'Susan Sibbald knew Scottish shepherd Wully Carruthers who was a fellow-subscriber to the circulating library at Melrose, but while she borrowed Ann Radcliffe, he read "Ancient and Modern History", though he did sometimes read a "novel or nonsense buke", like "Sir Charles Grandison". He had also read Alan Ramsay's "The Gentle Shepherd", and contrasted it ironically with the life of a real shepherd.
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Wully Carruthers Print: Book
Mary read to me a little before dinner, (which she does tolerable); 'Cyrus' a Romance. I wound silk.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Lay till near 11. Mary read 'cyrus', I winding silk.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Read 'The travells of Cyrus' after supper.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Home past 9. Supper alone, Read 'Cyrus', Bed 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
Rise at 10. Mary read 'Cyrus'. Knited [knitted] till 7.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Took Phisick. Rise at 10. Mary read Cyrus.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Took phisick. Mary read Cyrus.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Stancliff Print: Book
Read 'travells of Cyrus' alone 2 1/2 hours. A fine book. Bed near 12.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Savile Print: Book
I finished Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd", and with some parts have been much pleased - the Scotch is interesting to me from not being acquainted with it.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Horrocks Ainsworth Print: Book
'[Janet Hamilton] had a heavy literary diet as a child - history by Rollin and Plutarch, Ancient Universal History, Pitscottie's Chronicles of Scotland, as well as the Spectator and Rambler. She could borrow books by Burns, Robert Fergusson and other poets from neighbours, and at age eight she found "to my great joy, on the loom of an intellectual weaver", Paradise Lost and Allan Ramsay's poems'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Janet Hamilton Print: Book
[We then read aloud a dialogue on taste by Mr Ramsay, a lively original book with some entertaining and instructive remarks on the progress of those arts that seem particularly to call forth the exertion to taste. I pointed out this, to carry on the pursuit in her mind though on a wholly different principle. Cozens forms beauties by mathematical Rules: reduces all to a regular, invariable System. Ramsay makes beauty the mere result of opinion in different persons, & consequently varying with the various persons he admits of no other standard for taste; the comparisons this difference of opinion drew and the observations that arose, the Books it led us to consult, gave us much amusing conversation.' [reading in turn with her pupil and sister Clara].
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent Print: Book
'When at home I usually retired to my garret, where I employed myself in either reading or working... In reading I usually sat in the Oriental, or, to use a less pompous word, in the tailor's posture, and thus had no need of either chair or table... The books I read at this time related chiefly to North America. Among the chief of them were Ramsay's "History of the American Revolution", Smith's "Travels in Canada and the United States", and Parkinson's "Travels in North America".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
James Burn, on his first contact with literature after years of having seen none: '"In the latter end of the year of 1826, a friend made me a present of an old edition of Chevalier Ramsay's "Life of Cyrus". This little volume opened up to my enquiring mind a rich field of useful knowledge. The apendix to the work contained the [italics]heathen mythology[end italics]: this part of the work completely fascinated me, and for a considerable time became my constant companion."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Dawson Burn Print: Book
'I have read since last October a good deal of the history relating to the East...: not much of books not connected with India [but included] ...; Ramsay's "Revolution of South Carolina " ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mountstuart Elphinstone Print: Book
'Adam Smith, Sir [-] informed me, was no admirer of the Rambler or the Idler, but was pleased with the pamphlet respecting the Falkland Islands, as it displayed in such forcible language, the madness of modern wars. Of Swift, he made frequent and honourable mention, and regarded him, both in style and sentiment, as a pattern of correctness. He often quoted some of the short poetical addresses to Stella, and was particularly pleased with the couplet,
Say Stella, - feel you no content,
Reflecting on a life well-spent?
Smith had an invincible dislike to blank verse, Milton's only excepted. "they do well", said he, "to call it blank, for blank it is". Beattie's Minstrel he would not allow to be called a poem; for he said it had no plan, beginning or end. He did not much admire Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd", but preferred the "Pastor Fido", of which he spoke with rapture'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Adam Smith Print: Book
'I spoke of Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," in the Scottish dialect, as the best pastoral that had ever been written; not only abounding with beautiful rural imagery, and just and pleasing sentiments, but being a real picture of manners; and I offered to teach Dr. Johnson to understand it. "No, sir (said he), I won't learn it. You shall retain your superiority by my not knowing it".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
'No − my “Burns” is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it ; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up and away I go. And then again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns, in a column or two. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. "Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns: an Essay" (or "A Critical Essay" but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) “by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, MS., P.P.C., etc.” How’s that for cut and dry? And I [italics]could[end italics] write that book. Unless I deceive myself in a superior style, I could write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an essay on Burns in ten columns.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
'I read […] Allan Ramsay […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'It was while serving here [Willenslee at the farm of Mr Laidlaw] , in the eighteenth year of my age, that I first got a perusal of "The Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace", and "The Gentle Shepherd"; and though immoderately fond of them, yet (which you will think remarkable in one who hath since dabbled so much in verse) I could not help regretting deeply that they were not in prose, that every body might have understood them; or, I thought if they had been in the same kind of metre with the Psalms, I could have borne with them. The truth is, I made exceedingly slow progress in reading them. The little reading that I had learned I had nearly lost, and the Scottish dialect quite confounded me; so that, before I got to the end of a line, I had commonly lost the rhyme of the preceding one; and if I came to a triplet, a thing of which I had no conception, I commonly read to the foot of the page without perceiving that I had lost the rhyme altogether. I thought the author had been straitened for rhymes, and had just made a part of it do as well as he could without them. Thus, after I got through both works, I found myself much in the same predicament with the man of Eskdalemuir, who had borrowed Bailey's Dictionary from his neighbour. On returning it, the lender asked him what he thought of it. "I dinna ken man", replied he: "I have read it all through, but canna say that I understand it; it is the most confused book that ever I saw in my life!".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: James Hogg Print: Book
Walter Scott quotes four lines from 'My Jo Janet' in Allan Ramsay's 'Tea-Table Miscellany'.
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott