d I not
got a parcel of guineas from you, and such as you, who were pleased to
patronise my subscriptions, I should not have had a gray groat. I think
shame--but why should I, when I open my mind to one of your
goodness?--to hint that I want to have some small commission, when it
happens to fall in your way to put me into it.'

Not without an element of pathos is the scene that is here presented, of
him, who had done so much to amuse and elevate his fellows, being
compelled to make such a request. Satisfactory is it, however, to know
that, though the poetical epistle 'to the Lords' was fruitless of
practical benefit in the way he desired, albeit exciting for him the
warmest sympathy among the worthy senators of the College of Justice,
there is reason to believe the President was able to throw 'some small
commission' in Ramsay's way, and thus, by his opportune generosity, to
dispel the thunderclouds of misfortune hurrying hard upon the poet's
steps.

Of course, to his enemies (amongst whom was Pennecuik, the poet), as
well as to the more bigoted of the clergy, his trials were a judgment
upon his conduct. A shoal of pamphlets and pasquinades appeared, as
though to rub salt into the raw wounds of his mortified feelings: such
despicable effusions--written in more than one case by 'ministers of the
Gospel'--as 'The Flight of Religious Piety from Scotland, upon account
of Ramsay's lewd books and the Hell-bred comedians, who debauch all the
Faculties of the Soul of our Rising Generation,' 'A Looking-Glass for
Allan Ramsay,' 'The Dying Words of Allan Ramsay,' etc. As Chalmers
remarks: 'The lampooners left intimations of what must have been of
considerable consolation to our adventurous dramatist; that "he had
acquired wealth"; that "he possessed a fine house"; that "he had raised
his kin to high degree."' Such topics of censure did more honour than
hurt to Ramsay. To their ribald raillery the poet replied only by a
contemptuous silence, infinitely more galling than if he had turned on
the wasps and crushed them, thus bespeaking for them a prominence in no
measure merited. Their spleen he forgot amid the engrossments of a
closer attention to business, and the charms of friendship's
intercourse.

It may be added, however, that the whirligig of time brought in for
Ramsay his revenges upon his enemies. The theatre which in 1746 was
erected in Playhouse Close in the Canongate, though only by a quibbling
evasion of the statute, s