The quarto of 1721 contained, moreover, several pieces that had not been previously printed. These we will at present only mention _en passant_, reserving critical analysis for our closing chapters. Not the least noticeable of the poems in the volume are those wherein he lays aside his panoply of strength,--the 'blythe braid Scots,' or vernacular,--and challenges criticism on what he terms 'his English poems.' These were undoubtedly the most ambitious flights in song hitherto attempted by the Scottish Tityrus. To the study of Dryden, Cowley, Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, he had devoted himself,--particularly to Pope's translation of Homer's _Iliad_, and to the collected edition of the works of the great author of the _Rape of the Lock_, issued in 1717. He had been in correspondence for some years previous with several of the leading English poets of the day, and with other individuals well known both in politics and London society, such as Josiah Burchet, who, when he died in 1746, had been Secretary to the Admiralty for forty-five years, and had sat in six successive Parliaments. This was the friend whose admiration for Ramsay was so excessive as to prompt him to send (as was the custom of the time) certain recommendatory verses for insertion in the quarto, wherein he hailed honest Allan in the following terms-- 'Go on, famed bard, the wonder of our days, And crown thy head with never-fading bays; While grateful Britons do thy lines revere, And value as they ought their Virgil here.' Small wonder is it that, stimulated by such flattery, Allan should have desired to evince to his friends by the Thames, that the notes of their northern brother of the lyre were not confined to the humble strains of his own rustic reed.