THE SELECTED WRITINGS OF JOHN RAMSAY, M.A. WITH MEMOIR AND NOTES BY ALEXANDER WALKER (HIS LITERARY EXECUTOR) PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE REID, A.R.S.A. JOHN RAE SMITH, ABERDEEN WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON 1871 All rights reserved. ΤΟ THE GENTLE READER. A WISE man wrote some forty years ago, that “there were three difficulties in authorship-to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and, to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game, in which the booksellers are the kings, the critics the knaves, the public the pack, and the poor author the mere table, or thing played upon." The writer of the following papers, while in life, held some such opinion as to the gains and comforts of bookmaking. At his death he gave his executors the liberty to gather together into a volume such of his literary bantlings as were thought worth preserving. For the characteristic portrait of Mr. Ramsay, and graceful artistic drawings of "bits" and "places" which he loved to look upon, the Editor has to thank the facile pencil of his friend Mr. George Reid, A.R.S.A. |
