Ramsay's importance in literary history is twofold. As a pastoral writer ("in some respects the best in the world," according to James Henry Leigh Hunt) he contributed, at an early stage, to the naturalistic reaction of the 18th century. His "Gentle Shepherd", by its directness of impression and its appreciation of country life, anticipates the attitude of the school which broke with neo-classical tradition. It has the "mixed" faults which make the greater poem of his Scots successor, Thomson, a "transitional" document, but these give it an historical, if not an individual, interest. His chief place is, however, as an editor. He is the connecting-link between the greater "Makars" of the 15th and 16th centuries, and Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns. Ramsay also knew the Scottish bookseller Andrew Millar since the latter's arrival in Edinburgh in 1720 as the thirteen-year-old apprentice of Ramsay's friend James McEuen. From 1713 Ramsay ran a wigmaker's and printseller's shop in Niddrie's Wynd, close to McEuen's High Street premises. He joined the bookselling trade in 1720, and in 1722 relocated to the east side of the Luckenbooths, next to McEuen and facing the Market Cross. He also owned a shop directly opposite McEuen, on the south side of the Cross. McEuen was the first to advertise copies of Ramsay's "Poems" (1723), in Glasgow.