Allan Ramsay was, born at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, in 1686, and was therefore Pope's senior by two years. He has been called 'the restorer of Scottish poetry,' and by his compilation of _The Evergreen_ (1724), and of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_, published in the same year, he gathered up the wealth of song scattered through the country. _The Miscellany_ extended to four volumes, and before the poet's death had reached twelve editions. An undying interest belongs to both anthologies. _The Evergreen_ was the first poetry Walter Scott perused, and in a marginal note on his copy of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_ he writes: 'This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I was taught _Hardiknute_ by heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever forget.' The ballad Scott loved so well, I may say in passing, was written as a whole or in part by Lady Wardlaw (1677-1727),[35] and belongs therefore either to our period or to the later years of the seventeenth century.
In 1725 Ramsay published _The Gentle Shepherd_, a pastoral that puts to shame the numerous semi-classical and mythological poems which appeared under that name in England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the action and language harmonize with what we know, or think we know, of country manners and life. There is neither striking invention in the plot nor much individuality in the characters, but there is poetical harmony throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is the work of a poet, and gives a higher impression of Ramsay's power than his songs alone would warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly without the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly of service in showing the immeasurable superiority of Burns. Ramsay was a successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired to a villa which he had built for himself on the Castle Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man, he enjoyed life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when his road lay down the hill. In an epistle to a friend he writes: