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 ægis 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—