The Gentle Shepherd. Allan Ramsay

Чтение книги онлайн.

       The editions marked thus (*) follow a different text of the "Gentle Shepherd" from that of the present edition. See the Notes.

      THE LIFE

      OF

      ALLAN RAMSAY.

      Born 1686.—Died 1758.

      Allan Ramsay, the restorer of Scottish Poetry, was born on the 15th day of October, 1686, at Leadhills, in the parish of Crawfordmoor, in Lanarkshire. His father, John Ramsay, superintended Lord Hopetoun's lead mines at that place; and his grandfather, Robert Ramsay, a writer or attorney in Edinburgh, had possessed the same appointment: his great-grandfather, Captain John Ramsay, was the son of Ramsay of Cockpen in Mid-Lothian, who was brother of Ramsay of Dalhousie. His mother, Alice Bower, was daughter of Allan Bower, a gentleman of Derbyshire, whom Lord Hopetoun had brought to Scotland to instruct and superintend his miners. His grandmother, Janet Douglas, was daughter of Douglas of Muthil. In his lineage, therefore, our Poet had something to boast of, and, though born to nae lairdship, he fails not to congratulate himself on being sprung from the loins of a Douglas. He did not long enjoy the blessing of paternal care and instruction; for, shortly after his birth, his father died, leaving the widow and family in a condition rather destitute. His mother soon after married a Mr. Crichton, a petty landholder of the same county, by whom she had several children. Under these unfortunate circumstances, young Allan entered upon the career of life; and, for fourteen years he remained in the house of his stepfather, with no other education than was supplied by the school of the parish. Here, surrounded by wild and mountainous scenery, and amid an artless and secluded people, whose manners and language were of patriarchal simplicity, his childhood received those pastoral and Arcadian impressions, which were too lively to be effaced by future habits, however uncongenial, and of which he in his manhood, amid all the artificial life of the city, made so lively and fascinating a transcription.

      Of his progress and attainments at school, we have no record. It does not appear that he read much poetry prior to his twentieth year; and his emulation, and ambitious thoughts, of which he says he had some, seem to have slumbered in inactivity, till they were awakened to unceasing exercise by the society and the excitements of Edinburgh.

      To Edinburgh he was sent in his fifteenth year, when the felicity of his boyhood had been broken by the death of his mother. We have the assurance of undoubted testimony, that at that early age, when his mind was beginning to search about for the choice of a profession, his wishes were to be a painter; a circumstance too little known, and too little noticed by his biographers, but strongly indicative, in our opinion, of the aspirations of his youthful disposition. While yet in the country, he had been in the practice of amusing himself with copying such prints as he found in the books of his mother's house. This early predilection for an art kindred to that wherein he afterwards excelled, very likely followed bins through life, and led him to devote his son to that favourite study, from which he himself was so harshly precluded. For his stepfather, little consulting the inclination of young Allan, and wishing as soon as possible, and at any rate, to disencumber himself of the charge of his support, bound this nursling of the Muses apprentice to a wig-maker. Lowly as this profession is, it has been vindicated by one of Ramsay's biographers into comparative dignity, by separating it from the kindred business of barber, with which it is vulgarly, and too frequently confounded. Ramsay was never, it seems, a barber; his enemies never blotted him with that ignominy; his calling of "scull-thacker," as he himself ludicrously terms it, was too dignified to be let down into an equality with the men of the razor.

      Thus from the beginning his business was with the heads of men. We know not on what authority it is asserted by some of his biographers, that he abandoned this profession on finishing his apprenticeship: he is called wig-maker in the parish record down to the year 1716; and we suspect he continued so till the year 1718, or 1719, for in one of Hamilton's letters to him, dated 24th of July, 1719, mention is made of his "new profession."

      He was in 1712 induced, as one of his biographers observes, by the example of other citizens, to enter into the state of marriage. His wife's name was Christian Ross, daughter of a writer in Edinburgh, who brought him, year after year, a numerous family of three sons and five daughters. Of this family, Allan, the eldest, and the only son who survived him, inherited the genius of his father, and, having received a liberal education, became afterwards conspicuous as a scholar, and a painter.[3]

      About the year 1711 or 1712 our Poet seems first to have ventured into the regions of rhyme. The clubs and societies of Edinburgh had provoked in him this new passion, and his earliest effort, so far as is known, is an Address, supplicatory of admission, "To the most happy members of the Easy Club," a production bearing every mark of unskilfulness СКАЧАТЬ