Background
Allan Ramsay was born on the 15th of October in 1686 at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, to John Ramsay, superintendent of Lord Hopetoun's lead-mines and his wife, Alice Bower, a native of Derbyshire.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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Allan Ramsay was born on the 15th of October in 1686 at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, to John Ramsay, superintendent of Lord Hopetoun's lead-mines and his wife, Alice Bower, a native of Derbyshire.
Allan Ramsay and his elder brother Robert probably attended the parish school at Crawfordjohn. In 1701 Allan was apprenticed to a wig-maker in Edinburgh.
In 1716 he had published a rough transcript of Christ's Kirk on the Green from the Bannatyne MS. , with some additions of his own.
In 1718 he republished the piece with more supplementary verses.
In the following year he printed a collection of Scots Songs.
The success of these ventures prompted him to collect his poems in 1722.
The volume was issued by subscription, and brought in the sum of four hundred guineas.
The Tea-Table Miscellany is containing some of Ramsay's own, some by his friends, several well-known ballads and songs, and some Caroline verse.
Nearly all the pieces were taken from the Bannatyne MS. , though they are by no means verbatim copies.
They included his version of Christ's Kirk (u. s. ) and a remarkable pastiche by the editor entitled the Vision.
In the volume of poems published in 1722 Ramsay had shown his bent to this genre, especially in " Patie and Roger, " which supplies two of the dramatis personae to his greater work.
Ramsay wrote little afterwards, though he published a few shorter poems, and new editions of his earlierwork.
A complete edition of his Poems appeared in London in 1731 and in Dublin in 1733.
With a touch of vanity he expressed the fear lest " the coolness of fancy that attends advanced years should make me risk the reputation I had acquired. "
He was already on terms of intimacy with the leading men of letters in Scotland and England.
He corresponded with Hamilton of Bangour (q. v. ), Somerville (q. v. ), Gay (q. v. ) and Pope.
Gay visited him in Edinburgh, and Pope praised his pastoral-compliments which were undoubtedly responsible for some of Ramsay's unhappy poetic ventures beyond his Scots vernacular.
Some of his prologues and epilogues were written for the London theatres.
In 1736 he set about the erection of a new theatre, " at vast expense, " in Carrubber's Close, Edinburgh; but the opposition was too strong, and the qew house was closed in 1737.
Ramsay's importance in literary history is twofold.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
He married Christian Ross in 1712; a few years after he had established himself as a wig-maker (not as a barber, as has been often said) in the High Street, and soon found himself in comfortable circumstances. They had six children. His eldest child was Allan Ramsay, the portrait painter.