RESTING ON HIS LAURELS; BUILDS HIS THEATRE; HIS BOOK OF 'SCOTS
PROVERBS'--1730-40
Ramsay had now reached the pinnacle of his fame. He was forty-four years
of age, prosperous in business, enjoying a reputation not alone confined
to Great Britain, but which had extended to France, to Holland, and to
Italy. His great pastoral was lauded in terms the most gratifying by
critics everywhere as the most perfect example of the pure idyll that
had appeared since the days of Theocritus. The proudest of the nobility
were not ashamed to take his arm for a walk down High Street, or to
spend an hour cracking jokes and discussing literature with him under
the sign of Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden.
What Chambers says in his _Eminent Scotsmen_, from which are culled the
following facts, is strictly accurate: 'Ramsay had now risen to wealth
and high respectability, numbering among his familiar friends the best
and the wisest men in the nation. By the greater part of the Scottish
nobility he was caressed, and at the houses of some of the most
distinguished of them, Hamilton Palace, Loudoun Castle, etc., was a
frequent visitor.' With Duncan Forbes, Lord Advocate (and before many
years to be Lord President), with Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Sir
William Bennet of Marlefield, Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, near
Edinburgh, he lived in the habit of daily, familiar, and friendly
intercourse. With contemporary poets his relations were likewise of the
most friendly kind. The two Hamiltons, of Bangour and Gilbertfield, were
his constant associates. To Pope, to Gay, and to Somerville; to Meston,
to Mitchell, and to Mallet, he addressed poetical greetings, and several
of them returned the salutations in kind. From England, too, came
another and a different proof of his popularity, in the fact that, when
in 1726 Hogarth published his 'Illustrations of Hudibras' in twelve
plates, these were dedicated to 'William Ward of Great Houghton,
Northamptonshire, and Allan Ramsay of Edinburgh.' Edinburgh itself was
proud of her poet, and was not averse to manifesting the fact when
fitting opportunity offered. He was a frequent visitor at the
University, and Dugald Stewart relates that an old friend of his father
informed him, the students of the fourth and fifth decades of last
century used to point out a squat, dapper, keen-eyed little man, who was
wont to walk up and down the space in front of their classrooms with
Professors Drummond and Maclaurin, as 'the great poet, Allan Ramsay.'
The narrator also added, he felt a secret disappointment when thus
viewing for the first time a real live poet, and noting that he differed
neither in dress nor mien from ordinary men. From his studies among the
classics, and from the prints in the early editions of Horace and
Virgil, he had been led to imagine the genus poet always perambulated
the earth attired in flowing singing robes, their forehead bound with a
chaplet, and carrying with them a substantial looking lyre!
The year 1728 had witnessed, as we have seen, the publication of Allan
Ramsay's last original work. Thereafter he was content to rest on his
laurels, to revise new editions of his various poems, and to add to his
_Tea-Table Miscellany_ and _Scots Songs_. Perhaps he may have been
conscious that the golden glow of youthful imagination at life's
meridian, had already given place to those soberer tints that rise
athwart the mental horizon, when the Rubicon of the forties has been
crossed. In 1737, when writing to his friend Smibert, the painter (then
in Boston, America, whither he had emigrated), Ramsay states, with
reference to his relinquishment of poetry: 'These six or seven years
past I have not written a line of poetry; I e'en gave over in good time,
before the coolness of fancy that attends advanced years should make me
risk the reputation I had acquired.' He then adds in the letter the
following lines of poetry, from which we gather, further, that his
determination was the result, not of mere impulse, pique, or chagrin,
but of reasoned resolve--
'Frae twenty-five to five-and-forty,
My muse was neither sweer nor dorty;
My Pegasus would break his tether,
E'en at the shaking of a feather,
And through ideas scour like drift,
Straking his wings up to the lift.
Then, then my soul was in a low,
That gart my numbers safely row;
_But eild and judgment 'gin to say,
Let be your sangs and learn to pray_.'
By 1730, then, Ramsay's work, of an original kind at least, was over. In
that year, however, he published another short volume of metrical
fables, under the title, _A Collection of Thirty Fables_. Amongst them
we find some of the most delightful of all our poet's work in this vein.
_Mercury in Quest of Peace_, _The Twa Lizards_, _The Caterpillar and the
Ant_, and _The Twa Cats and the Cheese_, possess, as Chalmers truly
says, 'all the _naivete_ of Phaedrus and La Fontaine, with the wit and
ease of Gay.'
And thus Ramsay's literary career closed, after well-nigh two decades of
incessant intellectual activity. Begun, as Professor Masson says, 'in
the last years of the reign of Queen Anne, and continued through the
whole of the reign of George I., it had just touched the beginning of
that of George II. when it suddenly ceased. Twice or thrice afterwards,
at long intervals, he did scribble a copy of verses; but in the main,
from his forty-fifth year onwards, he rested on his laurels.
Henceforward he contented himself with his bookselling, the management
of his circulating library, and the superintendence of the numerous
editions of his _Collected Poems_, his _Gentle Shepherd_, and his
_Tea-Table Miscellany_.'
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. Of the latter, many were
Scotsmen, and to them the vividly realistic scenes and felicitous
character-drawing of _The Gentle Shepherd_ touched, with a power and a
pathos almost overwhelming, the subtlest fibres of that love for
'Caledonia, stern and wild,' which, deepened by distance as it is, and
strengthened by absence, seems so inwoven with the very warp and woof of
the nature of her children that, go where they will, it can never be
eradicated, until the last great consummation overtakes them, when earth
returns to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.
Our poet now had more time on his hands for those social duties and
convivial pleasures wherein he took such delight. His new premises in
the Luckenbooths, facing down towards, and therefore commanding a full
view of, the magnificent thoroughfare of the High Street, were
immediately opposite the ancient octagonal-shaped Cross of Edinburgh,
where all official proclamations were made. The vicinity of the Cross
was, on favourable afternoons, the fashionable rendezvous of the period.
No sooner was the midday dinner over, than the fair ladies and gallants
of the town--the former in the wide hoops, the jewelled stomachers, the
silken _capuchins_ (cloaks), the _bongraces_ (hoods), and high
head-dresses of the day; the latter in the long, embroidered coats,
knee-breeches, silk stockings, and buckled shoes, tye-wigs, and
three-cornered hats peculiar to the fourth decade of last
century--issued from their dingy turnpike stairs in the equally darksome
closes, pends, and wynds, to promenade or lounge, as best pleased them,
in the open space around the Cross. Here were to be met all sorts and
conditions of men and women. Viewed from the first storey of the
building wherein Allan Ramsay's shop was situated, the scene must have
been an exceedingly animated one. Mr. Robert Chambers, with that
graphic power of literary scene-painting he possessed in measure so
rich, represented the picture, in his _Traditions of Edinburgh_, in
colours so vivid, and with a minuteness of detail so striking, that
subsequent descriptions have been little more than reproductions of his.
Let us take advantage of his admirable sketch of the scene round the
Cross, filling in any important details he may have omitted.
The jostlement and huddlement was extreme everywhere. Ladies and
gentlemen paraded along in the stately attire of the period: grave Lords
of Session, and leading legal luminaries, bustling Writers to the Signet
and their attendant clerks, were all there. Tradesmen chatted in groups,
often bareheaded, at their shop doors; _caddies_ whisked about, bearing
messages or attending to the affairs of strangers; children darted about
in noisy sport; corduroyed carters from Gilmerton are bawling 'coals'
and 'yellow sand'; fishwives are crying their 'caller haddies' from
Newhaven; whimsicals and idiots going about, each with his or her crowd
of tormentors; _tronmen_ with their bags of soot; town-guardsmen in
rusty uniform, and with their ancient Lochaber axes; water-carriers with
their dripping barrels; Highland drovers in philabeg, sporran, and cap;
Liddesdale farmers with their blue Lowland bonnets; sedan chairmen, with
here and there a red uniform from the castle--such was the scene upon
which, in the early months of the year 1732,--alas! his last on
earth,--the celebrated London poet, John Gay, gazed from the windows of
Allan Ramsay's shop. Beside him stood the redoubtable Allan himself,
pointing out to him the most notable personages in the motley crowd,
and every now and then called upon to explain some Scotticism in his
speech which reminded Gay of passages in _The Gentle Shepherd_ that Pope
had desired him to get explained from the author himself. And worthy
Allan is flattered yet flustered withal with the honour, for beside them
stand the famous Duchess of Queensberry--better known as Prior's
'Kitty,' otherwise Lady Catherine Hyde, daughter of the Earl of
Clarendon--and her miser husband, who only opened his close fist to
build such palatial piles as Queensberry House, in the Edinburgh
Canongate, and Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfriesshire. They have brought Gay
up north with them, after his disappointment in getting his
play--_Polly_, the continuation of the _Beggars' Opera_--refused
sanction for representation by the Duke of Grafton, then Lord
Chamberlain. Ah! how honest Allan smirks and smiles, and becks and bows,
with a backbone that will never be as supple in _kotowing_ to anyone
else. For does he not, like many more of us, dearly love a lord, and
imagine the sun to rise and set in the mere enjoyment of the ducal
smile?
A pleasant visit was that paid by Gay to Scotland in 1732, before he
returned to London to die, in the December of the same year. He spent
many of his spare hours in the company of Ramsay, and that of the two
friends in whose society much of the latter's time was now to be
passed--Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and Sir Alexander Dick of
Prestonfield. By all three, Gay was deeply regretted,--by Clerk and Dick
chiefly, because he had so much that was akin to their own genial
friend, Allan Ramsay.
In 1736 our poet published a collection of _Scots Proverbs_, which, for
some reason or another, has never been printed with his poems in those
editions that are professedly complete. Only in Oliver's pocket edition
is this excellent thesaurus of pithy and forcible Scottish apophthegms
presented with his other works. That it is one of the best repertories
of our proverbial current coin that exists, particularly with regard to
the crystallised shrewdness and keen observation embodied in them, must
be apparent to any reader, even the most cursory. To supersede the
trashy works of Fergusson and Kelly was the reason why Ramsay set
himself to gather up the wealth of aphoristic wisdom that lay manna-like
on all sides of him. As might be expected, it is richest in the sayings
common throughout the three Lothians, though the Lowlands, as a whole,
are well represented. Of Gaelic proverbs there is scarce a trace,
showing how faintly, despite his Jacobitism, his sympathies were aroused
by Celtic tradition or Celtic poetry. Many of the sayings were
undoubtedly coined in Ramsay's own literary mint, though the ideas may
have been common property among the people of his day. But how close the
union between the ideas and their expression in this collection! Of
looseness of phrase there is scarce a trace. How apt the stereotyping of
current idioms in such pithy verbal nuggets as--'Ne'er tell your fae
when your foot sleeps,' 'Nature passes nurture,' 'Muckledom is nae
virtue,' 'Happy the wife that's married to a motherless son,' 'Farmers'
faugh gar lairds laugh.'
Ramsay's dedication of his volume of _Scots Proverbs_ to 'The Tenantry
of Scotland, Farmers of the Dales and Storemasters of the Hills,' shows
the value he attached to this kind of literature. He writes in the
colloquial Scots, and his words are valuable as presenting us with a
reliable example of the Scots vernacular as spoken in educated circles
early last century. 'The following hoard of _Wise Sayings_ and
observations of our forefathers,' he remarks, 'which have been gathering
through many bygone ages, I have collected with great care, and restored
to their proper sense, which had been frequently _tint_ [lost] by
publishers that did not understand our landwart [inland] language.... As
naething helps our happiness mair than to hae the mind made up with
right principles, I desire you, for the thriving and pleasure of you and
yours, to use your een and lend your lugs to these guid auld says, that
shine wi' wailed sense and will as lang as the warld wags. Gar your
bairns get them by heart; let them hae a place among your family-books;
and may never a window-sole through the country be without them. On a
spare hour, when the day is clear, behind a rick, or on the green howm,
draw the treasure frae your pooch and enjoy the pleasant companion. Ye
happy herds, while your hirdsels are feeding on the flowery braes, ye
may eithly mak yoursels masters of the holy ware.'
Hitherto the sky of Ramsay's life had been well-nigh cloudless.
Misfortune and failure had never shrivelled his hopes or his enterprises
with the frost of disappointment. Nothing more serious than an envious
scribbler's splenetic effusions had ever assailed him. Now he was to
know the sting of mortification and the pinch of financial loss.
We have already adverted to the gloomy bigotry of a certain section of
the Scottish clergy of this period. To them everything that savoured of
jollity and amusement was specially inspired by the Evil One, for the
hindrance of their ministerial labours. The references to this matter
are manifold throughout Ramsay's poetry. Though no one had a deeper
respect for vital piety than he, no one more bitterly reprobated that
puritanic fanaticism that saw sin and wrong-doing in innocent recreation
and relaxation. Against Ramsay the ecclesiastical thunder had commenced
to roll some years before (according to Wodrow), when he started his
circulating library. That the works of Shakespeare, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Dryden, Waller, and the romances of
chivalry, should be placed in the hands of the youth of Edinburgh, was
accounted a sin so grave as to merit Presbyterial censure. Accordingly,
a party, amongst whom was the infamous Lord Grange, attempted to
suppress the library. But the _aegis_ of the redoubtable Dr. Webster had
been thrown over him, and the pother in time died away. It appears,
however, that Ramsay, in 1736, had imported a large stock of
translations of the most celebrated French plays of the day, and had
added them to his library. Sufficient was this to blow into a blaze the
smouldering embers of clerical indignation. From pulpit and press our
poet was fulminated at. Not that he gave the smallest sign that he cared
one jot for all their denunciations. He attended to his shop and his
library, and quaffed his claret at the _Isle of Man Arms_, at Luckie
Dunbar's in Forrester's Wynd, or at the famous John's Coffee House, with
the cynical response that 'they might e'en gang their ain gate.'
But just at this precise time Ramsay conceived the idea of becoming a
theatre-proprietor, and thus benefiting the worthy burgesses of Auld
Reekie by erecting a house where standard dramas might be performed. The
very proposal raised a storm of indignation in clerical circles, against
which even Dr. Webster and his friends were powerless. Hitherto the
opposition of the Presbyterian ministers had prevented the erection of
any theatre in the town. The companies of itinerating players who might
chance to visit the town from time to time, were compelled to hire a
hall or a booth for their performances. Prior to the Commonwealth,
_histrionic_ exhibitions were frequent in Edinburgh. But from 1650 to
the Union, fanaticism became paramount and sternly repressed them. One
of the earliest mentions of dramatic representations after that date
occurs in 1710, and again in 1715, when a regular company of players
performed certain dramas in the Long Gallery and in the Tennis Court at
Holyrood-house. In the subsequent winter, as we learn from the _Scots
Courant_ of December 16, 1715, the plays were represented in the old
magazine-house at the back of the foot of the Canongate, on which
occasion, said the notice, 'the several parts would be performed by some
new actors just arrived from England.'
On the last night of the year 1719 Ramsay supplied a prologue for the
performance of Otway's play, 'The Orphan,' and 'The Cheats' of Scapin,
'by some young gentlemen,' wherein he remarked--
'Somebody says to some folk, we're to blame;
That 'tis a scandal and a burning shame
To thole young callants thus to grow sae snack,
And learn--O mighty crimes!--to speak and act!
But let them talk. In spite of ilk endeavour,
We'll cherish wit, and scorn their fead or favour.'
In 1722 he wrote an epilogue, to be spoken after the acting of 'The
Drummer'; in 1726 a prologue, to be addressed to the audience by the
famous Tony Aston on the first night of his appearance; in 1727 a
prologue, to be delivered before the acting of 'Aurenzebe,' at
Haddington School; and finally, an epilogue, recited after the
performance of 'The Orphan' and 'The Gentle Shepherd,' in January 1729.
All these, and probably others that have not been preserved, evince that
Ramsay cherished a warm affection for the drama, with an earnest desire
to see his fellow-countrymen profit by it. After the indignant
remonstrance--
'Shall London have its houses twa,
And we be doomed to nane ava?
Is our metropolis ance the place
Where lang-syne dwelt the royal race
Of Fergus, this gait dwindled doun
To the level o' a _clachan_ toun?
While thus she suffers the desertion
Of a maist rational diversion,'
he commenced to erect, in 1736, a playhouse in Carrubber's Close. In his
advertisement in the _Caledonian Mercury_, announcing the prospective
opening, he states, he had built the house 'at vast expense,' in order
that, during the winter nights, the citizens might enjoy themselves in
hearing, performed by competent actors, dramas that would amuse,
instruct, and elevate.
His advertisement, in the issue of the _Mercury_ for September 15, 1736,
reads:--
'The new theatre in Carrubber's Close being in great forwardness,
will be opened on the 1st of November. These are to advertise the
ladies and gentlemen who incline to purchase annual tickets, to
enter their names before the 20th of October next, on which day
they shall receive their tickets from Allan Ramsay, on paying 30s.,
no more than forty to be subscribed for; after which none will be
disposed of under two guineas.'
Meantime the clerical party and the enemies of Ramsay had joined hands
in common opposition to his plans. 'Hardly had he begun operations'
(writes Professor Masson) 'when there came the extraordinary statute of
10 Geo. II. (1737), regulating theatres for the future all over Great
Britain. As by this statute, there could be no performance of stage
plays out of London and Westminster, save when the king chanced to be
residing in some other town, Ramsay's speculation collapsed.' In fact,
the municipal authorities, at the instigation of the clergy, employed
the force of the statute peremptorily to close his theatre. In vain he
appealed to law. 'He only received a quibble for his pains. He was
injured without being damaged,' said the lawyers. In vain he appealed in
a poetical epistle, to President Duncan Forbes of the Court of Session,
wherein he says--
'Is there aught better than the stage
To mend the follies o' the age,
If managed as it ought to be,
Frae ilka vice and blaidry free?
Wherefore, my Lords, I humbly pray
Our lads may be allowed to play,
At least till new-house debts be paid off,
The cause that I'm the maist afraid of;
Which lade lyes on my single back,
And I maun pay it ilka plack.'
Well might the good-hearted, honourable-minded poet dread the future.
The responsibility lay upon him alone for the expense of the building,
and from many intimations he let drop the failure of the speculation
well-nigh ruined him. But the increasing sale of his books, and the
expanding prosperity of his business, soon recouped his outlay. That he
was much depressed by his losses, heavy and unexpected as they were, is
evident from a private letter he wrote at this time to the President,
and which is still preserved at Culloden House. 'Will you,' he writes,
'give me something to do? Here I pass a sort of half-idle, scrimp life,
tending a trifling trade that scarce affords me the needful. Had I not
got a parcel of guineas from you, and such as you, who were pleased to
patronise my subscriptions, I should not have had a gray groat. I think
shame--but why should I, when I open my mind to one of your
goodness?--to hint that I want to have some small commission, when it
happens to fall in your way to put me into it.'
Not without an element of pathos is the scene that is here presented, of
him, who had done so much to amuse and elevate his fellows, being
compelled to make such a request. Satisfactory is it, however, to know
that, though the poetical epistle 'to the Lords' was fruitless of
practical benefit in the way he desired, albeit exciting for him the
warmest sympathy among the worthy senators of the College of Justice,
there is reason to believe the President was able to throw 'some small
commission' in Ramsay's way, and thus, by his opportune generosity, to
dispel the thunderclouds of misfortune hurrying hard upon the poet's
steps.
Of course, to his enemies (amongst whom was Pennecuik, the poet), as
well as to the more bigoted of the clergy, his trials were a judgment
upon his conduct. A shoal of pamphlets and pasquinades appeared, as
though to rub salt into the raw wounds of his mortified feelings: such
despicable effusions--written in more than one case by 'ministers of the
Gospel'--as 'The Flight of Religious Piety from Scotland, upon account
of Ramsay's lewd books and the Hell-bred 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,' etc. As Chalmers
remarks: 'The lampooners left intimations of what must have been of
considerable consolation to our adventurous dramatist; that "he had
acquired wealth"; that "he possessed a fine house"; that "he had raised
his kin to high degree."' Such topics of censure did more honour than
hurt to Ramsay. To their ribald raillery the poet replied only by a
contemptuous silence, infinitely more galling than if he had turned on
the wasps and crushed them, thus bespeaking for them a prominence in no
measure merited. Their spleen he forgot amid the engrossments of a
closer attention to business, and the charms of friendship's
intercourse.
It may be added, however, that the whirligig of time brought in for
Ramsay his revenges upon his enemies. The theatre which in 1746 was
erected in Playhouse Close in the Canongate, though only by a quibbling
evasion of the statute, so Draconic were its provisions, was largely due
to his energy and exertions. Thus, says a biographer, Ramsay, at the age
of sixty, had the satisfaction to see dramatical entertainments enjoyed
by the citizens, whose theatrical tastes he had kindled and fostered.