nd the pinch of financial loss.

We have already adverted to the gloomy bigotry of a certain section of
the Scottish clergy of this period. To them everything that savoured of
jollity and amusement was specially inspired by the Evil One, for the
hindrance of their ministerial labours. The references to this matter
are manifold throughout Ramsay's poetry. Though no one had a deeper
respect for vital piety than he, no one more bitterly reprobated that
puritanic fanaticism that saw sin and wrong-doing in innocent recreation
and relaxation. Against Ramsay the ecclesiastical thunder had commenced
to roll some years before (according to Wodrow), when he started his
circulating library. That the works of Shakespeare, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Dryden, Waller, and the romances of
chivalry, should be placed in the hands of the youth of Edinburgh, was
accounted a sin so grave as to merit Presbyterial censure. Accordingly,
a party, amongst whom was the infamous Lord Grange, attempted to
suppress the library. But the _aegis_ of the redoubtable Dr. Webster had
been thrown over him, and the pother in time died away. It appears,
however, that Ramsay, in 1736, had imported a large stock of
translations of the most celebrated French plays of the day, and had
added them to his library. Sufficient was this to blow into a blaze the
smouldering embers of clerical indignation. From pulpit and press our
poet was fulminated at. Not that he gave the smallest sign that he cared
one jot for all their denunciations. He attended to his shop and his
library, and quaffed his claret at the _Isle of Man Arms_, at Luckie
Dunbar's in Forrester's Wynd, or at the famous John's Coffee House, with
the cynical response that 'they might e'en gang their ain gate.'

But just at this precise time Ramsay conceived the idea of becoming a
theatre-proprietor, and thus benefiting the worthy burgesses of Auld
Reekie by erecting a house where standard dramas might be performed. The
very proposal raised a storm of indignation in clerical circles, against
which even Dr. Webster and his friends were powerless. Hitherto the
opposition of the Presbyterian ministers had prevented the erection of
any theatre in the town. The companies of itinerating players who might
chance to visit the town from time to time, were compelled to hire a
hall or a booth for their performances. Prior to the Commonwealth,
_histrionic_ exhibitions were frequent in Edinburgh. But f