SOURCE: "Eighteenth-Century Vernacular Poetry," in Scottish Poetry: A Critical Survey, edited by James Kinsley, Cassell and Company Ltd., 1955, pp. 150-84.

In the following excerpt, Daiches surveys Ramsay's contributions to Scottish literature as a poet and as an editor of Scots verse.

In 1712 [Ramsay] joined with other young men in Edinburgh in founding the Easy Club, 'in order that by a Mutual improvement in Conversation they may become more adapted for fellowship with the politer part of mankind and Learn also from one another's happy observations'. (Burns was to found the Tarbolton Bachelors' Club with similar ends in view.) The members of this club all had pseudonyms, and Ramsay's was first Isaac Bickerstaff and later Gavin Douglas, a pair of names which reflect Ramsay's dual interest in the Queen Anne wits and in older Scottish literature. The Easy Club is important in Ramsay's career because it shows him in...