Ramsay

(Allan) The Ever Green, being a Collection of Scots Poems, Wrote by the Ingenious before 1600.

      Edinburgh, Printed by Mr. Thomas Ruddiman..., 1724 first edition, 2 Vols., sm.8vo., orig. sprinkledcalf, spines ornamented in gilt within raised bands, red morocco labels sympathetically renewed Alston ix/88; Burns Martin 75; ECSB 158; Rothschild 1729. From the library of William Tytler (1711-1792), lawyer, historian, one of the Edinburgh literati, and editor of The Poetical Remains of James the First, King of Scotland, with his signature on the volume i front free endpaper and his marginal notes in thirteen places. These include i. an extensive note on the identity of Macduncan in “The Battle of Harlaw;” ii. a note identifying Ramsay as the author of the concluding stanzas to Dunbar’s “Tydings frae the Session;” iii. notes that “The Justing and Debate up at the Doun” is according to Lord Hailes The Jousting...at the Drum, “that is Lord Somervilles house above Dalkeith;” iv. ascribe authorship to several poems, some again with reference to Lord Hailes. Tytler would have known Ramsay well, at least by sight: the bookseller-poet did not die until 1758. He was certainly on close and friendly terms with the younger Allan Ramsay, the painter and pamphleteer. The Ever Green contains poems by Sempill, Henryson, Dunbar, James I, and others; chiefly derived from the Bannatyne manuscript and many of them published here for the first time. One political satire, "The Vision," though disguised as an earlier work, is Ramsay's own, and is his best sustained lyric. In publishing this work and The Tea-Table Miscellany, Ramsay was the main agent in the revival of vernacular poetry which was to influence the course of poetry from Ramsay himself through Fergusson and Burns.