pointing out to him the most notable personages in the motley crowd,
and every now and then called upon to explain some Scotticism in his
speech which reminded Gay of passages in _The Gentle Shepherd_ that Pope
had desired him to get explained from the author himself. And worthy
Allan is flattered yet flustered withal with the honour, for beside them
stand the famous Duchess of Queensberry--better known as Prior's
'Kitty,' otherwise Lady Catherine Hyde, daughter of the Earl of
Clarendon--and her miser husband, who only opened his close fist to
build such palatial piles as Queensberry House, in the Edinburgh
Canongate, and Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfriesshire. They have brought Gay
up north with them, after his disappointment in getting his
play--_Polly_, the continuation of the _Beggars' Opera_--refused
sanction for representation by the Duke of Grafton, then Lord
Chamberlain. Ah! how honest Allan smirks and smiles, and becks and bows,
with a backbone that will never be as supple in _kotowing_ to anyone
else. For does he not, like many more of us, dearly love a lord, and
imagine the sun to rise and set in the mere enjoyment of the ducal
smile?

A pleasant visit was that paid by Gay to Scotland in 1732, before he
returned to London to die, in the December of the same year. He spent
many of his spare hours in the company of Ramsay, and that of the two
friends in whose society much of the latter's time was now to be
passed--Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and Sir Alexander Dick of
Prestonfield. By all three, Gay was deeply regretted,--by Clerk and Dick
chiefly, because he had so much that was akin to their own genial
friend, Allan Ramsay.

In 1736 our poet published a collection of _Scots Proverbs_, which, for
some reason or another, has never been printed with his poems in those
editions that are professedly complete. Only in Oliver's pocket edition
is this excellent thesaurus of pithy and forcible Scottish apophthegms
presented with his other works. That it is one of the best repertories
of our proverbial current coin that exists, particularly with regard to
the crystallised shrewdness and keen observation embodied in them, must
be apparent to any reader, even the most cursory. To supersede the
trashy works of Fergusson and Kelly was the reason why Ramsay set
himself to gather up the wealth of aphoristic wisdom that lay manna-like
on all sides of him. As might be expected, it is richest in the sayings
common throughout the thre