeds to inform honest Allan that of 'poetry, the hail quintescence, thou hast suck'd up,' and affirms that—

After such a glowing tribute, Allan could do no less than dip deep into his cask of compliments also, and assure Gilbertfield that he felt taller already by this commendation—

Then he proceeds to shower on his correspondent his return compliments as follows—

Three epistles were exchanged on either side, bristling with flattery, and with a little poetic criticism scattered here and there. In Ramsay's second letter his irrepressible vanity takes the bit in its teeth and runs away with him. He appends a note with reference to his change of occupation, as though he dreaded the world might not know of it. 'The muse,' he says, 'not unreasonably angry, puts me here in mind of the favours she had done by bringing me from stalking over bogs or wild marshes, to lift my head a little brisker among the polite world, which could never have been acquired by the low movements of a mechanic.' He was a bookseller now, of course, and could afford to look down on wigmakers as base mechanics! 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 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.

At this time, also, Sir William Scott of Thirlestane, Bart., a contemporary Latin poet, as Chalmers records, of no inconsiderable powers, hailed Ramsay as one of the genuine poets whose images adorned the temple of Apollo. In the 'Poemata D. Gulielmi Scoti de Thirlestane,' printed along with the 'Selecta Poemata Archibaldi Pitcarnii' (Edinburgh, 1727), the following lines occur—

'Effigies Allani RamsÆi, PoËtÆ Scoti, inter cÆteras PoËtarum Imagines in Templo Apollinis suspensa:

As much as any other, this testimony evinces how rapidly our poet's reputation had increased.

At last, in the spring of 1720, Allan Ramsay came before the public, and challenged it to endorse its favourable estimate of his fugitive pieces by subscribing to a volume of his collected poems, 'with some new, not heretofore printed.' As Chambers remarks: 'The estimation in which the poet was now held was clearly demonstrated by the rapid filling up of a list of subscribers, containing the names of all that were eminent for talents, learning, or dignity in Scotland.' The volume, a handsome quarto, printed by Ruddiman, and ornamented by a portrait of the author, from the pencil of his friend Smibert, was published in the succeeding year, and the fortunate poet realised four hundred guineas by the speculation. Pope, Steele, Arbuthnot, and Gay were amongst his English subscribers.

The quarto of 1721 may be said to have closed the youthful period in the development of Ramsay's genius. Slow, indeed, was that development. He was now thirty-five years of age, and while he had produced many excellent pieces calculated to have made the name of any mediocre writer, he had, as yet, given the world nothing that could be classed as a work of genius. His sketches of humble life and of ludicrous episodes occurring among the lower classes in Edinburgh and the rustics in the country, had pleased a wide clientÉle of readers, because they depicted with rare truth and humour, scenes happening in the everyday life of the time. But in no single instance, up to this date, had he produced a work that would live in the minds of the people as expressive of those deep, and, by them, incommunicable feelings that go to the composition of class differences.

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 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. These we will at present only mention en passant, reserving critical analysis for our closing chapters. Not the least noticeable of the poems in the volume are those wherein he lays aside his panoply of strength,—the 'blythe braid Scots,' or vernacular,—and challenges criticism on what he terms 'his English poems.' These were undoubtedly the most ambitious flights in song hitherto attempted by the Scottish Tityrus. To the study of Dryden, Cowley, Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, he had devoted himself,—particularly to Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad, and to the collected edition of the works of the great author of the Rape of the Lock, issued in 1717. He had been in correspondence for some years previous with several of the leading English poets of the day, and with other individuals well known both in politics and London society, such as Josiah Burchet, who, when he died in 1746, had been Secretary to the Admiralty for forty-five years, and had sat in six successive Parliaments. This was the friend whose admiration for Ramsay was so excessive as to prompt him to send (as was the custom of the time) certain recommendatory verses for insertion in the quarto, wherein he hailed honest Allan in the following terms—

Small wonder is it that, stimulated by such flattery, Allan should have desired to evince to his friends by the Thames, that the notes of their northern brother of the lyre were not confined to the humble strains of his own rustic reed.

In the quarto, therefore, we have a poem, Tartana, or The Plaid, written in heroic couplets, with the avowed desire to reinstate in popular favour the silken plaid, which, from time immemorial, had been the favourite attire of Scots ladies, but, since the Rebellion of 1715, had been somewhat discarded, in consequence of Whiggish prejudices that it was a badge of disloyalty to the reigning house. Then we have Content, a long piece of moral philosophy in verse, and the Morning Interview, a poem written under the spell of Pope's Rape of the Lock, wherein the very machinery of the sylphs is copied from the great English satire. Nor is the 'South Sea Bubble,' which ran its brief course from 1718 to 1720, forgotten in Wealth, or The Woody (gallows), and two shorter poems illustrative of the prevailing madness. Epigrams, Addresses, Elegies, and Odes are also included, along with one or two of his famous poetical Epistles, modelled on those of Horace, and brimming over with genial bonhomie and good-humoured epicureanism. In this volume, also, we have additional evidence afforded how fondly he had become attached to Edinburgh and its environs. Scarce a poem is there in the book that lacks some reference to well-known features in the local landscape, showing that he still retained the love of wandering, in his spare hours, amid Pentland glens and by fair Eskside. Only with one extract will the reader's patience be taxed here. It is from his Ode to the Ph—, and is obviously an imitation of Horace's Ode to Thaliarchus. All the sunny glow of the great Roman's genius seems reflected in this revival of his sentiments, albeit under varying physical conditions, well-nigh three hundred and fifty lustra afterwards. The lines cleave to the memory with a persistence that speaks volumes for the catholicity and appropriateness of the thoughts—

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