uctam Parrhasia videtis arte
Allani effigiem, favente Phoebo,
Qui Scotos numeros suos, novoque
Priscam restituit vigore linguam.
Hanc Phoebus tabulam, hanc novem sorores
Suspendunt lepidis jocis dicatam:
Gaudete, O Veneres, Cupidinesque,
Omnes illecebrae, facetiaeque,
Plausus edite; nunc in aede Phoebi
Splendet conspicuo decore, vestri
Allani referens tabella vultus.'

As much as any other, this testimony evinces how rapidly our poet's
reputation had increased.

At last, in the spring of 1720, Allan Ramsay came before the public, and
challenged it to endorse its favourable estimate of his fugitive pieces
by subscribing to a volume of his collected poems, 'with some new, not
heretofore printed.' As Chambers remarks: 'The estimation in which the
poet was now held was clearly demonstrated by the rapid filling up of a
list of subscribers, containing the names of all that were eminent for
talents, learning, or dignity in Scotland.' The volume, a handsome
quarto, printed by Ruddiman, and ornamented by a portrait of the author,
from the pencil of his friend Smibert, was published in the succeeding
year, and the fortunate poet realised four hundred guineas by the
speculation. Pope, Steele, Arbuthnot, and Gay were amongst his English
subscribers.

The quarto of 1721 may be said to have closed the youthful period in the
development of Ramsay's genius. Slow, indeed, was that development. He
was now thirty-five years of age, and while he had produced many
excellent pieces calculated to have made the name of any mediocre
writer, he had, as yet, given the world nothing that could be classed as
a work of genius. His sketches of humble life and of ludicrous episodes
occurring among the lower classes in Edinburgh and the rustics in the
country, had pleased a wide _clientele_ of readers, because they
depicted with rare truth and humour, scenes happening in the everyday
life of the time. But in no single instance, up to this date, had he
produced a work that would live in the minds of the people as expressive
of those deep, and, by them, incommunicable feelings that go to the
composition of class differences.

As a literary artist, Ramsay was destined to develop into a _genre_
painter of unsurpassed fidelity to nature. As yet, however, that which
was to be the distinctive characteristic of his pictures had not dawned
upon his mind. But the time was rapidly approaching. Already the first
gli