SOURCE: "Biographical and Critical Introduction: Ramsay as 'Translator,'" in The Works of Allan Ramsay, Vol. IV, edited by Alexander M. Kinghorn and Alexander Law, William Blackwood & Sons, 1970, pp. 109-127.

In the following excerpt, Kinghorn discusses Ramsay's imitations of the Latin poet Horace and the French fabulists La Fontaine and La Motte.

Ramsay's renderings from Horace show how much, and how little, he had in common with the Roman, whose poetic character, with its urbanity and worldly-wise sophistication, held an understandable attraction for the Scot. The MS. Life is one authority for judging the extent of the language barrier separating Ramsay from his originals, both in French and Latin. The biographer writes:

He had made himself very much master of the French language, and his imitations of the Fables of La Motte are excellent. He much lamented his deficiency in the Latin; of which, however, he had pickt...