He is described by those who knew him towards the latter part of his life, as a squat man, with a belly rather portly, and a countenance full of smiles and good humour. He wore a round goodly wig rather short. His disposition may be easily collected from his writings. He possessed that happy Horatian temperament of mind, that forbids, for its own ease, all entrance to the painful and irascible passions. He was a man rather of pleasantry and laughter, than of resentment and moody malignancy. His enemies, of whom he had some, he did not deem so important as on their account to ruffle his peace of mind, by indulging any reciprocal hostility, by which they would have been flattered. He was kind, benevolent, cheerful; possessing, like Burns, great susceptibility for social joys, but regulating his indulgences more by prudence, and less impetuous and ungovernable than the impassioned poet of Ayrshire. By his genius he elevated himself to the notice of all those of his countrymen who possessed either rank or talents; but these attentions proceeded spontaneously from their admiration of his talents, and were not courted by any servilities or unworthy adulations. Never drawn from business by the seductions of the bowl, or the invitations of the great, he consulted his own respect, and the comfort of his family, by attending to the duties of his shop, which so faithfully and liberally rewarded him. His vanity (that constitutional failing of all bards) is apparent in many of his writings, but it is seasoned with playfulness and good humour. He considered, indeed, that "pride in poets is nae sin," and on one occasion jocularly challenges superiority in the temple of Fame, even to Peter the Great of Russia, by saying, "But haud, proud Czar, I wadna niffer[17] fame."--He is called by Mr. William Tytler, who enjoyed his familiarity, "an honest man, and of great pleasantry." [Footnote 17: Exchange.] Of learning he had but little, yet he understood Horace faintly in the original; a congenial author, with whom he seems to have been much delighted, and in the perusal of whose writings he was assisted by Ruddiman. He read French, but knew nothing of Greek. He did not, however, like Burns, make an appearance of vilifying that learning of which he was so small a partaker; he bewailed his "own little knowledge of it;" and, like the Ayrshire bard, he was sufficiently ostentatious and pedantic in the display of what little he possessed. He composed his verses with little effort or labour; his poetry seems to have evaporated lightly and airily from the surface of a mind always jocose and at its ease. And as _it lightly came_, he was wont to say, _so it lightly went_; for after composition, he dismissed it from his mind without further care or anxiety. In 1759 an elegant obelisk was erected to the memory of Ramsay, by Sir James Clerk, at his family-seat of Pennycuik, containing the following inscription: