James, a Scottish poet and miscellaneous writer, best known by his pastoral and poetical title of the Ettrick Shepherd. He was born in the humble rank of a shepherd, and his early lot was full of hardship, but his situation had its redeeming and compensatory features. He was not, like Burns, condemned to severe and irksome labour, forced to do the work of a man when a mere stripling. He had not, like Bloomfield or Gifford, to undergo the close, monotonous, and depressing confinement of a workshop. He had the free range of the mountain and glen in a picturesque district famous for its historical and poetic associations, and he was familiar from infancy with the heroic and legendary lore and ballad strains of the Border. When his great contemporary Scott wondered at his untaught minstrelsy, the Shepherd could say—

"Ah little weaned a parent's tongue Such strains had o'er my cradle sung."

By the maternal side Hogg was descended from a long line of shepherds, noted for their fidelity, skill, and devoted attachment to their masters. His mother, Margaret Laiddlaw, was a great collector and reciter of ancient ballads and Border history, and a woman of remarkable liveliness, humour, and spirit. Her cottage was the favourite resort of all the young shepherds of Ettrick and Yarrow. His father, Robert Hogg, was, mentally and morally, a much inferior person. He had also been a shepherd, but he subsequently embarked in the business of a store-farmer and drover, frequenting the English and Scotch markets, and he soon wrecked the humble fortunes and prospects of the family. James was the second of four sons, born in a cottage at Ettrick Hall, near the parish church and school. In the various accounts of his own life which he wrote from time to time, Hogg gave 1772 as the year of his birth. At first he said he was born in the latter end of that year, but subsequently he claimed to be born on the anniversary of Burns' birth-day, the 25th of January. The parish register, however, records his baptism as having taken place on the 9th of December 1770. About seven years after this time Robert Hogg's affairs became desperate, his effects were sold, and in the distress and poverty of the family James was put out to service in the neighbourhood as a cow-herd, which he considered to be the lowest and worst occupation in that part of the country. It is, however, the usual commencement of the life of an ordinary shepherd until he has attained his fifteenth or sixteenth year, when he is considered fit to be trusted with a karsel or flock of sheep. Previous to entering upon service, Hogg had attended the parish school, and was, as he tells us, at the head of a class of young scholars, who read the Shorter Catechism and Proverbs of Solomon. This could hardly have been attained in less than a twelvemonth, and in the following year he was placed by his parents for four months under a private teacher, with whom he was instructed in the Bible, and learned to write imperfectly. The Shepherd's statements as to the amount of his school education are vague and contradictory. In one he says that the whole did not cost ten shillings; in another, that he was about six months at school; and in a third (his farewell address to the readers of the Spy) he boldly affirms that he was never at school. The probability is that he had the same amount of education as other children in the district of the same age, but that from his lively rambling disposition and love of outdoor sports, he was a careless and irregular scholar. In his fourteenth year he had saved five shillings, with which he bought an old violin, on which he practised at nights in the stables and cow-houses where he was forced to make his bed. He had access to few books, he says, except theological works, until, in his eighteenth year, he got a persial of the Metrical History of Wallace, and Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd (which he wished had been in prose or in the metre of the Psalms), and Burnet's Theory of the Earth, which he says had nearly overturned his brain. Chance newspapers also fell in his way, which he read through, but was often "no wiser than when he began." In attempting to write he found he had forgotten several of the letters, and had to copy them from a printed book, or "patch up the words in the best way he could without them." This picture of intellectual stagnation on the part of one afterwards remarkable for mental activity and ambition, and happening in the midst of a body of intelligent shepherds and farmers, who were all readers, as he relates, and delighting in poetry and music, has been pronounced incredible. It is clearly exaggerated, but Hogg's genius was slow in manifesting itself; his fancy flowered late. Favourable circumstances, however, were now at hand. After serving a number of masters, first as cow-herd and afterwards as shepherd, he was engaged in the latter capacity by Mr Laidlaw, tenant of Blackhouse, a farm on the Douglas Burn, in Yarrow. From Whitsunday 1790 to Whitsunday 1799, Hogg continued in the service of Mr Laidlaw. He was treated with affectionate kindness, and had the use of a considerable collection of books, which he soon exhausted, and then subscribed to a circulating library in Peebles. About the year 1793 he obtained a glimpse of the wilder scenery of the West Highlands, being despatched by his master with a flock of sheep to the head of Strathfillan, in Perthshire. This period of nine years, from his twentieth to his twenty-ninth year, was perhaps the happiest of Hogg's life. He was buoyant and vigorous, the envy of the shepherds for his swiftness and agility, and the delight of the country maidens for his gay fancy, music, and handsome appearance. He soon added the recommendation of being a poet. Two months in every year formed a sort of poetical carnival in his shepherd's life. From the middle of July to the middle of September his only duty was what was called "summering the lambs." The young flock was committed to his care, and all he had to do was to move them from place to place. There was no toil or fatigue in the occupation, his dog may be said to have done the whole; and, carrying his books with him, the Shepherd had ample leisure among the green hills and quiet waters for study and contemplation. In the little library at Blackhouse were the Spectator, the works of Milton, Pope, Thomson, and Young, with some books of travels and treatises of "sound divines," all of which, with others, Hogg eagerly perused. He may be said to have made the whole circle of standard English literature, and he was not without worthy and congenial associates. His own brother William was a man of strong sense and literary tastes, who contributed to several periodicals; another shepherd, Alexander Laidlaw, was equally accomplished in his humble sphere; and the eldest son of his master was that Mr William Laidlaw afterwards known as the confidential friend and manager of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, the author of the beautiful ballad of Lucy's Flittin', and in all respects a most amiable, ingenious, and accomplished man. Laidlaw was ten years younger than Hogg, but their acquaintance soon ripened into a tender friendship, and Laidlaw seized every opportunity of bringing forward the talents of his friend, and aiding in their development. The first dawning of such a mind, and the successive steps by which the poet overcame the difficulties of his situation would, if faithfully narrated, form an interesting record. Burns has told us how love and poetry began with him in his early obscurity; and Hogg's first attempts consisted of songs and ballads to be sung by the country girls in chorus. "The first time," he says, "that I attempted to write verses was in the spring of the year 1796—the first time I ever heard of Burns was in 1797, the year after he died." A man recited to him Tam O'Shanter. "This," he adds, "formed a new epoch of my life. Every day I pondered on the genius and fate of Burns. I wept, and always thought with myself—what is to hinder me from succeeding Burns. I, too, was born on the 25th of January, and I have much more time to read and compose than any ploughman could have, and can sing more old songs than ever ploughman could in the world. But then I wept again because I could not write." The poet's memory, or his desire to appear a poetical prodigy, the "last infirmity" of literary ambition, has here completely misled him. He had written and published verses, and imitated Burns, three years before 1797. His first printed piece was a short tale in the measure and style of Burns's Holy Fair, entitled The Mistakes of a Night. It is a coarse but humorous effusion of eleven stanzas, and was printed in the Scots Magazine for October 1794, with a note appended to it calculated to sober the vanity of the writer. The editor said he was disposed to give the verses a place, to "encourage a young poet," who, he hoped, would improve, and be at more pains to "make his rhymes answer," and to "attend to grammatical accuracy."

After quitting Blackhouse, Hogg removed to Ettrick, to a small farm rented by his brother William, who had married and resigned the lease of the farm in favour of the poet and his father. He looked about for some more promising situation as overseer or manager; and in June 1800 took a tour to the Highlands, proceeding to the sources of the Dee. To William Laidlaw he wrote from Blairgowrie, "I must enter amongst the bens and glens of the Grampians—these sovereigns of the north I see towering their ancient tops, speckled with the snows of the last century, and aspiring to bid 'good morrow' to the sun." On his return he committed what he afterwards considered—and justly considered—a great folly. He had gone to Edinburgh market, he says, and whilst waiting there from Monday to Wednesday, he suddenly resolved on writing out some of his poems from memory, and having them printed. The volume appeared in January 1801, and was entitled Scots Pastoral Poems, Songs, &c., mostly written in the dialect of the south, by James Hogg, tenant in Ettrick. In one of his autobiographies Hogg says this volume was full of errors and imperfections; he had left the manuscript with the printer (one Taylor, in the Grassmarket), and seen no more of his poems until he received word that a thousand copies were thrown off. This must not be taken literally. He had seen the proof sheets, but he was soon ashamed of the publication, which produced nothing but mortification. His friends in the Forest complained that he had styled himself a tenant in Ettrick, the farm being really held by his brother; but he replied that he had given no such order, and that in the proof sheet which he received to which the title-page was annexed, there was no such designation. In one of the pieces he had reflected on Lord Napier, an extensive proprietor in Ettrick. "I see my error," he writes to Laidlaw, "but what ailed both you and Clarkson, who had both perused the MS., that you had not told me that sooner?" It is madness to talk of losing the whole impression; to do that, you know, is entirely out of my power; I wish I had the one paid that is printed, and other things which are more pressing at present. It is a great mortification to my gay heart, which fondly imagined the whole world were my friends; d—n it, I'll proceed no farther with this reflection." And then the poor bard changes his tone, and alludes jocularly to the chance of Lord Napier sending him a challenge! He, the Shepherd, as the party challenged, would, of course, have the choice of distance and weapons; and he would select one of his lordship's hillsides in Ettrick; his weapon would be fragments of rock, and hurling these down on the peer, he would make him for once a fugue. Such was Hogg on his first publication—rash, blundering, and improvident—and such he continued to the last.

In the autumn of 1802, Sir Walter, then Mr Scott, "the Shirra," made a raid into Yarrow for the purpose of collecting materials for a third volume of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. He was accompanied by John Leyden, and he carried an introduction from another poetical Borderer, Andrew Mercer, to William Laidlaw at Blackhouse. Laidlaw had received from Hogg a copy of an ancient ballad, called Auld Maitland, which the Shepherd had written down from the recitation of his mother and uncle—the latter a shrewd old shepherd named "Will of Phawhope." The relic was deemed invaluable; and Scott, before he left the district, took a note of Hogg's address that he might correspond with him. The Shepherd was then absent in the north. Affairs had gone ill at Ettrick, and he had tried another journey to see if anything could be done in the Highlands "in the farming line," but returned unsuccessful.

Scott never lost sight of his poetical brother in the Forest. He corresponded with him, and becoming more and more curious to meet with one who had interested him so strongly, he made another visit to Blackhouse, with the intention of getting Mr William Laidlaw to guide him to Ettrick. They went by Dryhope and St Mary's Loch over the high green solitary hills that separate the head of Yarrow from her sister stream; and arriving in the valley of Ettrick put up their horses at Ramsay-cleuch, a farm occupied by some relatives of Laidlaw. A cordial welcome and a Dandie Dinmont dinner awaited the Sheriff and his friend, and in the evening Hogg was sent for to come to tea. "For at that time," says Laidlaw, "the good Shepherd retained all his original simplicity of character, and he brought with him a MS. of some size—enough at least to show his industry—filled with ballads and fragments. Mr Scott's meeting with Hogg was like that of an elder brother meeting a younger that he had not seen for years, and whose talents and acquirements were far beyond his hopes and expectations." The incident formed a grand era in the history of the Shepherd. Scott became his model as a poet, his judicious counsellor, and his indefatigable friend. No outbreaks of waywardness, caprice, or jealousy on the part of the irritable and impulsive bard of Ettrick, could damp the zeal or lessen the generosity of his first and greatest patron.

Hogg made two more Highland expeditions, of which he published some account in a series of letters in the Scots Magazine. The narrative shows considerable facility in prose composition, with touches of poetical feeling; but his attention was chiefly directed to the rural economy of the north. One of these tours was extended to the Hebrides, which he thought highly favourable for the extension of sheep farming, though then chiefly occupied in the rearing of black cattle. He got a neighbour in Ettrick to join him in taking a farm in the Island of Harris; lambs were purchased for stocking the farms in the summer of 1804; the poet had written his Farewell to Ettrick, and both parties had set off for Harris, when he learned, he says, about the middle of July, that he could not enter into possession—"that the tacksmen's right to the subject was called in question, and a plea entered at the Court of Session accordingly."

He gave up all intention of proceeding to the island, and went off to the north of England, among the lakes of Cumberland, for some time, "in order to avoid a great many disagreeable questions and explanations." His friend, the Ettrick farmer, who had proceeded with his stock part of the way, was a considerable loser by the poet's mismanagement; and Hogg says that he himself "lost all the money he had made by a regular and industrious life." He had saved about L200 while a shepherd at Blackhouse. The affair altogether was supposed to leave a stain on the poet's moral character as well as sagacity; and it was long ere he regained the countenance or regard of his early friends in the Forest. He did not rejoin them at this time, but engaged himself as a shepherd in Nithsdale.

The second publication of Hogg was made in 1807. He had corresponded with Scott, and was encouraged by him to collect and publish a volume of legendary ballads and songs under the title of the Mountain Bard. The poems evinced decided talent; Scott heralded the volume with a brief but kind prefatory notice; the Shepherd told the story of his life and misfortunes, and public interest being thus excited, the work was well received. By its sale, and by a Treatise on the Diseases on Sheep, published the same year, he realized about L300. With this money the Shepherd unfortunately embarked in farming in Dumfries-shire, and in three years was utterly ruined, abandoning all his effects to his creditors. He returned to Ettrick, and there found only cold and estranged looks. He could not even obtain employment as a shepherd; so, wrapping his plaid around him, he set off, in February 1810, to push his fortune in Edinburgh as a literary adventurer.

No vicissitude could abate Hogg's self-reliance, or diminish what he honestly called his vanity. He would have fared ill, however, but for a generous Border admirer, Mr John Grieve, established in business in Edinburgh, who opened his house to him as Thrale did to Johnson, and for years suffered him to want for nothing. From the noble family of Buccleuch he seems also to have received assistance. In 1810 he published a collection of songs, which being dedicated to the Countess of Dalkeith, and recommended to her notice by Scott, was rewarded with a present of a hundred guineas. He then commenced a weekly periodical, The Spy, which he continued from the 1st of September 1810 to the 17th of August 1811. Several friends contributed essays to this work, but its general strain was coarse and indelicate. His poetical genius had in the meantime been gradually purifying itself, and his Queen's Wake, published in 1813, established his reputation as one of the first poets of the age. This was followed by Mador of the Moor, a Highland story in the Spenserian stanza, of improbable plot, but highly effective in its descriptive scenes. He next published The Pilgrims of the Sun, a wild mystical poem in blank verse; and The Poetic Mirror, a successful imitation of the style of some of the living poets. This work was aided by contributions from poetical friends. Scott had been applied to, but refused in a curt and decided letter, which gave such offence to the now elated Shepherd, that he replied to him in wrath, addressing him as "D—d sir," "yours in disgust," &c. For this atrocity he afterwards apologized, and Scott bade him "think no more of the business, and come to breakfast next morning." The Duchess of Buccleuch, on her deathbed in 1814, had made a request of the Duke that he would do something for the Ettrick bard, and the Duke gave him a lease for life of the farm of Altrive in Yarrow, consisting of about seventy acres of moorland, on which the poet built a house and spent the last years of his life. He took possession of it in 1817, but his literary exertions were never relaxed. Before 1820 he had written *The Brownie of Bodsbeck*, a tale of the Covenanters, and two volumes of *Winter Evening Tales*, besides collecting, editing, and writing part of two volumes of *Jacobite Relics*, and contributing largely to *Blackwood's Magazine*. In 1820 he married an amiable lady of a good Annandale family, and found himself possessed of about £1,000, a good house, and a well-stocked farm. Fortune seemed at last to be propitious—he was the most prosperous as he was the most celebrated man in the Forest. So intent was he on his home felicity, and his reputation as a store-farmer in Yarrow, that he declined a flattering invitation from Sir Walter Scott to accompany him to London to witness the coronation of George IV. The Shepherd preferred attending the great sheep fair at St Boswell's! This new-born virtue of prudence, however, soon forsook him; he became a candidate for a large farm on the Buccleuch estate. On the 29th of November 1821 he wrote to Laidlaw, "The farms will be decided to-day, and we will soon see what has been allotted to me. I have made no movement one way or another; no doubt I could have Mount Benger for the asking, but I did not know whether it was to be lowered or not, and had hopes that they might have some better one in their eye for me," Mount Benger was to be his destiny. It adjoined Altrive, and he took it on lease for nine years. He stocked it and conducted it expensively, as his neighbours alleged—having double the number of horses that was required, and treble the number of work-people. His hospitality was also profuse. To meet his new engagements he wrote several novels, republished his poems, and gave to the world a second metrical romance, *Queen Hynde*, which contains many fine passages, but is deficient in poetical colouring and interest. He had realized nearly £1,000 by these various literary labours.

Hogg's connection with *Blackwood's Magazine* kept him still more familiarly before the public. The wit and mischief of some of his literary friends made free with his name, and represented him in ludicrous and grotesque aspects, but the effect of the whole was favourable to his popularity. His appearances in the *Noctes Ambrosiana* gave an erroneous impression of his habits, and so far prejudiced him in the estimation of the graver portion of his friends and the public, but they unquestionably elevated his reputation as a man of genius and of rare colloquial powers. For some time he winced keenly under the monthly infliction, but at length came to relish the poetical exaggeration of his friend Wilson, and predicted that the magazine would sink whenever his name was withdrawn from it. For much of the éclat and brilliancy of his latter years, relieving and gilding days of adversity, he was indebted to these celebrated and unique dialogues. By the end of his nine years' lease of Mount Benger the poet was again a ruined man. He made a visit to London in the winter of 1831, and was feted and feasted by the nobility, literati, and public men of the metropolis. He was engaged to banquets weeks in advance, and often engaged to three places in one day. On his return a public dinner was given him in Peebles—Professor Wilson in the chair—and he acknowledged that he had at last "found fame." His health, however, was seriously impaired. In November 1833 he writes to a private friend, "Though plump and fair, I am plagued with an asthmatic cough and wheezing which renders me quite useless, and disables me from hunting, fishing, &c., without which you know I cannot subsist." In the same letter he mentions that his domestic memoir of Sir Walter Scott had been published in Albany—its circulation being confined (which, of course, was found impossible) to the United States. "I had an offer for it," he remarks, "which I did not find myself in circumstances to refuse." The publication of this brochure drew down upon Hogg the keen resentment of Mr Lockhart. It is, however, a candid and just representation of his illustrious friend; though, like all Hogg's reminiscences, it is confused and inaccurate in details. With his pen in his hand to the last, the Shepherd in 1834 published, a volume of *Lay Sermons*; and in 1835 two volumes of *Montrose Tales*. By the latter end of this year his illness

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1 Before the commencement of the *Noctes*, letters, poems, &c., were printed in *Blackwood* in Hogg's name, which he never wrote, and which wanted the geniality and humour of Wilson's personations; of these he complained grievously. The following is part of an unpublished letter, addressed to Sir Walter Scott, and dated "Altrive Lake, October 3, 1821":

"My dear Sir Walter,—Like every other vassal, whose situation with his chief is perfectly understood, though never once mentioned, I always sit wisely still, unless either called upon by you to some great weaponshaw; or when I find marauders and freebooters encroaching on my own privileges. In this last case I am never behind, viz., in asking indemnities, although in the former one (as in the late council of affairs) I am unwilling to make any little outlay to budge. I am fairly in Jamie Telfer's situation, and therefore I come lang eight miles barefoot to Abbot's Ha', in hopes to have a rise in my favour. I allude to the beauty usage of me by Blackwood, and some new cronies of his. I know not what to do with this wrecker. He will neither answer a letter nor regard me in any way or another; and though I have a written promise, dated nineteen months back, that my name should never be mentioned in this place without my own consent, yet you see how it is kept, and how I am again misrepresented to the world. I am neither drunkard, nor an idiot, nor a monster of nature, nor am I so imbecile as never to have written a word of grammar in my life. I would not mind their vulgar injurious ribaldry so much on my own account, but there are other feelings now that I am bound to regard above my own, where the wounds inflicted by such assassins rankle with so keen a smart, that I am unable to allay them, and this part of the business I cannot endure. I am assailed by letters from every quarter, urging me to do something in my own defence, which I am very willing to do if I wist what to do; but I am so apt to run wrong that I dare not trust myself without asking your advice. Shall I answer him in print—pursue him at law (to which it will soon come if I answer him)—or knock out his brains? I must do something, for I am told there never was a man so ill-used in Britain; and truly I do not think there ever was. Will you suffer your liege vassal to be guided this way, and advise him to take all patiently? You were angry at me the last time I went to law, and, as a small arlepany, made me pay the piper damnable; and though I am burning for a mischief again, I shall [not] be free of entering on it this time without advice. Now, dear Sir Walter, though I have written this in bed for sheer amusement, I want a serious line from you what you think on the subject. I am lying sick of the measles, and not like to get readily free of the distemper, else I would have been down seeing Laidlaw, Lockhart, and yourself this week, which has for several years been the one I always paid my yearly homage. Yours,

We have left out some remarks by Hogg about Blackwood and pecuniary affairs. He quarrelled with most of his publishers, and generally had the wrong side of the quarrel. About a year after the date of the above letter, Professor Wilson commenced his *Noctes*—the Shepherd being the prime interlocutor; they were continued till 1832, then stopped for two years, and resumed in 1834, by the voluntary act (as appears from Mr Rogers' *Modern Minstrel*) of Professor Wilson, who remitted to the Shepherd a solution of five guineas a sheet. Hogshead assumed the form of dropsy, and after a short confinement, and three days of calm and motionless insensibility, he died on the 21st of November, having nearly completed his sixty-fifth year. He was buried in his native churchyard of Ettrick. Wordsworth and many lesser bards mourned his death; and among his own hills and dales the loss was felt to be great and irreparable. His fame seemed to fill the whole district, and was brightest at its close; his presence was associated with all the Border sports and festivities, and as a man James Hogg was ever frank, joyous, kind, and charitable.

The collected works of this self-taught genius and remarkable man are comprised in eleven volumes—five of poetry and six of prose. His tales are more popular in America than in this country. They contain true and affecting transcripts of nature, but often run into exaggeration, coarseness, and indelicacy. His Shepherd's Calendar is the best of his prose works, and must always be interesting for its genuine representation of pastoral life. His shepherds and shepherds' dogs are as faithfully delineated and as distinctly marked as those on the canvas of Landseer. As a poet Hogg is not only the best imitator of Scott, but has a vein of wild imagination peculiarly original. Nothing can be more exquisite than some of his lyrics and minor poems—his Skylark; When the Kye Comes Home; his verses on the Comet and Evening Star; and his Address to Lady Ann Scott, the last combining the most beautiful and touching description of cottage life among the solitary hills, with a certain solemnity of feudal homage and religious feeling tinged with the lights of a poetical superstition. The Queen's Wake unites his characteristic excellences—his command of the old romantic ballad style, his graceful fairy mythology, and his aerial flights of imagination. The story of Kilmeny stands by universal consent at the head of all our fairy tales: it is inimitable for its scenes of visionary splendour, purity, and bliss, linked to the fairest objects of earthly interest, sympathy, and affection. In such compositions Hogg seems completely transformed; he is absorbed in the ideal and supernatural, and might have claimed, over all his contemporaries, the Delphic laurel for direct and immediate inspiration.

(HOGSHEAD, a measure of capacity, containing 63 old wine gallons, or 52½ imperial gallons. The English hogshead was 51 gallons; but the London hogshead of beer was 3 gallons more, and of ale 3 gallons less. All these measures, however, are now superseded.