f letters in the Scottish metropolis at the time, and speedily
raised his house to considerable celebrity during the third and fourth
decades of last century. To Allan Ramsay he paid especial court, and the
poet became a daily visitor at the tavern. Here he would meet many of
the judges and leading lawyers, the professors from the College, any
visitors of note who might be in town; also Clerk of Penicuik, Sir
William Bennet of Marlefield, Hamilton of Bangour, the poet, Preston and
Crawford, the rising young song-writers of the day, as well as Beau
Forrester, the leader of fashion in Edinburgh, who is recorded to have
exhibited himself, once at least, in an open balcony in a chintz
nightgown, and been dressed and powdered by his _valet de chambre_ as an
object-lesson to the town dandies how to get themselves up. There, too,
among many others, he probably met the famous, or rather infamous, John
Law of Lauriston, banker, financier, and cheat, who was in Edinburgh in
1722, after having brought France to the verge of bankruptcy and ruined
thousands by his financial schemes. A motley crowd, in good sooth; yet
one whence our poet could draw many a hint for future use.

The success of the quarto encouraged Ramsay to redoubled efforts, and
the next six or seven years are the period of his greatest literary
fertility. In 1722 appeared his _Fables and Tales_ and _The Three
Bonnets_, a poem in four cantos. In some criticisms of Ramsay the
statement has been made that he owed the idea of his _Fables_ to Gay's
inimitable collection. That this is an error is evident, seeing the
latter did not publish his volume until 1726. In his preface to the
_Fables and Tales_ the poet says: 'Some of the following are taken from
Messieurs la Fontaine and La Motte, whom I have endeavoured to make
speak Scots with as much ease as I can; at the same time aiming at the
spirit of these eminent authors without being too servile a translator.'
Ramsay took as his prototypes in this species of composition, Phaedrus,
La Fontaine, and Desbillons, rather than Aesop. Many of the incidents
he drew from occurrences in the everyday life around him. For example,
_Jupiter's Lottery_ has obvious reference to the South Sea Bubble
lotteries; while _The Ass and the Brock_ was thought at the time to be a
sly skit on the addle-pated Commissioners Walpole had that year sent up
to Scotland to nip northern Jacobitism in the bud.

Ramsay's _Tales_ in verse contain some of hi