From envy free; tho' prais'd, not vain;
Ne'er acting without honour's warrant;
Still equal, generous, and humane,

As husband, master, friend, and parent.

So modest, as scarce to be known
By glaring, proud, conceited asses,
Whose little spirits aften frown

On such as their less worth surpasses.

Ye'll own he's a deserving man,

That in these outlines stands before ye;
And trowth the picture I have drawn

1726.

VERSES

ON THE LAST LEAF OF THE BANNATYNE MANUSCRIPT

IN THE ADVOCATE'S LIBRARY.

In seventeen hundred twenty-four,
Did Allan Ramsay keen-

ly gather from this book that store,
Which fills his Evergreen.

Thrice fifty and sax towmonds neat,
Frae when it was collected;

Let worthy poets hope good fate,
Thro' time they'll be respected.

(1) The character, though true, has something in it so great that my too modest friend will not allow me to set his name to it.

Fashion of words and wit may change,
And rob in part their fame,

And make them to dull fops look strange,
But sense is still the same;

And will bleez bright to that clear mind,
That loves the ancient strains,
Like good Carmichael, patron kind,
To whom this book pertains.

FINIS quod ALLAN RAMSAY.

SPOKEN TO MRS. N

A POEM wrote without a thought,
By notes may to a song be brought,
Tho' wit be scarce, low the design,
And numbers lame in ev'ry line;
But when fair Christy this shall sing
In concert with the trembling string,
O! then the poet's often prais'd

For charms so sweet a voice hath raised.

EPISTOLARY POEMS.

EPISTOLARY POEMS.

1721.

AN EPISTLE TO ALLAN RAMSAY,

BY JOSIAH BURCHET, ESQ.

WELL fare thee, Allan! who in mother-tongue
So sweetly hath of breathless Addie sung:
His endless fame thy nat'ral genius fir'd,
And thou hast written as if he inspir'd.
Richy and Sandy, who do him survive,
Long as thy rural stanzas last, shall live;

The grateful swains thou'st made, in tuneful verse,
Mourn sadly o'er their late, lost patron's hearse.
Nor would the Mantuan bard, if living, blame
Thy pious zeal, or think thou'st hurt his fame,
Since Addison's inimitable lays

Give him an equal title to the bays.
When he of armies sang in lofty strains,
It seem'd as if he in the hostile plains
Had present been; his pen hath to the life
Trac'd every action in the sanguine strife.
In council now sedate the chief appears,
Then loudly thunders in Bavarian ears;
And still pursuing the destructive theme,
He pushes them into the rapid stream:
Thus beaten out of Blenheim's neighb'ring fields,
The Gallic gen'ral to the victor yields,