Allan Ramsay
Robert Fergusson
Reader, R. B. Wharrie
(From Glasgow)
Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson deserve to be remembered and read not merely because Burns admired and imitated both. Ramsay in particular did much for the revival of interest in Scottish poets of the past by making the first Scottish anthology, 'The Evergreen', and by writing simple and graceful songs in traditional Scottish forms at a time when the influence of Pope and other English poets was tending to kill originality in the writing of verse. During his brief career of twenty-four years, Robert Fergusson wrote many poems of a satirical nature, and it is easy to see how much he influenced his famous successor, Robert Burns.