bestowed much of their time in
acquiring a taste for that downright perfect music which requires none
or very little of the poet's assistance." And he tells us in the same
preface of a letter he has had from America informing him that there too
his manual of song has gone, and that his

"Soft verse made to a Scottish air
Is often sung by our Virginian fair."

The book is dedicated to the ladies--the _Donne qui hanno intelletto
d'amore_, long supposed to be the final critics and judges of such
productions: and is confidently recommended to these "fair singers" for
whose "modest eyes and ears," according to the poet (but with notable
exceptions, as has been said), they were prepared. The third volume
consisted almost exclusively of English songs, among which are many
classic verses. If it were but as a stepping-stone to those perfect
lyrics, so full of natural truth and feeling, with which Burns
afterwards brought to a climax the songs of his country, the _Tea-table
Miscellany_ would have a merit of its own.

Ramsay died in 1758, when the troubles of the country were over, the
last seeds of insurrection stamped out, and the powerful revolution
begun which made the clans loyal to Government and Scotch politicians
faithful to the Union. He was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard, where
so many of the most notable of the citizens of Edinburgh were laid. A
hundred years or so after, the enlightened community placed his statue
in the gardens that lie between the old town and the new. And thus the
poet's career was run; it was a prosperous one, full of the success that
was most sweet to him; comfort and competence and reputation, at once
that of a warm and well-to-do citizen and that of a poet. Few poets have
lived to see their productions so popular. _The Gentle Shepherd_ may be
said to have been in every cottage in Scotland in its author's lifetime,
and his songs were sung by everybody. Nor did this fame interfere with
the citizen's well-earned and more substantial reward. The shop in which
he began his prosperous career, and which was crowded so continually by
eager messengers with their pennies in search of Allan Ramsay's last new
piece--the most immediate and one of the most pleasant evidences of
success--still exists, with its high steps and broad low windows, in the
heart of the old town with which his name is so completely associated;
and the quaint square house in which his later days of ease and
retirement