ALEXANDER

See also:

• ROSS
• ALEXANDER ROSS (1699-1784)
• ROSS, GEORGE WILLIAM (1841- )
• ROSS, JOHN, or KOOESKOOWE (179o-1866)
• ROSS, ROBERT (1766-1814)
• ROSS, SIR HEW DALRYMPLE (1779-1868)
• ROSS, SIR JAMES CLARK (1800-1862)
• ROSS, SIR JOHN (1777-1856)

ROSS (1699-1784)  , Scottish poet, wad born on the 13th of April 1699 at Kincardine-O'Neil, Aberdeenshire . He was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and became tutor to the children of Sir William Forbes of Craigievar . He became in 1732 schoolmaster of Lochlee, Angus, where the rest of his life was spent . He had long been in the habit of writing verse for his own amusement, when in 1768 he published, at the suggestion of James Beattie, The Fortunate Shepherdess . . . to which is (sic) added a few songs . This is a pastoral narrative poem, written in obvious imitation of Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd . Its affectations are chiefly on the surface . The background of shepherd life as known to Ross, and the rather sordid _motives of the characters, despite their high-sounding names of Helenore, Rosalind, &c., are depicted with uncompromising truth . He died at Lochlee, and was buried on the 26th of May 1784 . See Helenore, or the Fortunate Shepherdess, edited by John Longmuir (1866); also H . Walker, Three Centuries of Scottish Literature (1893), ii . 28–34 .

The bulk of Ross's writings remain in MS .