a-Table Miscellany_, and in compiling his collection of _Scots
Proverbs_.

CHAPTER VIII

RESTING ON HIS LAURELS; BUILDS HIS THEATRE; HIS BOOK OF 'SCOTS
PROVERBS'--1730-40

Ramsay had now reached the pinnacle of his fame. He was forty-four years
of age, prosperous in business, enjoying a reputation not alone confined
to Great Britain, but which had extended to France, to Holland, and to
Italy. His great pastoral was lauded in terms the most gratifying by
critics everywhere as the most perfect example of the pure idyll that
had appeared since the days of Theocritus. The proudest of the nobility
were not ashamed to take his arm for a walk down High Street, or to
spend an hour cracking jokes and discussing literature with him under
the sign of Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden.

What Chambers says in his _Eminent Scotsmen_, from which are culled the
following facts, is strictly accurate: 'Ramsay had now risen to wealth
and high respectability, numbering among his familiar friends the best
and the wisest men in the nation. By the greater part of the Scottish
nobility he was caressed, and at the houses of some of the most
distinguished of them, Hamilton Palace, Loudoun Castle, etc., was a
frequent visitor.' With Duncan Forbes, Lord Advocate (and before many
years to be Lord President), with Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Sir
William Bennet of Marlefield, Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, near
Edinburgh, he lived in the habit of daily, familiar, and friendly
intercourse. With contemporary poets his relations were likewise of the
most friendly kind. The two Hamiltons, of Bangour and Gilbertfield, were
his constant associates. To Pope, to Gay, and to Somerville; to Meston,
to Mitchell, and to Mallet, he addressed poetical greetings, and several
of them returned the salutations in kind. From England, too, came
another and a different proof of his popularity, in the fact that, when
in 1726 Hogarth published his 'Illustrations of Hudibras' in twelve
plates, these were dedicated to 'William Ward of Great Houghton,
Northamptonshire, and Allan Ramsay of Edinburgh.' Edinburgh itself was
proud of her poet, and was not averse to manifesting the fact when
fitting opportunity offered. He was a frequent visitor at the
University, and Dugald Stewart relates that an old friend of his father
informed him, the students of the fourth and fifth decades of last
century used to point out a squat, dapper, keen-eyed little man, who wa