;
Lest I should tine dear self-conceit
And read and write nae mair.'

His position in Edinburgh society was greatly improved by the success of
the volume. The magnates of 'Auld Reekie' who still clung to the capital
their forefathers had loved,--the legal luminaries of Bench and Bar, the
Professors of the University, the great medicos of the town,--all were
proud to know the one man who was redeeming the Scottish poetry of that
age from the charge of utter sterility. There was the Countess of
Eglinton, 'the beautiful Susannah Kennedy of the house of Colzean,'
whose 'Eglinton air' and manners in society were, for half a century,
regarded as the models for all young maidens to imitate. Living as she
did until 1780, when she had attained the great age of ninety-one, she
was visited by Dr. Johnson during his visit to Scotland in 1773. On that
occasion it transpired that the Countess had been married before the
lexicographer was born; whereupon, says Grant, 'she smartly and
graciously said to him that she might have been his mother, and now
adopted him; and at parting she embraced him, a mark of affection and
condescension which made a lasting impression on the mind of the great
literary bear.' She was one of Ramsay's warmest admirers. Then there
were Lord Stair and his lovely lady, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, then
about to become Lord Advocate: also, Laurence Dundas, Professor of
Humanity; Colin Drummond, of Metaphysics; William Law, of Moral
Philosophy; Alexander Monro (_primus_), of Anatomy, and George Preston,
of Botany, all of the University of Edinburgh--and all deeply
interested in the quaint, cheery, practical-minded little man, who
combined in himself the somewhat contradictory qualities of an excellent
poet and a keen man of business. Thus the influence was a reciprocal
one. His poetry attracted customers to his shop, while his bookselling
in turn brought him in contact with social celebrities, whose good
offices the self-complacent poet would not suffer to be lost for lack of
application.

In 1722 the proprietor of the famous John's Coffee House and Tavern, in
Parliament Close, off the High Street,--which, by the way, still
exists,--was a man named Balfour. The latter, who had lived for some
time in London, had acquired a smattering of literary culture, and
conceived the idea of rendering his house the Edinburgh counterpart of
Will's or Button's. He set himself to attract all the leading wits and
men o