But when Burns came before the public even this conventionalized literary Scots seemed on the point of extinction. Though Ramsay’s _Tea-Table Miscellany_--which included many purely English verses--was still popular as a song-book, the rest of his work was neglected. Hamilton of Gilbertfield’s recension of Blind Harry’s _History of Sir William Wallace_ was no more than a story-book for children. The unhappy Robert Fergusson, starved and neglected, had ended his life in a madhouse, and fashionable Edinburgh, glancing askance at his satirical verses, said it served him right. Ramsay was a crude homespun figure of the generation in which Thomson by writing _The Seasons_ had given his countrymen a poem which they could show to Englishmen without blushing; ‘The Daft Days’ and the rest of Fergusson’s work was little better than a national disgrace when set beside the beauties of James Beattie’s _Minstrel_. Nevertheless there still underlay the new fashions a literary tradition which most of the anglicizing gentry scorned or ignored. An oral Scottish literature was still alive, though it was soon to perish when its lovers smothered it by writing it down. Percy’s _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, which first gave highbrow sanction to the popular ballads of Scotland and northern England, were not published until Burns was six years old, and even Percy only scratched the surface of this rich deposit. Throughout the century scores of ballads still circulated by oral tradition which had never been recorded in writing, and in these the genuine spirit of the Scottish language flourished without concession to fashionable English.