'Quhen Merch with variand winds was overpast, And sweet Apryle had with his silver showers Tane leif of Nature with an orient blast, And lusty May, that mudder is of flowrs, Had maid the birds begin the tymous hours; Amang the tendir odours reid and quhyt, Quhois harmony to heir was grit delyt.' _Hailes._ 'Quhen Merche wes with variand windis past, And Appryll had with her silver shouris Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast, And lusty May, that mudder is of flouris, Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt, Quhois harmony to heir it wis delyt.' In Dunbar's 'Lament for the Deth of the Makkaris' he not only varied but added several lines, and these in the silliest manner possible. For example, at the conclusion of Dunbar's noble elegy, Ramsay must needs tack on three stanzas, as a prophecy by Dunbar himself, wherein the vanity-full poet is introduced as 'a lad frae Hethermuirs.' What censure could be too strong for inappropriate fooling like the following, coming in to mar the solemn close of Dunbar's almost inspired lines?-- 'Suthe I forsie, if spaecraft had, Frae Hether-muirs sall rise a lad, Aftir two centries pas, sall he Revive our fame and memorie: Then sal we flourish _evirgrene_; All thanks to careful Bannatyne, And to the patron kind and frie Wha lends the lad baith them and me. Far sall we fare baith eist and west, Owre ilka clime by Scots possest; Then sen our warks sall never dee, _Timor mortis non turbat me_.' In the _Evergreen_ Ramsay published two of his own poems, _The Vision_ (in which the author bewails the Union and the banishment of the Stuarts) and _The Eagle and the Robin Reid-breist_ (likewise a Jacobite poem), wilfully altering the spelling in both, and introducing archaicisms into the thought, so as to pass them off as 'written by the ingenious before 1600.' He also inserted _Hardyknute_, a fragment, which subsequent research has proved to have been written by Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw, a contemporary of Ramsay's. Although the _Evergreen_ did much to revive popular interest in early Scottish poetry, and thus prepare the way for Lord Hailes and Bishop Percy, from a critical point of view it was worse than worthless, inasmuch as many of the errors and alterations appearing in Ramsay's specimens of our early Scots literary remains, have not been corrected even to this day.