Part 3 (1/2)

Little promise was visible in that piece of future excellence, yet within eighteen y Johnston_, to which the critics of the Easy Club gave unstinted praise For huraphic word-painting, the poeed by our latter-day standard of refineeneral Only to antiquarians and students of by-past custo or edifying

To follow Rah all his earlier pieces would simply exhaust the interest of the reader Suffice it to say, that, at the request of the Easy Club, he wrote an Elegy on the death of Dr Pitcairn in 1713, but the poem contained so many political references and satirical quips that he omitted it from the collected edition of his works in 1721 Pitcairn was a sort of Scottish Voltaire, a man far in advance of his time, who paid in popular suspicion and reprobation for his liberality and tolerance What Robert Chambers remarks of him is ithin the facts of the case 'His sentiments and opinions on various subjects accord with the htened views of the present day, and present a very striking and renorance and prejudice hich he was surrounded Fanatics and bigots he detested, and by fanatics and bigots, as a matter of course, he was abused and calu an atheist, a deist, a ion,_and one ice drunk every day_' Rarosslythe ly sarcastic hu, over their action in connection with the Union, who in reality were the traitors

To the instigation of the Easy Club we also owe the piece on _The Qualifications of a Gentleman_, published in 1715, subsequent to a debate in the Society on the subject Rau the task in a raceful and witty that the Club forentle their approbation of his as this, and did not ilance be supposed For in the concluding lines of the poeenial _bonhoood huht display, We frankly turned the vote another way; And in each thing we coreat prize nor birth nor riches won

The vote was carried thus:--that easy he Who should three years a social fellow be, And to our Easy Club give no offence, After triennial trial, should coreat title, as the blast of faore'

In 1715, also, he amused the h, with so _The Great Eclipse of the Sun_, foretold to take place during April 1715 The following picture, descriptive of the awe and terror produced on ignorant minds and on the brute creation by the occurrence of the eclipse, is as pithily effective in its si in Crabbe's _Tales in Verse_ or Shenstone's _Schoole darkness overshades the plains, 'Twill give an odd surprise to unwarned swains; Plain honest hinds, who do not know the cause, Nor know of orbs, their hed furrows ho that the end Of tien'ral conflagration near

The traveller, benighted on the road, Will turn devout, and supplicate his God

cocks with their careful , to their roosts will fly

The horned cattle will forget to feed, And corassy mead

Each bird of day will to his nest repair, And leave to bats and owls the dusky air; The lark and little robin's softer lay Will not be heard till the return of day'

The years 1715-16 were evidently periods of great activity on Ramsay's part, for at least five other notable productions of his pen are to be assigned to that date To him the revelation of his life's _metier_ had at last come, and his enthusiasm in its prosecution was intense

Henceforward poetry was to represent to him the supreme aim of existence But like the canny Scot he was, he preferred to regard its emoluments as a crutch rather than a staff; nay, on the other hand, the detere his daily duties in his trade, as he executed his literary labours, _con amore_, seems to have been ever present with himaker and a poet, he writes to his friend Arbuckle--

'I theek the out, and line the inside Of ather in the cash

Contented I have sic a skair, As does my business to a hair; And fain would prove to ilka Scot, That pourtith's no the poet's lot'

During the years in question Ramsay produced in rapid succession his poeain responsible for this clever satire; and also two huies_, one on John Cowper, the Kirk-Treasurer's-Man, whose official oversight of the _nyly ludicrous they on Lucky Wood_, alewife in the Canongate, also gave Ramsay full scope for the exercise of that broad Rabelaisian huer to be any doubt

Finally, in 1716, he achieved his great success, which stareatest delineators that had as yet appeared, of rural Scottish life a of one canto of a poem entitled _Christ's Kirk on the Green_ Tradition and internal evidence alike point to King James I as the author The the, which breaks out just as the dancing was co painted the rustic squabble with an uncommon spirit, in a most ludicrous manner, in a stanza of verse, the most difficult to keep the sense co in words for crambo's sake where they return so frequently, I have presuhable scene Ainal, I put a stop to the war, called a congress, and ht have their picture in theThe following cantos ritten, the one in 1715 (OS corresponding to January 1716), the other in 1718, about three hundred years after the first Let no worthy poet despair of iood sense will always be the sae of language'

The task was no easy one, but Ra the second and third cantos into the first, so that they read as the production of one mind For faithful portraiture of Scottish rural manners, for a fidelity, even in theTeniers and his vividly realistic pictures of Dutch rustic life, the cantos are unrivalled in Scottish literature, save by the scenes of his own _Gentle Shepherd_

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Preface

CHAPTER V

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

Ra in the Scots vernacular, was now thoroughly established Though the patronage of the Easy Club could no longer be extended to him, as the Governland 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