day, 1714, aged eighty-one. Ramazzini was a member of several of the academies of science established in Germany, Berlin, &c., and left several works; the principal of which, and one which will ever be held in estimation, is his treatise on the diseases of artists and manufacturers, entitled "De Morbis Artificum Diatriba," first published in 1700, and frequently reprinted, and published in English. He also published some tracts relative to certain epidemics, both among men and cattle; some "Ephemerides Barometrica ;" a work on the abuse of Peruvian bark; and several orations delivered in his professorial capacity. All his works have been collected and published together at Padua, Geneva, London, and Naples; the edition of London, 1716, 4to, is the most correct.1

RAMEAU (JOHN PHILIP), chevalier de St. Michel, composer to the king of France, and to l'Academie Royale de la Musique, or serious opera at Paris, was born at Dijon in 1683. He went early in his life to Italy, and at his return was appointed organist at Clermont en Auvergne, where his "Traité de la Musique" was written, in 1722. He was afterwards elected organist of St. Croix de la Bretonnerie at Paris. Here his time was chiefly employed in teaching; however, he published harpsichord lessons, and several other theoretical works, without distinguishing himself much as a vocal composer, till 1733, when, at fifty years of age, he produced his first opera of " Hippolite et Aricie." The music of this drama excited professional envy and national discord. Party rage was now as violent between the admirers of Lulli and Rameau, as in England between the friends of Bononcini and Handel, or, in mo. dern times, at Paris, between the Gluckists and the Piccinists. When the French, during the last century, were so contented with the music of Lulli, it was nearly as good as that of other countries, and better patronized and supported by the most splendid prince in Europe. But this nation, so frequently accused of more volatility and caprice than their neighbours, have manifested a steady persevering constancy in their music, which the strongest ridicule and contempt of other nations could never vanquish.

Rameau only answered his antagonists by new productions, which were still more successful; and, at length, he was acknowledged by his countrymen to be not only supe

1 Eloy, Dict. Hist. de Medicine.-Fabroni Vitæ Italorum.

rior to all competition at Paris, but sole monarch of the musical world. From 1733 to 1760 he composed twentyone operas, of which the names and dates are annually published in the "Spectacles de Paris," and in many other periodical works. Rameau's style of composition, which continued in favour almost unmolested for upwards of forty years, though formed upon that of Lulli, is more rich in harmony, and varied in melody. The genre, however displeasing to all ears but those of France, which had been nursed in it, was carried by the learning and genius of Rameau to its acme of perfection; and when that is achieved in any style, it becomes the business of subsequent composers to invent or adopt another, in which • something is still left to be done, besides servile imitation.

The opera of "Castor and Pollux" having been long regarded in France as the master-piece of this composer, Dr. Burney has entered into a strict critical examination of it, for which we refer to his History. He concludes. with observing, that, though the several merits of this musician have been too much magnified by partizans and patriots in France, and too much depreciated by the abettors of other systems and other styles, as well as patriots of other countries, yet Rameau was a great man; nor can the professor of any art or science mount to the summit of fame, and be elected by his countrymen supreme dictator in his particular faculty, without a large portion of genius and abilities.

The successful revival of his opera of "Castor and Pollux" in 1754, after the victory obtained by his friends over the Italian burletta singers who had raised such disturbance by their performance of Pergolesi's intermezzo, the "Serva Padrona," was regarded as the most glorious event of his life. The partizans for the national honour could never hear it often enough. "This beautiful opera," says M. de la Borde, "without any diminution in the applause or pleasure of the audience, supported a hundred representations, charming at once the soul, heart, mind, eyes, ears, and imagination of all Paris."

From this æra to the time of his death, in 1767, at eighty-four years of age, Rameau's glory was complete. The royal academy of music, who all regarded themselves as his children, performed a solemn service in the church. of the oratory, at his funeral. And M. Philidor had a mass

performed at the church of the Carmelites, in honour of a man whose talents he so much revered.1

RAMLER (CHARLES WILLIAM), a German poet of great celebrity in his own country, but little known here, was born in 1725, at Kolberg, and became professor of belles lettres in a military academy at Berlin. In concert with Lessing, he there edited two ancient poets of the Germans, Logau and Wernike. His Lyrical Anthology contributed much to improve the taste of his countrymen, by those changes of diction which almost every poem received from his pen. : Sixteen odes of Horace he translated with great felicity, and composed many original imitations of them. His oratorios, which Graun set to music, would have been warmly admired, but in the country of Klopstock. In 1774, he translated the critical works of Batteux, which be accompanied with considerable additions.

Ramler's odes were first collected apart in 1772; they had been composed on several occasions, during the preeeding fifteen years. Their character is peculiarly Horatian, but they have too much the air of close imitation, yet they have procured him the name of the German Horace. He sung the praises of the king of Prussia with as much spirit as Horace did those of Augustus, but with less flattery. He died March 19, 1798.2

RAMSAY (ALLAN), one of the extraordinary instances of the power of uncultivated genius, was born at Leadhills*, Oct. 13, 1685 †. His father, John Ramsay, descended of the Ramsays of Cockpen, an ancient and respectable family in Mid-Lothian, was factor to the earl of Hopeton, and superintendant of his lead-mines. His mother, Alice Bower, was daughter of Allan Bower, a gentleman of Derbyshire, who, on account of his great skill in mining, had been invited by sir James Hope of Hopeton to set his valuable mines in motion.

When Allan Ramsay was about a year old his father died, and his mother being but ill provided for, soon after married a second husband in the neighbourhood, by whom she

*The geographical situation of his native place is very poetically described in the beginning of an ode for his admission into a club of Clydsdale gentlemen, printed in the first volume of his poems, "Of Crawford

more, born in Lead-bill," &c.

There is an ode addressed to his friend sir Alexander Dick of Corstorphin, written on his seventieth birthday, and dated Oct. 15, 1755.

* Burney's Hist. of Music-and life of Rameau in Rees's Cyclopædia. 2 Dict. Hist.-Maty's Review, vol. VIII. from a German biography.

had several children. In this situation young Ramsay could not be supposed to have much care or expence bestowed upon him: he had, however, access to all the learning a village-school could afford, and it was during this period, the first fifteen years of his life, that he had an opportunity of storing his mind with those rural images which were afterwards so agreeably exhibited in his writings.

About the year 1700, his mother died: he was now completely an orphan; but was come to an age when it was proper for him to do something for his own subsistence. His own wish, as he was often heard to say, was to have been bred a painter, and he had even attempted to copy prints he found in books, before he left the country. What were the particular causes which prevented this wish from being gratified, have not come to our knowledge; but his step-father, being exceedingly desirous of getting rid of him at any rate, carried him to Edinburgh, and bound him apprentice to a wig-maker *, probably believing it to be the most profitable trade of the two.

But, although young Ramsay was of that happy temper which readily accommodates itself to accidental circumstances, yet, poor as he was, he could not heartily reconcile himself to an occupation in which his active and liberal mind found no exercise that was fit for it. He therefore thought how he might procure for himself a decent maintenance by some means more connected with his poetical genius and growing passion for literary knowledge. All this he accomplished by turning bookseller, in which employment he succeeded very much to his satisfaction, publishing sometimes his own works, sometimes those of other authors, as they occasionally presented themselves.

The first of his own writings were given to the public in detached pieces; but upon finding that these met with approbation from people of the best taste, both in Scotland and England, it encouraged him to open a subscription for a volume in quarto, which came out in 1721, and produced him a very considerable sum of money.

In 1728, he published a second volume in quarto; and these two volumes, which have been often reprinted in

* Not a barber, as has been advanced in some London publications.

octavo, contain all his printed works which he has thought fit to acknowledge. The longest piece among them, and the one which has been the most universally read and admired, is a pastoral comedy, called the Gentle Shepherd," which, though it presents only that mode of country life which belongs to the corner of Scotland where he himself was born, yet is every where filled with such just sentiments and general imagery as will insure it approbation in every country where its language can be either understood or translated.

The first scene, between Patie and Roger, of this drama, was written early, and published first by itself, and afterwards in his first volume in 1721, as an independent eclogue. In that volume is likewise to be found the dia logue song between Patie and Peggie, afterwards introduced into the second act. After the publication of this first volume, he put forth another eclogue between Jenny and Peggy, as a sequel to Patie and Roger, and which now stands the second scene in the "Gentle Shepherd." At what particular time between 1721 and 1728 he conceived the idea of forming a complete drama, of which those two were to serve as the opening, is not precisely known; but it was not, probably, till after publishing the last mentioned eclogue; for he had more skill than to weaken the effect of a complete work, by giving it to the public in detached scenes, and at such different periods.

Soon after the first edition, in octavo, of this pastoral was published, and about the time of the publication of his second volume in quarto, the "Beggar's Opera" made its appearance, with such success that it soon produced a great number of other pieces upon the same musical plan. Amongst the rest, Ramsay, who had always been a great admirer of Gay, especially for his ballads, was so far carried away by the current as to print a new edition of his pastoral, interspersed with songs adapted to the common Scotch tunes. He did not reflect at the time that the

Beggar's Opera" was only meant as a piece of ironical satire, whereas his " Gentle Shepherd" was a simple imitation of nature, and neither a mimickry nor mockery of any other performance. He was soon, however, sensible of his error, and would have been glad to have retracted those songs; but it was too late; the public was already in possession of them, and as the number of singers is always greater than that of sound critics, the many editions since