SOURCE: "The Reputation and the Influence of Ramsay," in Allan Ramsay: A Study of His Life and Works, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931, pp. 124-35.

Martin's 1931 biography of Ramsay was considered definitive until it was supplanted by Alexander Kinghorn in 1970 with his The Works of Allan Ramsay. In the following excerpt, Martin discusses Ramsay's reputation among his contemporaries and in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

There is no reason for thinking that before 1719 Ramsay was known beyond the city of Edinburgh. But in that year we have his correspondence with Hamilton of Gilbertfield, the englishing of "Richy and Sandy" by Josiah Burchet, and the exchange of riming epistles with the Irishman, James Arbuckle. From this time Ramsay's fame spread rapidly beyond the walls of the Good Town, not without the help of his friends. Before Steele went to Edinburgh on government business in 1720, he instructed James...