y. So places designed
for healthful and mannerly dancing have, by people of an unhappy turn,
been debauched by introducing gaming, drunkenness, and indecent
familiarities. But will any argue from these we must have no churches,
no wine, no beauties, no literature, no dancing? Forbid it, Heaven!
whatever is under your auspicious conduct must be improving and
beneficial in every respect.'

His poem is an ode in praise of dancing, and of the manner in which the
Assemblies were conducted. Fortifying his case with Locke's well-known
sentence--'Since nothing appears to me to give children so much becoming
confidence and behaviour, and so raise them to the conversation of those
above their age, as dancing, I think they should be taught to dance as
soon as they are capable of learning it,' he boldly avows himself as an
advocate for the moderate indulgence in the amusement, both as
health-giving and as tending to improve the mind and the manners, and
concludes with these two spirited stanzas, which are quoted here as
space will not permit us to refer to the piece again--

'Sic as against the Assembly speak,
The rudest sauls betray,
Where matrons, noble, wise, and meek,
Conduct the healthfu' play.
Where they appear, nae vice dare keek,
But to what's good gives way;
Like night, soon as the morning creek
Has ushered in the day.

Dear Em'brugh! shaw thy gratitude,
And of sic friends make sure,
Wha strive to make our minds less rude,
And help our wants to cure;
Acting a generous part and good,
In bounty to the poor;
Sic virtues, if right understood,
Should ev'ry heart allure.'

But we must hasten on. In 1724 Ramsay published his poem on _Health_,
inscribed to the Earl of Stair, and written at the request of that
nobleman. In it Ramsay exhibits his full powers as a satirist, and
inculcates the pursuit of health by the avoidance of such vices as
sloth, effeminacy, gluttony, ebriety, and debauchery, which he
personifies under the fictitious characters of Cosmelius, Montanus,
Grumaldo, Phimos, Macro, etc. These were said to be drawn from
well-known Edinburgh _roues_ of the time, and certainly the various
types are limned and contrasted with a masterly hand. To the cultured
reader, this is the poem of all Ramsay's minor works best calculated to
please and to convey an idea of his style, though at times his genius
seems to move under constraint.

B