im to be 'a
gentleman by merit.' Only a periphrastic method of signifying their
approbation of his work was this, and did not imply any reflection upon
his birth, as might at first glance be supposed. For in the concluding
lines of the poem Ramsay, with his genial _bonhomie_ and humour had
said--

'Yet that we more good humour might display,
We frankly turned the vote another way;
And in each thing we common topics shun,
So the great prize nor birth nor riches won.
The vote was carried thus:--that easy he
Who should three years a social fellow be,
And to our Easy Club give no offence,
After triennial trial, should commence
A gentleman; which gives as just a claim
To that great title, as the blast of fame
Can give to those who tread in human gore.'

In 1715, also, he amused the members of the Club, and after them the
wits of Edinburgh, with some lines on the current predictions regarding
_The Great Eclipse of the Sun_, foretold to take place during April
1715. The following picture, descriptive of the awe and terror produced
on ignorant minds and on the brute creation by the occurrence of the
eclipse, is as pithily effective in its simplicity and fidelity to life
and nature as anything in Crabbe's _Tales in Verse_ or Shenstone's
_Schoolmistress_--

'When this strange darkness overshades the plains,
'Twill give an odd surprise to unwarned swains;
Plain honest hinds, who do not know the cause,
Nor know of orbs, their motions or their laws,
Will from the half-ploughed furrows homeward bend
In dire confusion, judging that the end
Of time approacheth; thus possessed with fear,
They'll think the gen'ral conflagration near.
The traveller, benighted on the road,
Will turn devout, and supplicate his God.
Cocks with their careful mates and younger fry,
As if 'twere evening, to their roosts will fly.
The horned cattle will forget to feed,
And come home lowing from the grassy mead.
Each bird of day will to his nest repair,
And leave to bats and owls the dusky air;
The lark and little robin's softer lay
Will not be heard till the return of day.'

The years 1715-16 were evidently periods of great activity on Ramsay's
part, for at least five other notable productions of his pen are to be
assigned to that date. To him the revelation of his life's _metier_ had
at last come, and his enthusiasm in its prosecution