The quarto of 1721 contained, moreover, several pieces that had not been previously printed. These we will at present only mention en passant, reserving critical analysis for our closing chapters. Not the least noticeable of the poems in the volume are those wherein he lays aside his panoply of strength,—the 'blythe braid Scots,' or vernacular,—and challenges criticism on what he terms 'his English poems.' These were undoubtedly the most ambitious flights in song hitherto attempted by the Scottish Tityrus. To the study of Dryden, Cowley, Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, he had devoted himself,—particularly to Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad, and to the collected edition of the works of the great author of the Rape of the Lock, issued in 1717. He had been in correspondence for some years previous with several of the leading English poets of the day, and with other individuals well known both in politics and London society, such as Josiah Burchet, who, when he died in 1746, had been Secretary to the Admiralty for forty-five years, and had sat in six successive Parliaments. This was the friend whose admiration for Ramsay was so excessive as to prompt him to send (as was the custom of the time) certain recommendatory verses for insertion in the quarto, wherein he hailed honest Allan in the following terms—
'Go on, famed bard, the wonder of our days,
And crown thy head with never-fading bays;
While grateful Britons do thy lines revere,
And value as they ought their Virgil here.'
Small wonder is it that, stimulated by such flattery, Allan should have desired to evince to his friends by the Thames, that the notes of their northern brother of the lyre were not confined to the humble strains of his own rustic reed.
In the quarto, therefore, we have a poem, Tartana, or The Plaid, written in heroic couplets, with the avowed desire to reinstate in popular favour the silken plaid, which, from time immemorial, had been the favourite attire of Scots ladies, but, since the Rebellion of 1715, had been somewhat discarded, in consequence of Whiggish prejudices that it was a badge of disloyalty to the reigning house. Then we have Content, a long piece of moral philosophy in verse, and the Morning Interview, a poem written under the spell of Pope's Rape of the Lock, wherein the very machinery of the sylphs is copied from the great English satire. Nor is the 'South Sea Bubble,' which ran its brief course from 1718 to 1720, forgotten in Wealth, or The Woody (gallows), and two shorter poems illustrative of the prevailing madness. Epigrams, Addresses, Elegies, and Odes are also included, along with one or two of his famous poetical Epistles, modelled on those of Horace, and brimming over with genial bonhomie and good-humoured epicureanism. In this volume, also, we have additional evidence afforded how fondly he had become attached to Edinburgh and its environs. Scarce a poem is there in the book that lacks some reference to well-known features in the local landscape, showing that he still retained the love of wandering, in his spare hours, amid Pentland glens and by fair Eskside. Only with one extract will the reader's patience be taxed here. It is from his Ode to the Ph—, and is obviously an imitation of Horace's Ode to Thaliarchus. All the sunny glow of the great Roman's genius seems reflected in this revival of his sentiments, albeit under varying physical conditions, well-nigh three hundred and fifty lustra afterwards. The lines cleave to the memory with a persistence that speaks volumes for the catholicity and appropriateness of the thoughts—
'Look up to Pentland's tow'ring tap,
Buried beneath big wreaths o' snaw,
O'er ilka cleugh, ilk scaur, and slap,
As high as ony Roman wa'.
Driving their ba's frae whins or tee,
There's no ae gowfer to be seen;
Nor doucer fouk, wysing a-jee
The biassed bowls on Tamson's green.
Then fling on coals, and ripe the ribs,
And beek the house baith butt and ben;
That mutchkin stoup it hauds but dribs,
Then let's get in the tappit hen.
Guid claret best keeps out the cauld,
An' drives awa' the winter soon:
It makes a man baith gash and bauld,
An' heaves his saul ayont the moon.
Leave to the gods your ilka care;
If that they think us worth their while,
They can a rowth o' blessings spare,
Which will our fashous fears beguile.'