RAMSAY AS AN EDITOR; THE 'TEA-TABLE MISCELLANY' AND THE
'EVERGREEN'--1721-25
The popularity accruing to Ramsay from the publication of the quarto of
1721 was so great that his fame was compared, in all seriousness, with
that of his celebrated English contemporaries, Pope, Swift and Addison.
No better evidence of the unfitness of contemporary opinion to gauge the
real and ultimate position of any author in the hierarchy of genius
could be cited than the case now before us. The critical perspective is
egregiously untrue. The effect of personality and of social qualities is
permitted to influence a verdict that should be given on the attribute
of intellectual excellence alone. Only through the lapse of time is the
personal equation eliminated from the estimate of an author's relative
proportion to the aggregate of his country's genius.
Nor were his countrymen aware of the extravagance of their estimate when
such a man as Ruddiman styled him 'the Horace of our days,' and when
Starrat, in a poetical epistle, apostrophises him in terms like these--
'Ramsay! for ever live; for wha like you,
In deathless sang, sic life-like pictures drew?
Not he wha whilome wi' his harp could ca'
The dancing stanes to big the Theban wa';
Nor he (shame fa's fool head!) as stories tell,
Could whistle back an auld dead wife frae hell.'
James Clerk of Penicuik considered Homer and Milton to be the only
worthy compeers of the Caledonian bard; and Sir William Bennet of
Marlefield insisted the Poet-Laureateship should be conferred on Ramsay,
as the singer who united in himself the three great qualifications--genius,
loyalty, and _respectability_! Certainly honest Allan would have been a
Triton amongst such minnows as Nicholas Rowe, who held the bays from
1714-18, or Laurence Eusden, whose tenure of the office lasted from 1718
to 1730, but of whose verse scarce a scrap remains.
Compliments reached Ramsay from all quarters of the compass. Burchet,
Arbuckle, Aikman, Arbuthnot, Ambrose Philips, Tickell, and many others,
put on record their appreciation of his merits as a poet. But of all the
testimonies, that which reached him from Pope was the most valued, and
drew from Allan the following lines, indicative of his intense
gratification, while also forming a favourable example of his skill in
epigram--
'Three times I've read your Iliad o'er:
The first time pleased me well;
New beauties unobserved before,
Next pleased me better still.
Again I tried to find a flaw,
Examined ilka line;
The third time pleased me best of a',
The labour seem'd divine.
Henceforward I'll not tempt my fate,
On dazzling rays to stare;
Lest I should tine dear self-conceit
And read and write nae mair.'
His position in Edinburgh society was greatly improved by the success of
the volume. The magnates of 'Auld Reekie' who still clung to the capital
their forefathers had loved,--the legal luminaries of Bench and Bar, the
Professors of the University, the great medicos of the town,--all were
proud to know the one man who was redeeming the Scottish poetry of that
age from the charge of utter sterility. There was the Countess of
Eglinton, 'the beautiful Susannah Kennedy of the house of Colzean,'
whose 'Eglinton air' and manners in society were, for half a century,
regarded as the models for all young maidens to imitate. Living as she
did until 1780, when she had attained the great age of ninety-one, she
was visited by Dr. Johnson during his visit to Scotland in 1773. On that
occasion it transpired that the Countess had been married before the
lexicographer was born; whereupon, says Grant, 'she smartly and
graciously said to him that she might have been his mother, and now
adopted him; and at parting she embraced him, a mark of affection and
condescension which made a lasting impression on the mind of the great
literary bear.' She was one of Ramsay's warmest admirers. Then there
were Lord Stair and his lovely lady, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, then
about to become Lord Advocate: also, Laurence Dundas, Professor of
Humanity; Colin Drummond, of Metaphysics; William Law, of Moral
Philosophy; Alexander Monro (_primus_), of Anatomy, and George Preston,
of Botany, all of the University of Edinburgh--and all deeply
interested in the quaint, cheery, practical-minded little man, who
combined in himself the somewhat contradictory qualities of an excellent
poet and a keen man of business. Thus the influence was a reciprocal
one. His poetry attracted customers to his shop, while his bookselling
in turn brought him in contact with social celebrities, whose good
offices the self-complacent poet would not suffer to be lost for lack of
application.
In 1722 the proprietor of the famous John's Coffee House and Tavern, in
Parliament Close, off the High Street,--which, by the way, still
exists,--was a man named Balfour. The latter, who had lived for some
time in London, had acquired a smattering of literary culture, and
conceived the idea of rendering his house the Edinburgh counterpart of
Will's or Button's. He set himself to attract all the leading wits and
men of letters in the Scottish metropolis at the time, and speedily
raised his house to considerable celebrity during the third and fourth
decades of last century. To Allan Ramsay he paid especial court, and the
poet became a daily visitor at the tavern. Here he would meet many of
the judges and leading lawyers, the professors from the College, any
visitors of note who might be in town; also Clerk of Penicuik, Sir
William Bennet of Marlefield, Hamilton of Bangour, the poet, Preston and
Crawford, the rising young song-writers of the day, as well as Beau
Forrester, the leader of fashion in Edinburgh, who is recorded to have
exhibited himself, once at least, in an open balcony in a chintz
nightgown, and been dressed and powdered by his _valet de chambre_ as an
object-lesson to the town dandies how to get themselves up. There, too,
among many others, he probably met the famous, or rather infamous, John
Law of Lauriston, banker, financier, and cheat, who was in Edinburgh in
1722, after having brought France to the verge of bankruptcy and ruined
thousands by his financial schemes. A motley crowd, in good sooth; yet
one whence our poet could draw many a hint for future use.
The success of the quarto encouraged Ramsay to redoubled efforts, and
the next six or seven years are the period of his greatest literary
fertility. In 1722 appeared his _Fables and Tales_ and _The Three
Bonnets_, a poem in four cantos. In some criticisms of Ramsay the
statement has been made that he owed the idea of his _Fables_ to Gay's
inimitable collection. That this is an error is evident, seeing the
latter did not publish his volume until 1726. In his preface to the
_Fables and Tales_ the poet says: 'Some of the following are taken from
Messieurs la Fontaine and La Motte, whom I have endeavoured to make
speak Scots with as much ease as I can; at the same time aiming at the
spirit of these eminent authors without being too servile a translator.'
Ramsay took as his prototypes in this species of composition, Phaedrus,
La Fontaine, and Desbillons, rather than Aesop. Many of the incidents
he drew from occurrences in the everyday life around him. For example,
_Jupiter's Lottery_ has obvious reference to the South Sea Bubble
lotteries; while _The Ass and the Brock_ was thought at the time to be a
sly skit on the addle-pated Commissioners Walpole had that year sent up
to Scotland to nip northern Jacobitism in the bud.
Ramsay's _Tales_ in verse contain some of his daintiest though not his
strongest work. He makes no claim to originality with respect to them,
but admits they are drawn in many cases from La Motte and other sources.
In his preface he says: 'If my manner of expressing a design already
invented have any particularity that is agreeable, good judges will
allow such imitations to be originals formed upon the idea of another.
Others, who drudge at the dull verbatim, are like timorous attendants,
who dare not move one pace without their master's leave.' Some of the
_Tales_ are obviously modelled on those of Chaucer and Boccaccio, but in
most of his, he insinuates a political or social moral, while they
narrate the story for the story's sake. _The Three Bonnets_ is a satire
on his countrymen for being so shortsighted, in their own interests, as
to consent to the Union. Bristle, the eldest of the three brothers in
the tale, was intended to represent the Tories and Scots Jacobites, who
were opposed to the scheme, and he is therefore drawn as a man of great
resolution and vigour of character. Bawsy, the youngest, or weak
brother, shadowed forth the character of those who consented under the
persuasion of the nobility; while Joukum, the second eldest of the
trio,--a vicious, dissipated _roue_,--stood for the portrait of those
Scots noblemen who accepted Lord Somers' bribes, and sold their country
to the English alliance. The story ran that their father, Duniwhistle,
on his deathbed, had, to each of the brothers, presented a bonnet with
which they were never to part. If they did so, ruin would overtake them.
Joukum falls in love with Rosie, a saucy quean, who demands, as the
price of her hand, that he should beg, borrow, or steal for her the
three bonnets. Joukum proceeds to Bristle, and receives a very angry
reception; he next repairs to lazy Bawsy, who, dazzled by the promises
the other makes as to the good things he will receive after the wedding,
surrenders his bonnet, which Joukum lays with his own at the feet of
Rosie. The latter agrees to wed Joukum, and a vivid picture is drawn of
the neglected state of poor Bawsy after this is accomplished. Rosie
proves a harridan, leading Joukum a sorry dance; and the poem concludes
with the contrasted pictures of the contented prosperity of
Bristle--Scotland as she might have been had she not entered the
Union--and the misery of Bawsy, representing Scotland as she then was.
Somewhat amusing is it to conjecture what Ramsay's feelings would be on
this subject could he for an instant be permitted to witness the
progress of Scotland during the past hundred and thirty years, and the
benefits that have accrued to her from the Union.
Amongst his metrical tales, one of the finest, without question, is _The
Lure_, a satirical fable or allegory, whereof the moral, as may best be
stated in the poet's own words--
----'shews plainly,
That carnal minds attempt but vainly
Aboon this laigher warld to mount,
While slaves to Satan.'
The narrative, however, though possessing many merits, is too indelicate
for latter-day taste even to be sketched in outline.
In 1723 appeared his poem _The Fair Assembly_, directed against the
Puritanic severity of that section of the community which took exception
to dancing and such pleasant amusements, alike for young and old.
Nothing reveals to us more vividly the strange contrasts in the
religious life of the time, than the fact that the clergy winked at the
drunkenness which was so prominent a feature in the social customs of
the eighteenth century, and fulminated unceasingly against dancing.
Those who indulged in it were in many instances barred from sacramental
privileges, and had such pleasant epithets as 'Herodias' and 'Jezebel'
hurled at them. As Chambers states in his _Traditions of Edinburgh_:
'Everything that could be called public or promiscuous amusement was
held in abhorrence by the Presbyterians, and only struggled through a
desultory and degraded existence by the favour of the Jacobites, who
have always been a less strait-laced part of the community. Thus there
was nothing like a conventional system of dancing in Edinburgh till the
year 1710,' when at length--induced, probably, by the ridicule cast on
the ascetic strictness of Scottish social functions by the English
visitors who from time to time sojourned in 'the grey metropolis of the
north'--a private association commenced weekly _reunions_, under the
name of 'The Assembly.' Its first rooms, according to Arnot's _History
of Edinburgh_, were in a humble tenement in the West Bow (standing on
the site now occupied by St. John's Free Church), where they continued
to be located until 1720, when they were removed to Old Assembly Close.
In the West Bow days it was, as Jackson tells us in his _History of the
Stage_, that the Presbyterian abhorrence of 'promiscuous dancing' once
rose to such a height that a crowd of people attacked the rooms when an
'Assembly' was being held, and actually perforated the closed doors with
red-hot spits.
As affording an interesting picture of the austerity of the time, a
sentence or two may be quoted from a little pamphlet in the Advocates'
Library entitled, 'A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to his
Friend in the City, with an Answer thereto concerning the New Assembly.'
The author writes: 'I am informed there is lately a Society erected in
your town which I think is called an "Assembly." The speculations
concerning this meeting have of late exhausted the most part of the
public conversation in this countryside. Some are pleased to say 'tis
only designed to cultivate polite conversation and genteel behaviour
among the better sort of folks, and to give young people an opportunity
of accomplishing themselves in both; while others are of opinion it will
have quite a different effect, and tends to vitiate and deprave the
minds and inclinations of the younger sort.'
The Assemblies themselves must have been characterised by the most
funereal solemnity, particularly during the _regime_ of the famous
'Mistress of Ceremonies,' or directress, Miss Nicky Murray. So late as
1753, when the horror at 'promiscuous dancing' might be supposed to have
mitigated a little, Goldsmith, who then visited the Assembly, relates
that, on entering the room, he saw one end of it 'taken up by the
ladies, who sat dismally in a group by themselves. On the other side
stand their pensive partners that are to be, but with no more
intercourse between the sexes than between two countries at war. The
ladies, indeed, may ogle and the gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is laid
on any closer commerce.'
As might well be supposed, such bigoted austerity had no friend in Allan
Ramsay. All that he could do he did to dissipate the mistaken ideas of
the Scottish clergy and the stricter section of the Presbyterian Church,
on the subject of dancing and the holding of the Assemblies. In the
preface to his poem of _The Fair Assembly_ he remarks: 'It is amazing to
imagine that any are so destitute of good sense and manners as to drop
the least unfavourable sentiment against the Assembly. It is to be owned
with regret, the best of things have been abused. The Church has been,
and in many countries is, the chief place for assignations that are not
warrantable.... The beauty of the fair sex, which is the great preserver
of harmony and society, has been the ruin of many. So places designed
for healthful and mannerly dancing have, by people of an unhappy turn,
been debauched by introducing gaming, drunkenness, and indecent
familiarities. But will any argue from these we must have no churches,
no wine, no beauties, no literature, no dancing? Forbid it, Heaven!
whatever is under your auspicious conduct must be improving and
beneficial in every respect.'
His poem is an ode in praise of dancing, and of the manner in which the
Assemblies were conducted. Fortifying his case with Locke's well-known
sentence--'Since nothing appears to me to give children so much becoming
confidence and behaviour, and so raise them to the conversation of those
above their age, as dancing, I think they should be taught to dance as
soon as they are capable of learning it,' he boldly avows himself as an
advocate for the moderate indulgence in the amusement, both as
health-giving and as tending to improve the mind and the manners, and
concludes with these two spirited stanzas, which are quoted here as
space will not permit us to refer to the piece again--
'Sic as against the Assembly speak,
The rudest sauls betray,
Where matrons, noble, wise, and meek,
Conduct the healthfu' play.
Where they appear, nae vice dare keek,
But to what's good gives way;
Like night, soon as the morning creek
Has ushered in the day.
Dear Em'brugh! shaw thy gratitude,
And of sic friends make sure,
Wha strive to make our minds less rude,
And help our wants to cure;
Acting a generous part and good,
In bounty to the poor;
Sic virtues, if right understood,
Should ev'ry heart allure.'
But we must hasten on. In 1724 Ramsay published his poem on _Health_,
inscribed to the Earl of Stair, and written at the request of that
nobleman. In it Ramsay exhibits his full powers as a satirist, and
inculcates the pursuit of health by the avoidance of such vices as
sloth, effeminacy, gluttony, ebriety, and debauchery, which he
personifies under the fictitious characters of Cosmelius, Montanus,
Grumaldo, Phimos, Macro, etc. These were said to be drawn from
well-known Edinburgh _roues_ of the time, and certainly the various
types are limned and contrasted with a masterly hand. To the cultured
reader, this is the poem of all Ramsay's minor works best calculated to
please and to convey an idea of his style, though at times his genius
seems to move under constraint.
But in 1724 our poet showed himself ambitious of winning distinction in
a new field. In 1718, as was stated previously, he had published a
volume of _Scots Songs_, some of them original, but a large number of
them adapted from older and imperfect copies. So successful had the
venture been, that a second edition had been called for in 1719, and a
third in 1722. To attempt something of a cognate character, yet upon a
larger scale, Ramsay now felt encouraged. In January 1724 appeared the
first volume of the _Tea-table Miscellany: a Collection of Scots Sangs_.
The second volume was published in 1725, with the note by Ramsay: 'Being
assured how acceptable new words to known good tunes would prove, I
engaged to make verses for above sixty of them in these two volumes;
about thirty were done by some ingenious young gentlemen, who were so
pleased with my undertaking that they generously lent me their
assistance.' 'Among those young gentlemen,' as Professor Masson says in
his excellent monograph on Ramsay in his _Edinburgh Sketches and
Memories_, 'we can identify Hamilton of Bangour, young David Malloch
(afterwards Mallet), William Crawford, William Walkinshaw,' to which we
would add James Preston. A third volume of the _Miscellany_ appeared in
1727 and a fourth in 1732, though, as regards the last, grave doubts
exist whether Ramsay were really its editor or collector. Few
compilations have ever been more popular. In twenty-five years twelve
large editions were exhausted, and since Ramsay's death several others
have seen the light, some better, some worse, than the original. All
classes in the community were appealed to by the songs contained in the
_Miscellany_. That he intended such to be the case is evident from the
first four lines of his dedication, in which he offers the contents--
'To ilka lovely British lass,
Frae ladies Charlotte, Anne, and Jean,
Down to ilk bonny singing Bess,
Wha dances barefoot on the green.'
In the collection each stratum of society finds the songs wherewith it
had been familiar from infancy to age. Tunes that were old as the days
of James V. were wedded to words that caught the cadences of the music
with admirable felicity; words, too, had tunes assigned them which
enabled them to be sung in castle and cot, in hall and hut, throughout
'braid Scotland.' The denizens of fashionable drawing-rooms found their
favourites--'Ye powers! was Damon then so blest?' 'Gilderoy,' 'Tell me,
Hamilla; tell me why'--in these fascinating volumes, even as the Peggies
and the Jennies of the ewe-bughts and the corn-rigs rejoiced to note
that 'Katy's Answer,' 'Polwart on the Green,' 'My Daddy forbad, my Minny
forbad,' and 'The Auld Gudeman,' had not been lost sight of. For many a
long day, at each tea-party in town, or rustic gathering in the country,
the _Tea-Table Miscellany_ was in demand, or the songs taken from it,
for the entertainment of those assembled.
The widespread delight evoked by the _Miscellany_ allured Ramsay to
essay next a task for which, it must be confessed, his qualifications
were scanty. Nine months after the publication of the first volume of
the _Miscellany_--to wit, in October 1724--appeared another compilation,
_The Evergrene: being ane Collection of Scots Poems, wrote by the
Ingenious before 1600_. It was dedicated to the Duke of Hamilton, and
in the dedicatory epistle he informs his Grace that 'the following old
bards present you with an entertainment that can never be disagreeable
to any Scotsman.... They now make a demand for that immortal fame that
tuned their souls some hundred years ago. They do not address you with
an indigent face and a thousand pitiful apologies to bribe the goodwill
of the critics. No; 'tis long since they were superior to the spleen of
these sour gentlemen.' He had been granted access to the 'Bannatyne
MSS.'--the literary remains of George Bannatyne, poet, antiquarian, and
collector of ancient manuscripts of Scottish poetry. This valuable
repository of much that otherwise would have perished was lent to Ramsay
by the Hon. William Carmichael of Skirling, advocate (brother to the
Earl of Hyndford), with permission to extract what he required. From
this priceless treasure-trove he drew specimens of Dunbar, Henryson,
Alexander Scott, Lyndsay, Kennedy, Montgomery, Sempill, Gavin Douglas,
and others. A similar favour was in 1770 granted to Lord Hailes when
preparing his volume, _Ancient Scottish Poems_. Interesting, therefore,
it is, to compare the manner in which the two editors respectively
fulfilled their tasks.
In Ramsay's case the poems he selected from the Bannatyne MSS. were
passed through the alembic of his own brain. Everything was sacrificed
to popularity and intelligibility. Lord Hailes, on the other hand, was
the most scrupulous of editors, refusing to alter a single letter; for,
as he said, the value of the poems lies in the insight they afford us
into the state of the language at the periods when the various pieces
were written. Alter them in any degree, even the slightest, and you
destroy the intrinsic character of the composition. 'In making his
compilation from the Bannatyne MSS.,' continued Lord Hailes, 'Ramsay has
omitted some stanzas and added others, has modernised the versification
and varied the ancient mode of spelling.' To offend thus was to render
himself liable to the severest censure from all literary antiquarians.
The fault was as inexcusable as would be a trader's in palming off
shoddy goods as those of the best materials. As an example of the
ruthless liberties our poet took with the text, it may be well to follow
Chalmers' example, and print side by side a stanza of Ramsay's
'paraphrase' and Lord Hailes' severely accurate rendering of the opening
of Dunbar's 'Thistle and the Rose'--
_Ramsay._
'Quhen Merch with variand winds was overpast,
And sweet Apryle had with his silver showers
Tane leif of Nature with an orient blast,
And lusty May, that mudder is of flowrs,
Had maid the birds begin the tymous hours;
Amang the tendir odours reid and quhyt,
Quhois harmony to heir was grit delyt.'
_Hailes._
'Quhen Merche wes with variand windis past,
And Appryll had with her silver shouris
Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast,
And lusty May, that mudder is of flouris,
Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris
Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt,
Quhois harmony to heir it wis delyt.'
In Dunbar's 'Lament for the Deth of the Makkaris' he not only varied but
added several lines, and these in the silliest manner possible. For
example, at the conclusion of Dunbar's noble elegy, Ramsay must needs
tack on three stanzas, as a prophecy by Dunbar himself, wherein the
vanity-full poet is introduced as 'a lad frae Hethermuirs.' What censure
could be too strong for inappropriate fooling like the following, coming
in to mar the solemn close of Dunbar's almost inspired lines?--
'Suthe I forsie, if spaecraft had,
Frae Hether-muirs sall rise a lad,
Aftir two centries pas, sall he
Revive our fame and memorie:
Then sal we flourish _evirgrene_;
All thanks to careful Bannatyne,
And to the patron kind and frie
Wha lends the lad baith them and me.
Far sall we fare baith eist and west,
Owre ilka clime by Scots possest;
Then sen our warks sall never dee,
_Timor mortis non turbat me_.'
In the _Evergreen_ Ramsay published two of his own poems, _The Vision_
(in which the author bewails the Union and the banishment of the
Stuarts) and _The Eagle and the Robin Reid-breist_ (likewise a Jacobite
poem), wilfully altering the spelling in both, and introducing
archaicisms into the thought, so as to pass them off as 'written by the
ingenious before 1600.' He also inserted _Hardyknute_, a fragment, which
subsequent research has proved to have been written by Lady Elizabeth
Wardlaw, a contemporary of Ramsay's. Although the _Evergreen_ did much
to revive popular interest in early Scottish poetry, and thus prepare
the way for Lord Hailes and Bishop Percy, from a critical point of view
it was worse than worthless, inasmuch as many of the errors and
alterations appearing in Ramsay's specimens of our early Scots literary
remains, have not been corrected even to this day.
But though Ramsay, in the estimation of stern literary antiquarians, has
been guilty of an offence so heinous,--an offence vitiating both the
_Tea-Table Miscellany_ and the _Evergreen_,--on the other hand, from the
point of view of the popular reader, his action in modernising the
language, at least, was not only meritorious but necessary, if the
pieces were to be intelligible to the great mass of the people.
Remembered, too, it must be, that Ramsay lived before the development of
what may be styled the antiquarian 'conscience,' in whose code of
literary morality one of the cardinal commandments is, 'Thou shalt in no
wise alter an ancient MS., that thy reputation and good faith may be
unimpugned in the land wherein thou livest, and that thou mayest not
bring a nest of critical hornets about thine ears.'
In his _Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh_, Dr. Daniel Wilson thus
succinctly states the case: 'Ramsay had much more of the poet than the
antiquary in his composition; and had, moreover, a poet's idea of
valuing verse less on account of its age than its merit. He lived in an
era of literary masquerading and spurious antiques, and had little
compunction in patching and eking an old poem to suit the taste of his
Edinburgh customers.' He was no Ritson,--and, after all, even Plautus
had, for three hundred years after the revival of learning, to await his
Ritschl!