We reach now the commencement of Ramsay's literary career. For four years--in fact, until the breaking up of the Society after the Rebellion of 1715--all he wrote was issued with the _imprimatur_ of the Easy Club upon it. That they were proud of him is evident from the statement made by Dr. Ruddiman in a letter to a friend: 'Our Easy Club has been increased by the admission of a young man, Ramsay by name, _sib_ to the Ramsays of Dalhousie, and married to a daughter of Ross the writer. He will be heard tell o' yet, I'm thinking, or I am much out of my reckoning.' The next pieces which our poet read to his patrons were two he had written some time previous--to wit, a little Ode on the preservation from death by drowning of the son of his friend John Bruce, on August 19, 1710; and the _Elegy on Maggy Johnston_, the alewife, to which reference has already been made. The first of these bears evident traces of youth and inexperience, in both the esoteric and exoteric or technical mysteries of his art. For example, when referring to the danger wherein the lad and his companions had been placed, he remarks-- 'Whilst, like the lamp's last flame, their trembling souls Are on the wing to leave their mortal goals'; and he conjures up the following extraordinary spectacle of angelic gymnastics, whereby the rescue of the lads was effected-- 'Angels came posting down the divine beam To save the helpless in their last extreme.' Little promise was visible in that piece of future excellence, yet within eighteen months he had written the _Elegy on Maggy Johnston_, to which the critics of the Easy Club gave unstinted praise. For humorous description of the convivial habits of the day, and graphic word-painting, the poem is exceedingly happy. But alas! judged by our latter-day standard of refinement, good taste, and morality, it is _caviare_ to the general. Only to antiquarians and students of by-past customs do its allusions contain much that is either interesting or edifying.