Allan, a Scottish poet, was born at Leadhills in Lanarkshire on the 15th October 1686. His father was employed in the management of Lord Hopetoun's mines at that place, but died whilst the poet was yet in his infancy. He remained at the parish school of Leadhills with tolerable regularity till he reached his fifteenth year, and was employed in washing, preparing the lead ore for smelting, and other operations about the works. In 1701, when in his fifteenth year, he was bound apprentice to a wigmaker in Edinburgh, an occupation at which he continued till 1716. One of the earliest of Ramsay's productions now known, an address to the members of the Easy Club, appeared in 1712, when he was twenty-six years of age; and three years afterwards he was humorously appointed their poet-laureate. Many of his poems written about this time were published in the form of separate pamphlets. After having followed the occupation of wig-maker for a considerable time, he finally abandoned it for that of bookseller, as being more congenial to the literary turn of his mind. His detached pamphlets were afterwards published by him in the year 1721, in one volume 4to, which was encouraged by a very liberal subscription. The first volume of his well-known collection, the *Tea-table Miscellany*, was published in 1724, and ran through twelve editions in a very few years. He soon afterwards published what is called the *Evergreen*, being a collection of Scotch poems written by ingenious poets prior to the year 1600. In 1725 appeared his *Gentle Shepherd*, part of which, called *Patie and Roger*, was printed in 1721, and *Jenny and Moggy* in 1723, the great success of which induced him to form them afterwards into a regular drama.

In the year 1728 he published a second volume of his poems, which was afterwards reprinted in 8vo. These performances so rapidly enlarged the circle of his fame and reputation that in 1731 an edition of his poetical works was published by the booksellers of London, and two years afterwards they appeared at Dublin. From his shop opposite to Niddry Street he removed to one at the east end of the Luckenbooths. In this shop he continued to sell and lend out books until he was far advanced in years; and we have reason to believe that he was the first person who established a circulating-library in Scotland. His collection of *Fables* appeared in 1730, after which period he may be said to have almost discontinued the occupation of author. Such, however, was his enterprising spirit that he built, at his own expense, the first theatre for dramatical performances ever known in Edinburgh, which took place in what is called Carrubber's Clove, in the year 1736; but he did not long enjoy its character of manager, for the magistrates of Edinburgh required him to shut it up, as an act of Parliament prohibited all such amusements without a special license and his Majesty's letters-patent. It is generally understood that he relinquished the trade of bookseller about the year 1755, being then sixty-nine years of age, and lived the remainder of his days in a small house erected by himself on the north side of the Castlehill. A scurbutic complaint, attended with excruciating pain, deprived him of his teeth, and, after corroding one of his jaw-bones, put an end to his existence on the 7th of January 1758, in the seventy-third year of his age. He was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh.

Ramsay possessed a very considerable share of poetical genius. Of this, his *Gentle Shepherd*, which will continue to be admired as long as the language in which it is written shall be understood, and especially by the natives of North Britain, to whom only the peculiarities of dialect by which it is distinguished can be familiar, affords the best proof. Some of his songs may contain far-fetched allusions and childish conceits; but many of them are equal, if not superior, in their pastoral simplicity, to productions of a similar nature in any other language. Some of the imitations of the ancients by this poet are extremely happy; and several of his tales have all the excellences that belong to that species of composition. But of a great proportion of his other productions it may be pronounced with truth that they are mere prosaic compositions, filled with the most commonplace observations, and destitute even of the ornament of smooth versification and correct rhymes. A complete edition of his works, with a *Life* written by the late George Chalmers, was published in 2 vols. 8vo, 1800. A reprint of *The Gentle Shepherd*, with some account of the author's life, has recently been brought out in Edinburgh, in 1856.

The poet's son Allan attained to considerable eminence as a portrait-painter. (See Chambers's *Biographical Dictionary of Distinguished Scotsmen.*)