and he conjures up the following extraordinary spectacle of angelic gymnastics, whereby the rescue of the lads was effected—
'Angels came posting down the divine beam
To save the helpless in their last extreme.'
Little promise was visible in that piece of future excellence, yet within eighteen months he had written the Elegy on Maggy Johnston, to which the critics of the Easy Club gave unstinted praise. For humorous description of the convivial habits of the day, and graphic word-painting, the poem is exceedingly happy. But alas! judged by our latter-day standard of refinement, good taste, and morality, it is caviare to the general. Only to antiquarians and students of by-past customs do its allusions contain much that is either interesting or edifying.
To follow Ramsay's poetic development through 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 well within the facts of the case. 'His sentiments and opinions on various subjects accord with the most enlightened views of the present day, and present a very striking and remarkable contrast to the ignorance and prejudice with which he was surrounded. Fanatics and bigots he detested, and by fanatics and bigots, as a matter of course, he was abused and calumniated. He was accused of being an atheist, a deist, a mocker and reviler of religion, ... and one who was twice drunk every day.' Ramsay, in his Elegy, rebutted those grossly malevolent falsehoods, not only clearing the memory of his patron from such foul dishonour, but with bitingly sarcastic humour he turned the tables on the calumniators, by showing, 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. Ramsay versified the arguments used by the various speakers, executing the task in a manner at once so graceful and witty that the Club formally declared him to be 'a gentleman by merit.' Only a periphrastic method of signifying their approbation of his work was this, and did not imply any reflection upon his birth, as might at first glance be supposed. For in the concluding lines of the poem Ramsay, with his genial bonhomie and humour had said—
'Yet that we more good humour might display,
We frankly turned the vote another way;
And in each thing we common topics shun,
So the great 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 commence
A gentleman; which gives as just a claim
To that great title, as the blast of fame
Can give to those who tread in human gore.'
In 1715, also, he amused the members of the Club, and after them the wits of Edinburgh, with some lines on the current predictions regarding 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 simplicity and fidelity to life and nature as anything in Crabbe's Tales in Verse or Shenstone's Schoolmistress—
'When this strange 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 motions or their laws,
Will from the half-ploughed furrows homeward bend
In dire confusion, judging that the end
Of time approacheth; thus possessed with fear,
They'll think the gen'ral conflagration near.
The traveller, benighted on the road,
Will turn devout, and supplicate his God.
Cocks with their careful mates and younger fry,
As if 'twere evening, to their roosts will fly.
The horned cattle will forget to feed,
And come home lowing from the grassy 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 métier 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 determination to discharge his daily duties in his trade, as he executed his literary labours, con amore, seems to have been ever present with him. On this point, and referring to his dual pursuits as a wigmaker and a poet, he writes to his friend Arbuckle—
'I theek the out, and line the inside
Of mony a douce and witty pash,
And baith ways gather in the cash.