"Harmonious pipe, how I envye thy bliss,

When press'd to Sylphia's lips with gentle kiss!
And when her tender fingers round thee move
In soft embrace, I listen and approve

Those melting notes, which soothe my soul to love.
Embalm'd with odours from her breath that flow,
You yield your music when she's pleased to blow;
And thus at once the charming lovely fair
Delights with sounds, with sweets perfumes the air.
Go, happy pipe, and ever mindful be

To court the charming Sylphia for me;
Tell all I feel-you cannot tell too much-
Repeat my love at each soft melting touch;
Since I to her my liberty resign,

Take thou the care to tune her heart to mine."

It was to this lady that Allan Ramsay, in 1726, dedicated his "Gentle Shepherd." The baronet was one of Ramsay's warmest friends, who "admired his genius and knew his

worth." During the poet's latter years much of his time was spent at Pennycuik House, and at his death its master erected at his beautiful family seat an obelisk to Ramsay's memory. Sir John by his second wife had seven sons and six daughters. One of the former was the author of the well-known work on Naval Tactics, and father of the eccentric Lord Eldin, one of Scotland's most eminent lawyers. Sir John died at Pennycuik, October 4, 1755. His extremely humorous and popular song of "The Miller" first appeared in the second volume of Yair's Charmer, published at Edinburgh four years before Sir John's death; and since that date it has been included in almost all collections of Scottish song. The first verse belongs to an older and an anonymous hand.

Merry may the maid be

That marries the miller,

For foul day and fair day

He's aye bringing till her;

Has aye a penny in his purse

For dinner and for supper;

And gin she please, a good fat cheese,
And lumps of yellow butter.

When Jamie first did woo me,

I speir'd what was his calling; Fair maid, says he, O come and see, Ye're welcome to my dwalling: Though I was shy, yet I cou'd spy

The truth of what he told me,

And that his house was warm and couth, And room in it to hold me.

Behind the door a bag of meal,

And in the kist was plenty

Of good hard cakes his mither bakes, And bannocks were na scanty;

A good fat sow, a sleeky cow
Was standin' in the byre;
While lazy puss with mealy mou'
Was playing at the fire.

Good signs are these, my mither says,
And bids me tak' the miller,

For foul day and fair day

He's aye bringing till her;
For meal and malt she does na want,
Nor anything that's dainty;
And noo and then a keckling hen
To lay her eggs in plenty.

In winter when the wind and rain
Blaws o'er the house and byre,
He sits beside a clean hearth stane
Before a rousing fire,

With nut-brown ale he lilts his tale,
Which rows him o'er fu' happy:
Who'd be a king-a petty thing,
When a miller lives so happy?

"Dalhousie, of an auld descent

My chief, my stoupe, and ornament!"

His father, John Ramsay, was superintendent of Lord Hopetoun's mines at Leadhills; and his mother, Alice Bowers, was the daughter of a gentleman of Derbyshire, who had been invited to Leadhills to assist by his skill in the introduction of some improvements in the art of mining. Allan, while yet an infant, lost his father, who died at the early age of twenty-five. His mother soon after married a Mr. Crichton, a small landholder in Lanarkshire. He was sent to the village school, where he acquired learning enough, as he tells us, to read Horace "faintly in the original." In the year 1700 he lost his mother, and his step-father was not long in discovering that he was old enough to take care of himself. He took Allan to Edinburgh, and apprenticed him to a wig-maker, an occupation which most of his biographers are very anxious to distinguish from a barber. The vocation of a 'skull-thacker," as Ramsay humorously calls it, would appear not to have been so uncongenial as his biographers would have us believe, as it is certain that he did not abandon it when his apprenticeship ceased, but followed it for many years after. In the parish registers he is called a wig-maker down to 1716. Four years previous to this he married Christian Ross, a writer's daughter, with whom he lived most happily for a period of thirty years.

The earliest of his poems which can now be traced is an epistle addressed in 1712" To the Most Happy Members of the Easy Club," a convivial society, of which in 1715 he was appointed poet-laureate; but it was soon after broken up by the Rebellion. In 1716 Ramsay published an edition of James I.'s poem of "Christ's Kirk on the Green," with a second canto by himself, to which, two years after, he added a third. The wit, fancy, and perfect mastery of the Scottish language which his additions to the king's poem displayed, greatly extended his reputation as a poet. Abandoning his original occupation, he entered upon the more congenial business of bookselling. His first shop was "at the sign of the Mercury, opposite to Niddry's Wynd," Edinburgh. Here he appears to have represented the threefold character of author, editor, and bookseller. His poems were printed on single sheets as

they were composed, in which shape they found a ready sale, the citizens being in the habit of sending their children with a penny for "Allan Ramsay's last piece." In 1720 he opened a subscription for a collection of his poems in a quarto volume, and the liberal manner in which it was immediately filled up by "all who were either eminent or fair in Scotland" affords a striking proof of the esteem in which the whilom wig-maker was now held. The volume, which cleared him 400 guineas, closed with an address by the author to his book after the manner of Horace, in which he thus boldly speaks of his hopes:

"Gae spread my fame,

And fix me an immortal name;

Ages to come shall thee revive,
And gar thee with new honours live.
The future critics, I foresee,

Shall have their notes on notes on thee;
The wits unborn shall beauties find
That never entered in my mind."

In 1724 the poet published the first volume of the Tea-table Miscellany, a collection of songs Scottish and English, which was speedily followed by a second; a third volume appeared in 1727, and a fourth after another interval. This publication acquired him more profit than lasting fame, passing through no less than twelve editions in a few years. This was followed by "The Evergreen: being a Collection of Scots Poems, wrote by the Ingenious before 1600," in two volumes. This work did him even less credit as an editor than the Teatable Miscellany had done. Lord Hailes says with truth that he took great liberty with the originals, omitting some stanzas and adding others; modernizing at the same time the versification, and varying the ancient manner of spelling. Ramsay availed himself of the opportunity of concealment afforded by this publication to give expression in a poem of pretended antiquity, and with a feigned signature, to those Jacobite feelings which prudence led him to conceal. It was called "The Vision," and said to be "compylit in Latin be a most lernit clerk in tyme of our hairship and opression, anno 1300, and translatit in 1524." The pretended subject was the "history of the Scots' sufferings by the unworthy condescension of Baliol to Edward I. of England till they recovered their indepen