ALLAN RAMSAY?S SHOP. ?5 5 The Luckenbcoths.]
years after, a second plan was concerted in England,
by a cozenage trial, which might be adduced as a
precedent. The court thought proper to take the
opinion of the twelve judges in England, who
permitted the matter to drop without giving any j
but a third attempt was made to restrain a certain
Scdtsman from trading as a bookseller ih London,
For twelve years this man was harassed by successive
injunctions in Chancery, for printing books
which were not protected by the 8th of Queen
Anne, cap. 19, and the Court of Queen?s Bench
decided against the Scotsman (Miller v. Taylor),
and then the London trade applied once more to the
Court of Session to have it made law in Scotland.
This prosecution was brought by Hinton, a bookseller,
against the well-known Alexander Donaldson,
then in London, to restrain him from publishing
?Stackhouse?s History of the Bible.? He was subjected
to great annoyance, yet he supported himself
against nearly the entire trade in London, and
obtained a decree which was of the greatest importance
to the booksellers in Scotland.
Ramsay?s shop became the rendezvous of. all
the wits of the day. Gay, the poet, who was quite
installed in the household of the Duchess of
Queensberry-the witty daughter of the Earl of
Clarendon and Rochester-accompanied his fair
patroness to Edinburgh,. and resided for some time
in Queensberry House in the Canongate. He was
a frequent lounger at the shop of Ramsay, and is
said to have derived great amusement from the
anecdotes the latter gave of the leading citizens,
as they assembled at the cross, where from his
windows they could be seen daily with powdered
wigs, ruffles, and rapiers. The late William Tytler,
of Woodhouselee, who had frequently seen Gay
there, described him as ? a pleasant little man in
a tye-wig ;? and, according to the Scofs? Magazine
for 1802, he recollected overhearing him request
Ramsay to explain many Scottish words and
national customs, that he might relate them to
Pope, who was already a great admirer of ? The
Gentle Shepherd.?
How picturesque is the grouping in the following
paragraph, by one who has passed away, of
the crowd then visible from the shop of Allan
Ramsay ;-? Gentlemen and ladies paraded along
in the stately attire of the period; tradesmen
chatted in groups, often bareheaded, at their shop
doors ; caddies whisked about bearing messages or
attending to the affairs of strangers ; children filled
the kennel with their noisy sports. Add to this
the corduroyed men from Gilmerton bawling coals
or yellow sand, and spending as much breath in a
minute as would have served poor asthmatic Hugo
Arnot for a month ; fishwomen crying their caller
haddies from Newhaven ; whimsicals and idiots,
each with his or her crowd of tormentors ; sootymen
with their bags ; Town Guardsmen with their
antique Lochaber axes ; barbers with their hairdressing
materials, and so forth.? Added to these
might be the blue-bonneted shepherd in his grey
plaid; the wandering piper; the kilted drover,
armed to the teeth, as was then the fashion ; and
the passing sedan, with liveried bearers.
Johnson, in his ? Lives,? makes no reference to
the Scottish visit of Gay, who died in 1732, but
merely says that for his monetary hardships he received
a recompense ? in the affectionate attention
of the Duke and Duchess of Queensbeny, into
whose house he was taken, and with whom he
passed the remaining part of his life.?
Ramsay gave up his shop and library in 1752,
transferring them to his successor, who opened an
establishment below with an entrance direct from
the street. This was Mr. James MacEwan, from
whom the business passed into the hands of Mr.
Alexander Kincaid, an eminent publisher in his.
time, who took a great lead in civic affairs, and
died in office as Lord Provost of Edinburgh on
the zIst of January, 1777. Escorted by the
trained bands, and every community in the city,
and preceded by ? the City Guard in funeral order,
the officers? scarfs covered with crape, the drums
with black cloth, beating a dead march,? his
funeral, as it issued into the High Street, was one
of the finest pageants witnessed in Edinburgh
since the Union. During his time the old bookseller?s
shop acquired an additional interest from
being the daily lounge of Smollett, who was residing
with his sister in the Canongate in 1776. Thus it
is that he tells us, in ? Humphry Clinker,? that
the people of business in Edinburgh, and
even the genteel company, may be seen standing
in crowds every day, from one to two in the afternoon,
in the open street, at a place where formerly
stood a market cross, a curious piece of Gothic
architecture, still to be seen in Lord Somerville?s
garden in this neighbourhood.?
The attractions of the old shop increased when
it passed with the business into the hands of the
celebrated William Creech, son of the minister of
Newbattle. Educated at the grammar school of
Dalkeith and the University of Edinburgh, he had
many mental endowments, an inexhaustible fund
of amusing anecdote, and great conversational
powers, which through life caused him to be
courted by the most eminent men of the time;
and his smiling face, his well-powdered head, accurate
black suit, with satin breeches, were long
