mmerings of apprehension are to be detected in his tentative
endeavours to realise his _metier_ in the pastoral dialogue of _Patie
and Roger_ republished in his volume.

The quarto of 1721 contained, moreover, several pieces that had not been
previously printed. These we will at present only mention _en passant_,
reserving critical analysis for our closing chapters. Not the least
noticeable of the poems in the volume are those wherein he lays aside
his panoply of strength,--the 'blythe braid Scots,' or vernacular,--and
challenges criticism on what he terms 'his English poems.' These were
undoubtedly the most ambitious flights in song hitherto attempted by the
Scottish Tityrus. To the study of Dryden, Cowley, Swift, Pope, and
Arbuthnot, he had devoted himself,--particularly to Pope's translation
of Homer's _Iliad_, and to the collected edition of the works of the
great author of the _Rape of the Lock_, issued in 1717. He had been in
correspondence for some years previous with several of the leading
English poets of the day, and with other individuals well known both in
politics and London society, such as Josiah Burchet, who, when he died
in 1746, had been Secretary to the Admiralty for forty-five years, and
had sat in six successive Parliaments. This was the friend whose
admiration for Ramsay was so excessive as to prompt him to send (as was
the custom of the time) certain recommendatory verses for insertion in
the quarto, wherein he hailed honest Allan in the following terms--

'Go on, famed bard, the wonder of our days,
And crown thy head with never-fading bays;
While grateful Britons do thy lines revere,
And value as they ought their Virgil here.'

Small wonder is it that, stimulated by such flattery, Allan should have
desired to evince to his friends by the Thames, that the notes of their
northern brother of the lyre were not confined to the humble strains of
his own rustic reed.

In the quarto, therefore, we have a poem, _Tartana, or The Plaid_,
written in heroic couplets, with the avowed desire to reinstate in
popular favour the silken plaid, which, from time immemorial, had been
the favourite attire of Scots ladies, but, since the Rebellion of 1715,
had been somewhat discarded, in consequence of Whiggish prejudices that
it was a badge of disloyalty to the reigning house. Then we have
_Content_, a long piece of moral philosophy in verse, and the _Morning
Interview_, a poem written under the spe