s choice to proceed
to Edinburgh. The change to lighter labour would enable him to filch
from hours allocated to sleep precious moments for private reading,
which the arduous nature of his employment at Crawfordmuir had
prevented. Besides, he was in a 'city of books'--books only waiting to
be utilised. That he did take advantage of his opportunities during his
apprenticeship, and that it was at this period that the poetic instinct
in him took fire, on coming in contact with the electric genius of
Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, and other master-minds of English
literature, is a fact to which he refers more than once in his poems.

From 1701-7,--in other words, from his fifteenth to his twenty-first
year,--while he was serving his apprenticeship, there is a gap in the
continuity of the records we have of the poet; a _lacuna_ all the more
regrettable as these were the true germing years of his genius. Of the
name of his trade-master, of the spot where the shop of the latter was
situated, of his friends at that time, of his pursuits, his amusements,
his studies, we know little, save what can be gathered from chance
references in after-life. That they were busy years as regards his trade
is certain from the success he achieved in it; and that Ramsay was
neither a lazy, thriftless, shiftless, or vicious apprentice his after
career effectually proves. That they were happy years, if busy, may, I
think, be accepted as tolerably certain, for the native gaiety and
hilarity of his temperament underwent no abatement. Whether or not his
fashionable Edinburgh relatives took any notice of him, whether he was a
guest at his grandfather, the lawyer's house, or whether the latter and
his family, hidebound by Edinburgh social restrictions, found it
necessary to ignore a Ramsay who soiled his fingers with trade, is
unknown. Probably not, for it is matter of tradition that it was the
fact of his family connections which weighed with Writer Ross in
consenting to the union of his daughter with a tradesman.

In the spring of 1707 Allan Ramsay received back his indentures, signed
and sealed, with the intimation from the ancient and honourable
'Incorporation of Wigmakers' that he was free of the craft. He appears
almost immediately thereafter to have commenced business on his own
account in the Grassmarket, being admitted at the same time, in virtue
of being a craftsman of the town, a burgess of the City of Edinburgh.
Though no trace can be found