He now therefore intermeddled no longer with the anxieties of authorship, but sat down in the easy chair of his celebrity to enjoy his laurels and his profits. After a lapse of six years of silence, and of happiness, his ardour for dramatic exhibitions involved him in some circumstances of perplexity, attended, it is believed, with pecuniary loss. As Edinburgh possessed as yet no fixed place for the exhibition of the drama, he endeavoured to supply that deficiency to the citizens, by building, at his own expense a theatre in Carrubber's-close. Shortly after, the Act for licensing the stage was passed, which at once blasted all his hopes of pleasure and advantage; for, the Magistrates availing themselves of the power entrusted to them by the Act, shewed no indulgence to the author of the Gentle Shepherd, but, in the true spirit of that puritanism which reckons as ungodly all jollity of heart, and relaxation of countenance, they shut up his theatre, leaving the citizens without exhilaration, and our poet without redress. This was not all; he was assailed with the satirical mockery of his laughter-hating enemies, who turned against him his own weapons of poetical raillery. Pamphlets appeared, entitled, "The flight of religious piety from Scotland, upon the account of Ramsay's lewd books, and the hell-bred playhouse comedians, who debauch all the faculties of the soul of our rising generation;"--"A looking-glass for Allan Ramsay;"--"The dying words of Allan Ramsay." These maligners, in the bitterness of their sanctimonious resentments, reproached him with "having acquired wealth,"--with "possessing a fine house,"--with "having raised his kin to high degree;" all which vilifications must have carried along with them some secret and sweet consolations into the bosom of our bard. Amid the perplexities caused by the suppression of his theatre, he applied by a poetical petition to his friend the Honourable Duncan Forbes, then Lord President of the Court of Session, in order that he might obtain some compensation for his expenses; but with what success is not recorded by any of his biographers.