Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Allan Ramsay

CHAPTER VI
RAMSAY AS AN EDITOR ; THE ' TEA-TABLE MISCELLANY '
AND THE 'evergreen' 1 72 I -25
The popularity accruing to Ramsay from the publi-
cation of the quarto of 1721 was so great that
his fame was compared, in all seriousness, with that
of his celebrated English contemporaries, Pope, Swift
and Addison. No better evidence of the unfitness of
contemporary opinion to gauge the real and ultimate
position of any author in the hierarchy of genius could
be cited than the case now before us. The critical
perspective is egregiously untrue. The effect of person-
ality and of social qualities is permitted to influence a
verdict that should be given on the attribute of intel-
lectual excellence alone. Only through the lapse of
time is the personal equation eliminated from the
estimate of an author's relative proportion to the
aggregate of his country's genius.
Nor were his countrymen aware of the extravagance
of their estimate when such a man as Ruddiman styled
hhn 'the Horace of our days,' and when Starrat,
in a poetical epistle, apostrophises him in terms like
these —
' Ramsay ! for ever live ; for wba like you,
In deathless sang, sic life-like pictures drew ?