Frae northern mountains clad with snaw,
Where whistling winds incessant blaw,
In time now when the curling-stane,
Slides murm'ring o'er the icy plain';

and he asks his correspondent how, under these conditions,

'What sprightly tale in verse can Yarde
Expect frae a cauld Scottish bard,
With brose and bannocks poorly fed,
In hodden gray right hashly clad,
Skelping o'er frozen hags with pingle,
Picking up peats to beet his ingle,
While sleet that freezes as it fa's,
Theeks as with glass the divot wa's
Of a laigh hut, where sax thegither
Lie heads and thraws on craps of heather?'

--this being a humorous allusion to the prevalent idea in England at the
time, that the Scots were only a little better off than the savages of
the South Seas.

Finally, in his translations, or rather paraphrases, from Horace, Ramsay
was exceedingly happy. He made no pretensions to accuracy in his
rendering of the precise words of the text. While preserving an
approximation to the ideas of his original, he changes the local
atmosphere and scene, and applies Horace's lines to the district around
Edinburgh, wherewith he was so familiar. With rare skill this is
achieved; and while any lover of Horace can easily follow the ideas of
the original, the non-classical reader is brought face to face with
associations drawn from his own land as illustrative, by comparison and
contrast, of the text of the great Roman. Few could have executed the
task with greater truth; fewer still with more felicity. Already I have
cited a portion of Ramsay's rendering of Horace's famous Ode, _Vides ut
alta stet nive candidum Soracte_. There are two other stanzas well
worthy of quotation. Ramsay's rendering of the famous _Carpe diem_,
etc., passage is all I have space for--

'Let neist day come as it thinks fit,
The present minute's only ours;
On pleasure let's employ our wit,
And laugh at fortune's feckless powers.'

Reference has also been made to his apt translation of the ideas
contained in Horace's 1st Ode to Maecenas, by making them express his
own feelings towards Lord Dalhousie. Two of his aptest renderings of the
original, however, were those of Horace's 18th Ode to Quintilius Varus
(_Nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem_), which our poet
renders--

'O Binny, cou'd thae fields o' thine
Bear, as in Gaul, the juicy vine,
How sweet the bonny grape wad shine