262
was only commenced in his own lifetime, is accord-
ingly conspicuous for the elegance displayed both in
its general arrangement and in its details, and has
become a favourite residence with such individuals
as do not find it necessary, for professional reasons,
to live nearer the centre of the city.
In 1814 Raeburn was made an associate of the
Royal Academy, and in the subsequent year he be-
came an academician. He afterwards obtained from
foreign countries many honours of the same kind.
In 1822, when George IV. visited Scotland, the
long-established fame of Raeburn, together with his
fortune and gentlemanly manners, pointed him out
as an individual in whom the king might signify his
respect for Scottish art, and he was accordingly
knighted at Hopetoun House, on the last day of his
majesty's residence in the country. Some weeks
afterwards his brethren in art, now increased to a
large and respectable body, gave him a dinner as a
token of their admiration of his talents and character.
In his speech on this occasion he said modestly that
he was glad of their approbation, and had tried to
merit it; for he had never indulged in a mean or
selfish spirit towards any brother-artists, nor had at
any time withheld the praise which was due to them,
when their works happened to be mentioned.
Sir Henry received afterwards the appointment of
portrait-painter to his majesty for Scotland; a nomi-
nation, however, which was not announced to him
till the very day when he was seized with his last
illness. The king, when conferring the dignity of
knighthood, had expressed a wish to have a portrait
of himself painted by this great artist; but Sir Henry's
numerous engagements prevented him from visiting
the metropolis for that purpose. It reflects great
honour on the subject of this memoir, that he never
gave way to those secure and indolent habits which
advanced age and established reputation are so apt
to engender. He continued, with all the enthusiasm
of a student, to seek and to attain further improve-
ment. The pictures of his two or three last years
are unquestionably the best that he ever painted.
But perhaps the most interesting part of his recent
works consists in a series of half-length portraits of
eminent Scotsmen, which during this period he exe-
cuted for his private gratification.
This amiable and excellent man was suddenly
affected with a general decay and debility, not ac-
companied by any visible complaint. This state of
illness, after continuing for about a week to baffle all
the efforts of medical skill, terminated fatally on the
8th July, 1823, when he had reached the age of
sixty-seven.
Few men were better calculated to command re-
spect in society than Sir Henry Raeburn. His varied
knowledge, his gentlemanly and agreeable manners,
an extensive command of anecdote, always well told
and happily introduced, the general correctness and
propriety of his whole deportment, made him be
highly valued by many of the most distinguished
individuals in Edinburgh, both as a companion and
as a friend. His conversation might be said in some
degree to resemble his style of painting—there was
the same ease and simplicity, the same total absence
of affectation of every kind, and the same manly
turn of sense and genius. But we are not aware
that the humorous gaiety and sense of the ludicrous,
which often enlivened his conversation, ever guided
his pencil.
Sir Henry Raeburn, like Raphael, Michael An-
gelo, and some other masters of the art, possessed
the advantages of a tall and commanding person,
and a noble and expressive countenance. He ex-
celled in archery, golf, and other Scottish exercises;
and it may be added that, while engaged in paint-
ing, his step and attitudes were at once stately and
graceful.
By his lady, who survived him ten years, Sir
Henry had two sons: Peter, a youth of great pro-
mise, who died at nineteen; and Henry, who, with
his wife and family, lived under the same roof with
his father during the whole of their joint lives, and
was his most familiar friend and companion. To
the children of this gentleman the illustrious painter
left the bulk of his fortune, chiefly consisting of
houses and ground-rents in the suburb of St. Ber-
nards.
RAMSAY, ALLAN, the celebrated poet, was born
at the village of  Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, October
15, 1686. His parentage was highly respectable,
and his ancestry even dignified. His father, Robert
Ramsay, was manager of the lead-mines in Craw-
fordmuir, belonging to the Earl of  Hopetoun; and
his mother, Alice Bower, was the daughter of a
gentleman who had been brought from Derbyshire
to introduce and oversee some improvements in the
management of the mines. His grandfather, Robert
Ramsay, writer or notary in Edinburgh, was the son
of Captain John Ramsay, a son of Ramsay of Cock-
pen, whose family was a branch of the Ramsays of
Dalhousie, afterwards ennobled.1 A grandmother
of the poet, moreover, was Janet Douglas, daughter
of Douglas of Muthil. Though thus well descended,
he was reared in the midst of poverty. He had the
misfortune to lose his father while he was yet an in-
fant; and his mother seems almost immediately to
have married a Mr. Crighton, a small landholder in
the neighbourhood. Whether this last circumstance
was an additional misfortune, as has been generally
assumed by his biographers, we think may reasonably
be questioned. It is not at all probable that his
father, dying at the age of twenty-five, could have
much property; and the use and wont of even a
small landholder's house is not likely to have been
beneath that of a poor widow's. His mother had a
number of children to Mr. Crighton; but the subject
of this memoir seems to have been cared for in the
same way as those were, and to have enjoyed all the
advantages appropriate to the same station in life.
He had the benefit of the parish school till he was
in his fifteenth year—an extent of education not yet
common in Scotland, except when attendance on the
university is included. Of the progress he had made
in his studies we have unfortunately no particular
account; it certainly made him acquainted with
Horace, as is abundantly evident in his poems.
In the year 1700 Ramsay lost his mother; and in
the following year his step-father carried him into
Edinburgh, and apprenticed him to a periwig-maker,
which appears to have been at that time a flourish-
ing profession. Ramsay himself, it is said, wished
to have been a painter; and his step-father has been
reflected on as acting with niggardly sharp-sighted-
ness in refusing to comply with his wishes. There
is not, however, in the numerous writings of Ram-
say, one single hint that any violence was, on this
occasion, done to his feelings; and we think the re-
flection might well have been spared. Those who
have borne the burden of rearing a family upon
limited means know the impossibility of indulging
either their own wishes or those of their children in
1 The laird of Cockpen here mentioned is usually repre-
sented as a brother of Ramsay of Dalhousie; but the branch
seems to have left the main stock at a much earlier period than
that would imply. The first Ramsay of Cockpen was a son of
Sir Alexander Ramsay, who was knighted at the coronation
of James I. in 1424.