Andrew Michael Ramsay - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

ANDREW MICHAEL RAMSAY (1686-1743), French writer, of Scottish birth, commonly called the "Chevalier Ramsay," was born at Ayr on the 9th of January 1686. Ramsay served with the English auxiliaries in the Netherlands, and in 1710 visited Fenelon, who converted him to Roman Catholicism. He remained in France until 1724, when he was sent to Rome as tutor to the Stuart princes, Charles Edward and Henry, the future cardinal of York. He was driven by intrigue from this post, and returned to Paris. He was in England in 1730, and received an honorary degree from the university of Oxford. The claim was nominally his discipleship to Fenelon, but in reality beyond doubt his connexion with the Jacobite party. He died at St Germaine-en-Laye (Seine-et-Oise) on the 6th of May 1743. Ramsay's principal work was Les voyages de Cyrus (London, 1728; Paris, 1727), a book composed in avowed imitation of Telimaque. He also edited Telemaque itself (Paris, 2 vols., 1717) with an introduction, and wrote a Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Fenelon (The Hague, 1723), besides a partial biography (Paris, 1735) of Turenne, some poems (Edinburgh, 1728) in English, and other miscellaneous works.