In 1803, the successful
poet and advocate Walter Scott invited a remarkable guest to dinner at
his Edinburgh residence. The plaid-clad figure, hands stained with tar
from doctoring the sheep he had just driven to market, ate and drank
heartily before putting his feet up on the sofa and proceeding to
entertain Scott and his wife with jokes, stories and songs.
James Hogg was in his
element, but next morning felt it prudent to pen an apology to his host:
‘I am afraid that I was at least half seas over last night, for I
cannot for my life remember what passed when it was late ... I have the
consolation, however, of remembering that Mrs. Scott kept us company all
or most of the time, which she certainly would not have done had I been
very rude.’
Scott’s guest was one
of the greatest literary talents to come out of Scotland, more prolific
a poet than Burns and arguably a more powerful teller of tales than
Scott, yet Hogg’s outspoken manner and quaint rustic image as the
Ettrick Shepherd kept him ultimately from the accolade he deserved.
Victorians bowdlerised
his books and left his best poems out of collections for fear of
indecency, but a select band has always appreciated his work.
Now a Hogg revival is
taking place in Scotland, with an Internet website in his honour, a new
edition of his works planned, and Scottish screen star Peter Mullan
hoping to film Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a
Justified Sinner.
All this attention would
delight the Borders farmer poet who never suffered a moment’s mock
modesty and opened his autobiography with the words: ‘I like to write
about myself: in fact, there are few things which I like better.’
Yet, until the age of 30,
Hogg could hardly write at all and had great difficulty setting down the
verses that sprang from his fertile imagination. With no schooling
beyond the age of seven, he still formed his letters like a struggling
child.
Yet the same man went on
to converse on equal terms with literary giants such as Wordsworth and
Byron, was feted in London and admired by King George IV. The numerous
financial disasters that beset him were equalled only by the number of
comebacks he made, refusing to lose his grip on happiness.
The key to this natural
genius was Hogg’s unshakeable belief in himself. Born in Ettrick
Forest, the son of a farmer and sheep dealer, he soon learned how to
rise above adversity when his father lost all his money and the family
were turned out of the house.
Young Jamie, who had
received only six months’ schooling, was hired out to herd cows and
sheep, often roaming the hills barefoot with his only shirt in rags. For
a whole year’s work, he once earned no more than a pair of shoes and a
sheep.
Yet he made the best of
his lonely. situation, running races against himself for amusement or
making up stories in his head. Anytbing he earned beyond his board and
lodging went to support his family until at the age of 14 he was allowed
to keep five shillings, with which he bought an old fiddle.
The cattle sheds and
steadings where he slept were filled with his attempts at music each
night. By day he composed songs for the farm lassies to sing at dances
and festivals, and he soon had local fame as ‘Jamie the poeter’.
In his teens he worked
for a landowner who lent him books, which Hogg consumed avidly. Yet it
was not until he was 24 that he sent off his first laboriously
transcribed poem to The Scots Magazine, a rollicking tale in rhyme
called The Mistakes of a Night, in which a youth goes courting one
evening and unwittingly seduces his sweetheart’s widowed mother.
When she falls pregnant,
the blushing youth is called by the Kirk Session to the Stool of
Repentance — an experience which Hogg, like Burns, was to have in real
life. At least twice, In 1806 and 1809, he became a father out of
wedlock, although the two girls’ families seemed content not to have
their daughters wed the penniless shepherd. When the aunt of one of the
girls did suggest Hogg should wed her niece, he replied that ‘she
advised me well but really I could not get time. She said I had plenty
of time since Candlemass. "O yes," said I, "that’s very
true, but then the weather was so wet I could not get through the
water", at which they all burst out a-laughing, the girl herself
among the rest, and there was no more of the matter, nor was there ever
a frown on either side.’
Nevertheless, 39-year-old
Hogg felt it might be best to leave Ettrick. By then he had published
not only a volume of poems called The Mountain Bard, dedicated to his
new friend Walter Scott, but also a useful handbook entitled The
Shepherd’s Guide: Being a Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Sheep.
These books had earned
him nearly £300 (about £30,000 in modem money) which he had squandered
on an unsuccessful farming venture. Ettrick looked askance at a failed
farmer and a fornicator with an odd habit of composing poems, and nobody
would give him a job as a shepherd. Penniless and in despair he came to
Edinburgh, where his friend John Grieve had a hatter’s business on the
North Bridge. Grieve gave him food and lodging while Hogg set about
trying to make money from his writing.
The Forest Minstrel was a
volume of ‘amorous phantasies’, populated by flesh-and-blood country
girls rather than the china shepherdesses favoured by more refined
poets. It was a work of genius, but earned Hogg nothing, other than an
accusation by The Scots Magazine that he was trying to ‘outdo even the
vulgarity of the lowest vulgar’.
Disgusted, the Ettrick
Shepherd decided to set up his own weekly magazine. With no editorial or
publishing experience, he kept The Spy going for a year, penning the
copy which filled its pages himself. It was controversial, outspoken,
and portrayed Edinburgh life the way Hogg saw it, but the more refined
sectors of Edinburgh society did not appreciate his candid views. When
The Spy ran an anonymous correspondent’s account of amorous escapades
with his housekeeper, one critic assumed this was drawn from Hogg’s
own experience and declared: ‘A more shameful and indecent paper was
never laid so barefacedly before the public.’
Around a quarter of the
magazine’s subscribers cancelled their subscriptions, but the more
discerning remained loyal until The Spy’s inevitable financial
collapse. By then it was impossible to ignore
Hogg’s impact on the
literary scene, and hundreds attended the weekly literary discussion
sessions known as The Forum, over which he presided in Edinburgh.
Hogg was still penniless,
relying on friends’ charity, but in 1813 he confounded the critics
with a new long poem, The Queen’s Wake, which was an instant success,
running to ten editions in the next ten years.
Hogg was now a celebrity,
invited to countless dinner parties ‘night after night, scraping on
the fiddle, singing his own ballads and, with the help of Glenlivet,
making himself and others uproariously merry’.
In 1814 he was
invited to an Edinburgh dinner party to meet ‘Mr Wordsworth’. Hogg,
who had assumed this was horse dealer of the same name was astonished to
find himself chatting instead to the great Lakeland poet.
He invited the
Wordsworths to visit his parents and sample the scenic splendours of
Ettrick. They enjoyed their visit and in turn asked him to stay with
them in the Lake District, where Hogg also met Coleridge and De Quincey.
Lord Byron was another
avid reader of the Ettrick Shepherd’s work, and declared: ‘Hogg is a
strange being but of great, though uncouth, powers. I think very highly
of him as a poet.’
When Hogg devised the
moneymaking idea of publishing a collection of English and Scottish
poetry Byron and Wordsworth both agreed to contribute a poem - but
Walter Scott declined. Hogg was incensed, and would not speak to Scott
for a year.
The two men had a cordial
but at times uneasy relationship. They had been friends since 1803, when
Scott had come to Ettrick in search of ballads for his Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border, to which Hogg’s family contributed.
While in Edinburgh, Hogg
would breakfast at Scott’s house two or three mornings a week, and
Scott enjoyed their conversations. But he and other Edinburgh
intellectuals seemed almost to tolerate Hogg as a licensed court jester
rather than an equal.
Hogg’s prolific pen
contributed to the success of Blackwood’s Magazine, yet the same
publication made fun of him as the Ettrick Shepherd, which tried his
patience sorely.
When Scott refused to
give him a poem, Hogg took it as a snobbish insult. In reality, Scott
was probably anxious not to contribute to the success of a rival poet
whose talent might one day eclipse his own.
He once offered to find
Hogg a good position on a farm, on condition that he stopped writing
poetry, and in later life Scott urged Hogg not to publish his novels and
short stories.
Yet, professional
jealousy aside, the friendship was genuine and, when Hogg fell seriously
ill, Scott turned up at the house and told John Grieve to spare no
expense on medical care because he would pick up the bill. When Hogg
later learned this, he made a handsome apology for taking umbrage and
the two men were reconciled.
In 1815, the 4th Duke of
Buccleuch offered Hogg the tenancy of Altrive Farm, rent-free, on his
estates. The Ettrick Shepherd could at last return home and take care of
his elderly parents.
In 1820, his 50th year,
he married Margaret Phillips, a lively woman 20 years his junior who
bore him a son and three daughters. It was a strong and happy marriage,
well able to weather misfortune.
In his first two years of
marriage, Hogg made about £200,000 in today’s terms from his writing,
yet it all went into a new farm, Mount Benger, which he had leased from
the Duke of Buccleuch.
Hogg was already
struggling financially by 1822 when his old friend, now Sir Walter
Scott, organised King George IV’s royal visit to Edinburgh. Hogg
penned a special masque to mark the occasion, published by Blackwood’s
- which never paid him a penny for it. ‘But I got what I held in
higher estimation, His Majesty’s thanks, for that and my other loyal
and national songs,’ he said later.
Yet the nature of Hogg’s
other work did not please the public. In 1824 he penned Confessions of a
Justified Sinner, the masterpiece which would inspire Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as The Master of
Baliantrae. Hogg felt it best to publish such a tale of horror
anonymously, and even then the fastidious public could not stomach it.
After squabbles with the publisher, Hogg made not a penny from his
greatest work.
Back in the Borders, the
new young Duke of Buccleuch’s gamekeeper caught the Ettrick Shepherd
poaching. In vain Sir Walter Scott pleaded for him: ‘But my lord Duke,
you must always remember that Hogg is no ordinary man, although he may
have shot a stray moorcock.’
The Hoggs were turned out
of Mount Benger and had to auction most of their possessions to pay
their debts. They spent their last years in the small house back at
Altrive, poor but happy.
In 1832, two years before
his death, Hogg went to London. He was wined and dined in the highest
circles and was rumoured to have turned down a knighthood.
His work had brought him
no great wealth, but a family and a coterie of friends and admirers with
whom he was happy and when, at the age of 64, the Ettrick Shepherd died
he had pronounced himself satisfied to let posterity make of him what it
would.
Not one for false
modesty, he might have hoped it would have made more of him. Now with
renewed interest in Hogg’s work promising to bring him to a prominence
which has so far eluded him, it seems that his devotees have decided to
give posterity a helping hand.
Caledonia
CALEDONIA! thou land of the mountain and rock,
Of the ocean, the mist, and the wind-
Thou land of the torrent, the pine, and the oak,
Of the roebuck, the hart, and the hind;
Though bare are thy cliffs, and though barren thy glens,
Though bleak thy dun islands appear,
Yet kind are the hearts, and undaunted the clans,
That roam on these mountains so drear!
A foe from abroad, or a tyrant at home,
Could never thy ardour restrain;
The marshall'd array of imperial Rome
Essay'd thy proud spirit in vain!
Firm seat of religion, of valour, of truth,
Of genius unshackled and free,
The muses have left all the vales of the south,
My loved Caledonia, for thee!
Sweet land of the bay and wild-winding deeps
Where loveliness slumbers at even,
While far in the depth of the blue water sleeps
A calm little motionless heaven!
Thou land of the valley, the moor, and the hill,
Of the storm and the proud rolling wave-
Yes, thou art the land of fair liberty still,
And the land of my forefathers' grave!
Visit
the James Hogg Society Web Site
HOGG, JAMES.—This delightful poet of
nature’s own rearing, who, of all our national bards under similar
circumstances, ranks nearest to Burns, was born in Ettrick Forest, on
the 25th of January, 1772. Whence he derived his most unpoetical of
names it is not easy to determine, unless we are to suppose that it was
the name of some honoured follower of the Conqueror, subsequently
fattened into its present form by the rich fruits of the conquest, or
finally by a profitable emigration into Scotland in the days, it may be,
of Malcolm Canmore. But upon this dangerous question we have no
particular wish to enter. At all events, we know that James Hogg was
fully sensible of this grunting incongruity in connection with the
tuneful avocation of minstrel, and therefore chose for himself the name
of the Ettrick Shepherd as the more fitting appellative. Whatever may
have been the good fortune of his earliest ancestors in Scotland, we
well know that none of it descended to himself; for his predecessors had
been shepherds as far back as he could trace them. His father, who
followed the same humble calling, had been so successful in it as to
save some money, which he invested in a farming speculation soon after
James was born. The young poet, who was the second of four sons, was
therefore sent to school, and would probably have received the usual
amount of education bestowed upon the children of our Scottish
peasantry, had it not been for a reverse of fortune, by which his father
was stripped of all his earnings. This happened when James was only six
years old; and he was taken from school in consequence of his parents
and their children being "turned out of doors," as he informs us,
"without a farthing in the world." After a resting-place had been found,
James was obliged to enter into service at the early age of seven. His
occupation was to herd a few cows, upon a half-year’s wage of a ewe lamb
and a pair of new shoes. In this lonely occupation, with nothing but his
cows for companions, the imaginative boy could find no better amusement
than to run races against time, or rather against himself. For this
purpose he was wont to strip like a regular athlete, until his clothes
were lost piece by piece, so that he was reduced to primitive nudeness;
and it was only by a diligent search of the other servants that the lost
articles were found. After a year spent in this kind of servitude, he
was sent once more to school. Hitherto his education had advanced so far
as reading in the "Shorter Catechism" and the Proverbs of Solomon; but
now he was transferred into a higher class, where the Bible itself was
the text-book of lessons. He also learned writing, after a fashion, in a
large coarse hand, where every letter was nearly an inch in length. A
quarter of a year spent in this way completed his education; all that
was afterwards to be done depended upon his own efforts.
Having thus received a
more limited tuition than usually happens to the children even of the
poorest in our country, Hogg was again obliged to return to the
occupation of a cow-herd, the lowest grade of rural employment; and
after serving in this capacity for several years, under different
masters, he was raised to the more honourable office of a shepherd. But
long before he attained this promotion, and while still a mere boy, the
first stirrings of the poetical spirit came upon him; and like almost
every poet, past, present, and to come, his inspirations were awoke by
female beauty, tenderness, and worth. He had already found the being who
afterwards was, in all likelihood, the "bonny Kilmeny," who bewitched
the world, as well as the animating muse of his first rugged efforts in
song. That episode, so important in a poet’s life, we give in his own
tender and truthful language:—"When only eight years of age, I was sent
out to a height called Broad-heads, with a rosy-cheeked maiden, to herd
a flock of new-weaned lambs, and I had my mischievous cows to herd
besides. But as she had no dog, and I had an excellent one, I was
ordered to keep close by her. Never was a master’s order better obeyed.
Day after day I herded the cows and the lambs both, and Betty had
nothing to do but to sit and sew. Then we dined together every day at a
well near to the Shiel-sike-head, and after dinner I laid my head down
on her lap, covered her bare feet with my plaid, and pretended to fall
sound asleep. One day I heard her say to herself, ‘Puir little laddie!
he’s jist tired to death;’ and then I wept till I was afraid she would
feel the warm tears trickling on her knee. I wished my master, who was a
handsome young man, would fall in love with her and marry her, wondering
how he could be so blind and stupid as not to do it. But I thought if I
were he I would know well what to do."
From love to music was
but a step in one of such a temperament, and when Hogg had reached the
age of fourteen he laid out five shillings, which he had saved from his
wages, in the purchase of an old violin. This new charm of existence
occupied him so wholly that all his leisure was devoted to it; and as
his only spare hours were taken from sleep, while his only dormitory was
a stable or a cow-house, his desperate attempts in music had commonly no
better auditory than that which was wont to gather around the harping of
Orpheus. He ever after retained his love of music, and by dint of
perseverance became a tolerable violinist. However trivial, or even
ridiculous, such a pursuit may be in common life, it is no frivolous
matter in that of a poet. It indicates that the soul of harmony is
within him, and that whether he learns to fiddle well or not, he will
turn it to the best account in that music of words which forms so
necessary an adjunct in poetry. Who does not recognize this fact in the
singular melody which characterizes the Ettrick Shepherd’s
versification? No sounds can be sweeter, and no notes more appropriate,
than those which embody "Kilmeny" and the Abbot M’Kinnon, in the
"Queen’s Wake." The first of these poems, as illustrative of the mere
music of language, independently of its poetical merits, has never been
surpassed.
In the meantime the
education of the future poet went on, and that, too, so oddly as to give
most uncertain promise of his future destination. He had already
committed the Psalms of David in metre to memory; but though he liked
their rhymes, he seems to have understood nothing else than the short
measure into which they are rendered. In his eighteenth year, "The Life
and Adventures of Sir William Wallace," modernized by Hamilton of
Gilbertfield, and forming the choice epic of our Scottish peasantry,
fell into his hands, and also the equally popular pastoral of the
"Gentle Shepherd." But partly from having almost forgotten the art of
reading, which he had learned so imperfectly, and partly from his scanty
reading having been hitherto limited to English, the Scottish dialect,
in which "Wallace" and the "Gentle Shepherd "are written, was so new and
so puzzling, that Hogg struggled on from line to line at a snail’s pace.
But what was more ominous still was his dislike at their versification,
so that he felt as if he would have relished them better had they been
written in prose. His love of reading having been noticed by his
employers, books were lent him, chiefly of a theological character, and
newspapers; through the last of which he was wont to wade, from the
title at the beginning to the names of printer and publisher at the end,
without stint or omission.
At length, when he had
reached his twenty-fourth year, Hogg commenced the life of a poet in
earnest. He had now read much, although very miscellaneously; and his
imprisoned ideas, after struggling for a vent, burst forth in the
language of song. His first attempts were of a humble description, being
chiefly ballads and songs, intended to be sung by the lasses of the
district; while the name of "Jamie the poeter," by which they soon
learned to distinguish him, was the "muses’ meed" with which he rested
satisfied for the present. It was easy, indeed, for him to compose
verses: they sprang up in his mind as rapidly as prose does with
ordinary mortals; but to embody them in form to the eye, so that others
might read and learn them—here was the crowning difficulty. We have
already noticed his very scanty education in penmanship, and from want
of occupation it had slumbered since his boyhood until now, that it was
urgently called into full exercise. His writing, at the best, was a sort
of laborious printing, letter by letter; while his model was the Italian
alphabet, for want of a more concise character. To add to his
difficulties, his chief opportunities for writing were derived from the
chance intervals that occurred in the management of his unruly flock.
Armed with a few sheets of paper, stitched together, in his pocket, and
a phial, instead of an ink-horn, dangling from his button-hole, he used
to sally to the hill-side with his sheep; and as soon as a season for
writing occurred, he stripped off coat and waistcoat, like one preparing
for a desperate deed, and squared his elbows for the feat. In this way
his earliest poems were committed to paper. One advantage of this slow
and toilsome process was that it afforded sufficient time for reflection
and correction; so that his MS., however uncouth, was not defiled with
those many erasures and alterations that so sorely trouble the author,
as well as perplex the printers. The word once down was as immutable as
the laws of the Medes and Persians. The habit thus established was of
immense service to Hogg when he acquired greater facility in penmanship,
and to this, perhaps, we may attribute the ready accuracy he afterwards
acquired, both in prose and verse, and the numerous productions which he
was enabled to give to the world in the midst of his other avocations.
It was now full time that
Hogg should have higher models than Ettrick ballads, and better judges
than the rude peasantry of the district. Accordingly, after he had
harped and preluded for a twelvemonth, he was so fortunate as to hear of
Robert Burns, who had died only a year before. His informant was a
"half-daft man," who recited to him the whole of "Tam O’Shanter," and
told him that its author was the sweetest poet that ever was born; that
he was now dead, and had left a place that would never be filled. Hogg,
who was so delighted with "Tam O’Shanter" that he quickly learned every
line by heart, had now full proof that there was still higher poetry
than his own, and a better poet than himself; and his whole enthusiasm
thenceforth was to become the rival, or at least the worthy successor of
Robert Burns. And why not? For had he not been born, of all days in the
year, upon the 25th of January, the very birthday of Robert Burns? And
was he not, in a great measure, an uneducated and self-taught man, even
as Burns was? And, moreover, was not his own occupation of herding sheep
every whit as poetical as following the plough, if not even more so? All
this was such proof demonstrative, that he never afterwards seems to
have lost sight of the hope that the Ettrick Shepherd would at last
become as famed as the Ayrshire ploughman. In other individuals such
soaring ambition is not only kept a secret from the world, but as much
as possible from their own hearts also; but with James Hogg there never
was such concealment. He uttered what he felt, so that those who loved
were often compelled to laugh at him, and reckon him not only the
simplest of poets, but the most vain-glorious of poetical simpletons.
For this, however, he cared very little, while he felt within himself
that new-born ardent enthusiasm which, he judged, would carry him far,
even though it should fall short of the mark. And in this he was right;
for if he did not become wholly a Burns, he still distanced others as
far as he was himself distanced by his prototype.
The first publication of
Hogg was a song, and nothing more—but it was such a song as the best of
our poets would not have been ashamed of. Such was the general suffrage,
by the high popularity which this patriotic lay, called "Donald M’Donald,"
attained, and continued to hold for years. It appeared in 1800, in
consequence of Napoleon’s threatened invasion; and, while it denounced
all manner of calamity and disaster upon the intruder—which, luckily,
were not brought to the test—it kindled, wherever it was sung, such an
ardent spirit of patriotism as Alcaeus himself would have longed to
second.
In the following year he
made a still more intrepid plunge into authorship, having come to
Edinburgh with a flock of sheep for sale, and being incumbered with
several days of interval, he resolved to spend the time in writing out
such of his compositions as he could most readily remember, and
publishing them in the form of a poetical pamphlet. He transcribed them
accordingly, placed them in the hands of a publisher, and then retired
to the Forest; where his production afterwards followed him, unrevised
and uncorrected, with not a few blunders gratuitously added by the
printer. This was but a sorry commencement; and like many poets after
their first work appears, his lucubrations seemed in his own eyes so
inferior in the form of a published book, that he wished them cancelled
and annihilated. But the press had clutched them, and their recal was
too late.
Soon after this
commencement, Hogg, impatient of the narrow circumstances within which
he was hampered, and conscious that he was fitted for something better,
resolved to amend his fortunes, by migrating either to the Highlands or
the Hebrides, and finding occupation as the superintendent of an
extensive sheep-farm. But, strongly recommended though he was,
especially by Sir Walter, then Mr. Scott, who had thus early recognized
the kindred genius in the Shepherd, the attempt was unsuccessful; and
poor Hogg, on returning home, lost all the money he still possessed, and
that, too, I the short space of a week. Something was needful to be done
immediately; and in this strait he was advised, by his steadfast friend,
Sir Walter Scott, to publish a volume of poetry. The materials were
already at hand; for Hogg, dissatisfied with the imitations of the
ancient ballads which Scott had published in the "Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border," had made several attempts of the same kind himself,
which were highly estimated. It is worthy of remark, by the way, that
the three great poets of Scotland—Scott, Hogg, and Allan
Cunningham—commenced their poetical career, not upon the refinements of
the modern school, but the rough spirit-stirring songs of shepherds and
moss-troopers. Hogg’s collection was soon in readiness; and on reaching
Edinburgh, Scott introduced him to Constable, by whom the volume was
published, under the title of "The Mountain Bard." By this work, which,
notwithstanding the roughness of a still uncultivated mind, possessed
indications of great originality and poetical merit, and by a prose work
which he produced about the same period, being an "Essay on Sheep," Hogg
cleared the sum of three hundred pounds.
It was at this time, and,
we believe, during this visit to Edinburgh in search of a publisher,
that Scott, who admired the genius of Hogg, and was amused with his
rough-spun simplicity, invited him to dinner in Castle Street, where a
party, admirers of the "Mountain Bard," were assembled to meet with its
most singular author. Hogg arrived, but in the dusty shepherd costume in
which he had attended the cattle-market, and with hands embrowned with
the processes of recent sheep-smearing. In this state he entered the
drawing-room:
"Gentles, methinks you frown:
And wherefore gaze this goodly
company;
As if they saw some wondrous
monument,
Some comet, or unusual prodigy?"
But Hogg does not appear
to have disturbed himself with their astonishment: he had made up his
mind to be a finished courtier by imitating the lady of the house. Mrs.
Scott, who was in a delicate state of health, was reclining upon a sofa;
upon which Hogg, faithful to his fair exemplar, threw himself in the
same attitude upon a sofa opposite, to the great dismay of the lady, who
saw her fine chintz crushed and soiled beneath its unwonted burden.
During the dinner, he delighted the company by his pithy and original
conversation, his Doric breadth of dialect, his stories and songs, which
were all produced as from a long-imprisoned fountain. But as the
conversation warmed and the wine circulated, he became less and less
mindful of the pattern of manners he had adopted, and more completely,
at every step, the unsophisticated boon companion of Ettrick Forest; and
after addressing his host successively as "Mr. Scott," "Sherra,"
"Scott," "Walter," and "Wattie," he wound up the climax at supper, by
hailing Mrs. Scott with the familiar title of "Charlotte."
The Ettnick Shepherd, as
we have already seen, had now made considerable advance in his
resemblance to Robert Burns. When his hour was at the darkest, he had
published a volume of poetry that raised him at once from poverty to
comparative wealth. He had established for himself a poetical
reputation, and obtained an entry into the literary society of the
capital. But, unfortunately, the parallel was not to end here, for, like
Burns, he was to lose the fortune which his genius had created almost as
rapidly as it had been won. Master of the enormous sum of three hundred
pounds, Hogg seems to have thought that it could accomplish everything;
and, accordingly, he rushed headlong into agricultural speculations, to
more than ten times the amount, and soon found himself penniless and in
debt. After struggling, or rather floundering on, impeded at every step
by the new character he had acquired, of a man that could win but not
keep—a character most unfavourable in the eyes of his countrymen— Hogg
cast about for other occupation. But his choice was more poetical than
prudent: he wished to obtain a commission in a militia regiment. This
was about the year 1808, when our captains of militia were menaced with
something more serious than the annoyances of pipe-clay and parades; for
an invasion was imminent, and it was thought that Hogg, although a poet
and admirable writer of war-songs, was more likely, in a charge of
bayonets, to play the part of a Horace than a Tyrtaeus. Such, at least,
was the suspicion of Sir Walter Scott, a good judge in such matters,
whose influence Hogg solicited in this affair, but who endeavoured to
dissuade his friend, by representing the smallness of pay attached to a
militia ensign’s commission. Disappointed in this, his next ambition was
a place in the Excise; but although in this case Scott exerted himself
with all his influence, the Ettrick Shepherd soon found that he had as
little chance of becoming an exciseman as a soldier. It was perhaps as
well for him that this further assimilation to Burns was not
accomplished.
Thus frustrated in all
his efforts, Hogg now resolved to embrace authorship as a profession. It
was his last resource, for nothing remained to him but his pen and he
had already tried its efficacy. Full of this purpose, he threw his plaid
over his shoulders, turned his back on Ettrick Forest, and entered
Edinburgh as if he had dropped from the clouds. Prudence, experience,
tact; a graceful conciliatory manner, and money-making money-saving
habits—in each and all of these, indeed, he was wofully wanting; all
that he brought to the tug of life, which was now to begin in earnest,
was high enthusiastic genius and indomitable perseverance. He was now at
the age of thirty-eight, and therefore too old to study the graces, or
unlearn the habits of his former life. His first application was to
journalists, publishers, editors of magazines, and booksellers; but
after going the round in quest of literary occupation, he found himself
rebuffed at every point. At last he resolved to try a volume of poetry;
but so much had he discontinued for years the practice of verse-making,
that he was obliged to draw for materials upon his early compositions.
The result was the "Forest Minstrel," a collection of songs, of which
two-thirds were his own; but as they were almost wholly the crude
productions of his early days, they acquired little popularity, and
brought him no profit—if we are to except the kindness of the Countess
of Dalkeith, to whom they were dedicated, who sent him a present of a
hundred guineas through the hands of Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards
befriended him still more substantially when she became Duchess of
Buccleugh. Chagrined at the bad success of his "Forest Minstrel," he
resolved to abandon publishers as the enemies of all genius, and turn to
the printers; but these he found as stiffnecked as the former class, for
they would not print his lucubrations without the name of a bookseller
as publisher on the title-page. His proposal also was little calculated
to win them, for it was, to publish a weekly newspaper called the "Spy,"
devoted to belles-lettres, morals, and criticism. Such a journal,
and by such a man!—the whole trade cried out against it. At length, in
his researches, he stumbled upon an obscure bookseller, who undertook
the office of printing and publishing, and the "Spy" in due time came
forth; but its language by the third or fourth number waxed so unruly
and indecorous, that many of the subscribers sent in their resignation,
But Hogg, who was stiffly confident in his own good intentions, and
unable to comprehend what he reckoned their unreasonable fastidiousness,
persisted in his delinquency, until he managed to drive all the
subscribers out of the field, and bring the "Spy" to an untimeous end
before it had lived and fretted for a short twelvemonth.
Hogg had now plunged into
the unfathomed sea of authorship, and found that he must sink or swim as
the case might be. He still felt his deficiency for a literary life, and
laboured earnestly to amend it; but as he was too old for a regular
training ab initio, he endeavoured to attain his end by a short
cut, and for this purpose attended a forum, or debating society, that
had been set up by a few aspiring young men in Edinburgh, who opened
their meetings to the public at the rate of sixpence a-head as the price
of admission. Here the Shepherd, who entered with his wonted ardour into
the work, became a frequent speaker; and his strange medley of broad
Scotch and homely quaint phraseology, combined with the rich original
ideas that flashed from him at every movement, made him a wondrous
favourite with his auditors, who laughed, wondered at, and admired this
most singular orator all in one breath. He ever afterwards retained a
grateful recollection of the benefits he derived from this kind of
schooling, and declared that without these weekly lessons he never could
have succeeded as he did. As this was only preliminary to something
better, he now set himself in good earnest to produce a work that should
surpass all he had yet written, and give him a place among the poets of
the day—an aim that was not a little strengthened by the success of
Scott and Byron, whom he secretly hoped to rival. As on former
occasions, he had lying beside him sundry ballads and tales, the
composition of his former days, which he was unwilling to lose; and in
the plan of his new production these were to be interwoven with new
materials into the form of a consecutive story. A few months of
application sufficed to complete the work, and the result was the
"Queen’s Wake." To find a publisher was now his task. He repaired to
head-quarters at once, by applying to Mr. Constable; but "the Crafty,"
who, no doubt, was inundated with similar applications, and was too wise
to buy a pig in a poke, refused to have anything to do in the affair
until he had seen the manuscript. This reasonable request the poet
refused, with "What skill have you about the merits of a book?" "It may
be so, Hogg," replied the Jupiter Tonans of Scottish publishers, "but I
know as well how to sell a book as any man, which should be some concern
of yours, and I know how to buy one, too." Another publisher was
ultimately found, and in the spring of 1813 the "Queen’s Wake" appeared.
Of this beautiful poem,
universally known and admired as it has been and still continues to be,
nothing can now be said, whether in criticism or laudation, that has not
already been said a hundred times over. It has appropriately taken its
permanent place in British poetry, where it promises to be as highly
valued, and to last as long, as anything that has been produced by
Campbell, Scott, or Byron. On its appearance the whole reading public
were struck with astonishment. That tales so striking, that pictures so
full of ethereal beauty and grandeur, and a versification so graceful
and musical, should have been the produce of an uneducated shepherd!—it
was one of those literary phenomena which occur only at rare intervals,
for the perplexity of criticism, and the subversion of its authority and
rule. By what strange power or chance had such a man been able to
describe the fairy queen and her glittering train riding along to the
music of their own silver bells; or the unearthly voyages and revels of
the witch of Fife; or that vast pillared temple of nature, Staffa,
amidst the deep, eternal anthem of its waves; or the phantom-seer
Columba, bewailing the iniquities of his once hallowed isle, and dooming
its sinful abbot and monks to the ruin they had merited? But, above all
these, the tale of Kilmeny bore the pre-eminence; for in it the poet’s
excellencies were concentrated, whether in the wild and wonderful of
conception or beauty of execution; while the music of the language
arrested the ear, as did the rich compositions of Weber, when his "Der
Freischutz" and "Oberon " first broke upon the public.
By the publication of the
"Queen’s Wake," its author was recognized not only as a veritable poet,
but one of the highest order; and as it went through five editions in a
short time, it tended greatly to relieve his straitened circumstances.
At this time also he was in the practice of contributing articles to the
"Scottish Review," a quarterly periodical of some literary reputation;
and on the appearance of the "Isle of Palms," by John Wilson, then
little known to fame, Hogg, who was delighted with the striking
incidents and rich imagery of the poem, wrote a eulogistic criticism,
which was published in the "Review." But amidst so much warm-hearted
commendation which he doled out, it was necessary to find fault
somewhere; and, accordingly, he fastened upon the incident of the hero
and heroine having been sent in an open boat over some hundred leagues
of ocean, without the slightest mention of any victualling for such a
voyage. Had Hogg but read a romance or two of the chivalrous ages, he
would have known how easily people can live without food, as well as be
hacked to pieces without dying. He was impatient to come into contact
with the talented author of the poem, and as no one was at hand to
introduce him, he introduced himself. On this occasion he quoted once
more what he thought the crying grievance of the "Isle of Palms," with
"Ye ken that it was arrant nonsense to set a man and wife awa sailing
ower the sea wi’ naething to fill their stamach but the cauld wind. You
should most certainly ha’e put some o’ provisions in the boat." "O,
Sir," replied the future Christopher North, with a look of great
gravity, while inwardly the cockles of his heart were dancing with
laughter, "they were on the water only a single night; and, moreover,
let me tell you, filling the belly is scarcely one of the poetical
occupations. You know, sir, they may have had bread and cheese in
their pockets without my taking the trouble of mentioning that in
the poem!" This was perfectly satisfactory to his unsophisticated
hearer, who replied, "Faith, I dare say you’re right after a’; but, do
you ken, the thing never struck me, man?"
Before proceeding with
the literary labours of James Hogg, it may be as well to notice an
incident characteristic of so singular a man, in which he endeavoured to
re-establish himself in life as a farmer—the department for which he
thought himself best fitted. For this, as in most of his other attempts,
patronage was necessary; and he bethought himself of the Duchess of
Buccleuch, whose kindness and condescension he had more than once
experienced already. Having screwed up his courage to the point of
requesting, he made his application to her Grace in the following
strange epistle:--
"To her Grace the Duchess of
Buccleuch, Dalkeith Palace. Forwarded by
Messrs. Grieve and Scott, hatters,
Edinburgh.
"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR
GRACE,—I have often grieved you by my applications for this and
that. I am sensible of this, for I have had many instances of your
wishes to be of service to me, could you have known what to do for that
purpose. But there are some eccentric characters in the world, of whom
no person can judge or know what will prove beneficial, or what may
prove their bane. I have again and again received of your Grace’s
private bounty, and though it made me love and respect you the more, I
was nevertheless grieved at it. It was never your Grace’s money that I
wanted, but the honour of your countenance; indeed, my heart could never
yield to the hope of being patronized by any house save that of
Buccleuch, whom I deemed bound to cherish every plant that indicated
anything out of the common way on the braes of Ettrick and Yarrow.
"I know you will be
thinking that this long prelude is to end with a request. No, madam! I
have taken the resolution of never making another request. I will,
however, tell you a story, which is, I believe, founded on a fact:—
"There is a small farm at the head
of a water called . . . possessed by a mean fellow named . . . A third
of it has been taken off, and laid into another farm; the remainder is
as yet unappropriated. Now, there is a certain poor bard, who has two
old parents, each of them upwards of eighty-four years of age, and that
bard has no house nor home to shelter these poor parents in, or cheer
the evening of their lives. A single line from a certain very great and
very beautiful lady, to a certain Mr. Riddle (the Duke’s chamberlain),
would insure that small pendicle to the bard at once. But she will grant
no such thing! I appeal to your Grace if she is not a very bad lady
that? I am your Grace’s ever obliged and grateful, "JAMES HOGG.
"Ettrick Bank, March 17, 1814.
"The Ettrick Shepherd."
This curious application,
which the Duchess received only a few months before her death, remained
unanswered—not from remissness, however, but the fear of "seeing herself
in print," should she vouchsafe a reply. She sent the letter to Sir
Walter Scott, requesting him to infirm his poetical friend of the Duke’s
unwillingness to displace a tenant, and assure him withal of her wish to
serve him whenever a suitable opportunity occurred. On Scott’s first
visit to the Duke after the death of the Duchess, the case of Hogg was
introduced, and his Grace feelingly said, "I must now consider this poor
man’s case as her legacy." The ultimate result of this resolution
was the establishment of Hogg, three years afterwards, in a snug farm on
Altrive Lake, at a merely nominal rent, where he might have every
opportunity of securing comfort and independence.
In the meantime, however,
it was necessary for Hogg to bestir himself to keep poverty both from
hearth and door. Notwithstanding the fame of the "Queen’s Wake," its
publication was attended with so many mischances, that the profits were
inadequate and at wide intervals. Besides, it must be remembered that
money, which can make to itself wings even in the custody of the
prudent, has its chances of escape multiplied fifty-fold when in the
keeping of a poet, and such a poet as the Ettrick Shepherd, whose
knowledge of man and life was anything but practical. In 1815 his
"Pilgrims of the Sun" appeared. But, notwithstanding its many powerful
descriptions and poetical passages, the reception which the public gave
to the work betokened disappointment: their hopes had been raised so
high by the "Wake," that anything short of it had little chance of
success. In America, however, it had a better reception, where the sale
of 10,000 copies extended the author’s reputation, but without bettering
his finances. A rebuff like this would have deterred most authors; but
Hogg had such an implicit faith in his own genius, that he believed
himself to be right in his estimate of the poem, and the whole literary
world in the wrong, and that the publishers were in a conspiracy to
arrest the progress of the "Pilgrims." This was soon after followed by "Mador
of the Moor," a poem in the Spenserian stanza, and which he reckoned his
masterpiece of versification. But here again the world out-voted him,
for "Mador of the Moor" was reckoned inferior even to its predecessor—a
judgment which has never as yet been reversed.
"My next literary
adventure," says Hogg in one of his autobiographies, "was the most
extravagant of any. I took it into my head that I would collect a poem
from every living author in Britain, and publish them in a neat and
elegant volume, by which I calculated I might make my fortune." It was
easy to ask, but to obtain such a favour was the difficulty; for the
best poets refused a contribution of any kind, while those of a second
or third rate, who complied, sent what was little better than the dregs
of their inkhorns. Of these refusals, that of Sir Walter Scott
especially incensed him; and in an angry letter which he wrote to the
great minstrel on the occasion, he changed the prefatory "dear sir" into
"damned sir," and ended with "yours with disgust, &c." A quarrel of some
weeks’ standing was the consequence between the reckless, hot-headed,
but warm-hearted shepherd, and equally warm-hearted but wiser friend and
patron. At length, finding that he could not obtain materials, or at
least such as were fitted for his purpose, he resolved to create them.
With great glee he accordingly set to work to produce such an imitation
of each distinguished poet as might be mistaken for an original, and
frolicked through this arduous task as if it had been capital fun. The
whole series of imitations, except a very small proportion, was written
in three weeks; and when completed, the volume was published under the
title of "The Poetic Mirror, or Living Bards of Britain." It was so
successful that the first edition was sold in six weeks. Still, it must
be owned, that it never attained the same universal popularity as the
"Rejected Addresses," notwithstanding its superior poetical merit to the
latter production. The imitation was, in most cases, too exaggerated to
pass current, so that the public lost the luxury of being cheated. Of
this he was himself partly conscious, and says, "I was led to think
that, had the imitations of Wordsworth been less a caricature, the work
might have passed, for a season at least, as the genuine productions of
the authors themselves, whose names were prefixed to the several poems."
On the year after the
appearance of the "Poetic Mirror," Hogg published two volumes under the
title of "Dramatic Tales." Among his poetical aspirations had been that
of producing something for the stage; but, in common with most
candidates for such honour, he had been repelled by the difficulties of
access to the green-room, so that "‘sdeath I’ll print it!" the only
alternative of a disappointed dramatic poet, was adopted by the
Shepherd. But the drama was not his forte, notwithstanding his own
opinion to the contrary; and the cold reception of his plays by the
reading public so incensed him, that, with the exception of an
occasional idle song to beguile a leisure hour, he resolved to write
poetry no more. Still, write he must, for his necessities required it,
and therefore he turned to prose. Like Sir Walter Scott, he would become
a novelist, and perhaps succeed as well as Sir Walter had done. He
accordingly produced "The Brownie of Bodsbeck and other Tales," which
was published in two volumes. Unfortunately for the "Brownie," the
ground which it entered was so fully occupied by "Old Mortality," that
there was little chance of its obtaining fair play, even had its merits
been greater than they were; and although it advocated the cause of the
aspersed Covenanters, it was regarded after all as a humble and
unsuccessful imitation of the "Great Unknown," who was then in the
ascendency. Hogg, in his own vindication, has told us that the "Brownie
of Bodsbeck" was written considerably prior to the publication of "Old
Mortality," and might have appeared a year before the latter, but for
the obstinacy of the publisher, whose taste it did not happen to suit.
The next attempt of Hogg
was to collect the "Jacobite Relics of Scotland" for publication, a
measure which had been proposed to the Highland Society of London, by
its noble chairman, the Duke of Sussex. Of his quest on this new tract,
Sir Walter Scott thus writes in one of his letters: "Hogg is here, busy
with his Jacobite songs. I wish he may get handsomely through, for he is
profoundly ignorant of history, and it is an awkward thing to read, in
order that you may write. I give him all the help I can, but he
sometimes poses me. For instance, he came yesterday, open mouth,
inquiring what great dignified clergyman had distinguished himself at
Killiecrankie—not exactly the scene where one would have expected a
churchman to shine—and I found with some difficulty that he had mistaken
Major-General Canon, called, in Kennedy’s Latin song, Canonicus
Gallovidiensis, for the canon of a cathedral." This was ridiculous
enough; but we suspect there are hundreds in Scotland who have passed
through the High School, and, it may be, the college to boot, who would
have fallen into the same mistake. This ignorance of Latin and history
was not the only difficulty that Hogg encountered, for he found the
Highland peasantry themselves very jealous about giving up their old
tokens of Jacobitism to a stranger, fearing that they might be
manufactured into a matter of high treason. But he persevered stoutly in
his task; and the first volume of the work was brought out in 1819, and
the second in 1821. To his industry as a collector was also added his
own native poetical talent, for some of the best songs were his own
composition; and nothing delighted him so much as the mistake of the
Edinburgh Review, when, in its sweeping condemnation of these Jacobite
Relics, it made a most favourable exception in behalf of Donald
M’Gillavry—the produce of his own pen. Hogg, who was wont to praise or
blame himself as unscrupulously and frankly as if he had been speaking
of some neutral person, regarded the completion of this work with no
little complacency, and has said of it in one of his autobiographies, "I
am sure I produced two volumes of Jacobite Relics, such as no man in
Scotland or England could have produced but myself." Between the
interval of the first and second volume of the Relics, he published, in
1820, his "Winter Evening Tales," the greater part of which he had
written in early life, when he was a shepherd among the mountains. These
tales, though written under such circumstances, are among the best of
his prose productions; and, none who read them can fail to be struck
with the life-like reality and air of truthfulness with which they are
pervaded. Let the event narrated be however absurd or impossible, the
reader is compelled to swallow it; for while the author writes as if he
were deponing upon oath, and descends to the minutest circumstantiality,
he goes onward with such earnestness as leaves little room for doubt or
disputation.
We have already mentioned
the singular manner in which Hogg obtained his little farm at Altrive,
upon a merely nominal rent, which, by the way, was never exacted. One
would have thought that here, even in spite of the precariousness of
authorship, he would have been able to seat himself in comfort under his
own vine and fig-tree. But he soon showed that while he had too little
prudence to be a money-making poet, he had too much genius to be a
plodding successful farmer. He removed to his farm in 1817, and after
building upon it a handsome cottage, he took to himself a partner of his
home and his cares in 1820, when he had reached the ripe age of
forty-eight. After his marriage, finding the farm of Altrive Lake too
small for his wants or ambition, he took on lease the larger adjoining
one of Mount Benger; but although the profits of his past literary
labours enabled him to expend a thousand pounds in stocking it, he soon
found that this was not half enough. He therefore encountered such
difficulties at the outset as obliged him to renew his literary labours,
and continue his dependence upon publishers. Commencing now the trade of
novelist in good earnest, he wrote, on the spur of the moment, the
"Three Perils of Man, viz., War, Women, and Witchcraft," a strange
medley of extravagant incident and beautiful description; and soon
after, a similar work in three volumes, entitled the "Three Perils of
Women." Before these works were published, the coronation of George IV.
occurred, and Sir Walter Scott, thinking that a memorial of this august
spectacle from the pen of the Ettrick Shepherd would be a rich
originality, and might produce him a golden requital, solicited and
obtained a place for Hogg, as well as himself in the Hall and Abbey of
Westminster, to witness the coronation. With this permission was coupled
an invitation from Lord Sidmouth, to dine with him after the solemnity,
when the two poets would meet the Duke of York and a few other Jacobites.
Here was an opportunity of princely patronage such as few peasant-poets
have enjoyed; and Scott accordingly announced the affair to Hogg,
requesting him to join him at Edinburgh, and set off with him to the
great metropolis. But poor Hogg!—he wrote "with the tear in his eye," as
he declared, to say that his taking such a journey was impossible—and
why? because the great yearly Border fair, held in St. Boswell’s Green,
in Roxburghshire, happened at the same period, and he could not absent
himself from the meeting! In the following year (1822) the king’s visit
to Edinburgh occurred; and Hogg, either infected with the national
epidemic, or to vindicate his loyalty, that had slumbered so strangely
at the time of the coronation, produced a poetical welcome to the
memorable advent, entitled "The Royal Jubilee, a Scottish Masque." As
such courtly masques are but forced productions at the best, that of the
Shepherd was scarcely better than the best laureate lays, if we except a
few genuine poetical touches here and there, such as royal favour can
seldom purchase. In speaking of this effusion, the Shepherd naively
adds, "I got no money for it; but I got what I held in higher
estimation —his majesty’s thanks for this and my other loyal and
national songs. The note is written by Sir Robert Peel, in his majesty’s
name, and I have preserved it as a relic."
After this Hogg continued
for several years to write in prose and verse for the periodicals,
"sometimes receiving liberal payment," he tells us, "and sometimes none,
just as the editor or proprietor felt disposed." But the periodical to
which he chiefly adhered, and of which he had been one of the original
founders, was Blackwood’s Magazine. And who that has read the Noctes
Ambrosians can fail to recollect the full portrait of the Shepherd
given there as he dressed and looked, as he thought, spoke, and acted;
even as he ate, drank, and slept? Overcharged the picture certainly was,
and of this he vehemently complained; but still, how few have sat to
such a limner, and have received such justice, where justice was most
required? Still more reasonably he complained of the many sentiments
attributed to him which he never conceived, as well as the tales and
songs which he had never composed, although they were given as his own
in these widely-admired Noctes. He now collected his own
veritable prose contributions to Blackwood, and published them in two
volumes, under the title of the "Shepherd’s Calendar," a work
more vigorously written, and which attained a higher popularity than any
of his former prose productions.
But, in the meantime,
what had become of the Ettrick Shepherd’s farming? The reader may well
conclude that all this authorship was either cause or effect—that it
either brought his farm to nought, or was the desperate resource of
utter failure in all his agricultural endeavours. Both conjectures are
but too correct. His extensive connection with the literary society of
Edinburgh, and the taste he had acquired for popular laudation, made the
occupations of a farmer a perfect weariness to his heart, so that he was
more frequently to be found among the intellectual throng of the
metropolis, than with the ploughmen and shepherds of Mount Benger. Nor
was it better when he betook himself to his rural home; for every idle
tourist, every lion-hunter, every wandering poet, every effete or embryo
scribbler, must needs make a pilgrimage to the wonderful poet of Altrive
Lake; and Hogg, whose heart overflowed with hospitality, entertained
them at his board, and not only squandered upon them his hard-won
resources, but, what was more valuable, his time also. It is not
wonderful, therefore, that when his lease of Mount Benger had expired,
he found himself, at the age of sixty, not a sixpence richer than when
he began the world. One resource was still in prospect. It was now the
fashion to bring out the well-established works of our popular authors
in reprints of monthly volumes, by which plan the gleaning was often
more abundant than the original harvest; and Hogg resolved to avail
himself, like others, of such a promising opportunity. For this purpose
he entered into negotiation with a London publisher, to bring out a
selection of his prose productions in volumes every two months, under
the title of "Altrive Tales;" and, to perfect the engagement, he
resolved to repair in person to the metropolis. This he did on the 1st
of January, 1832, when, for the first and last time in his life, he who
had appeared to the English admirers of the "Queen’s Wake" as a poetical
myth, and not an uneducated shepherd of real flesh and blood, presented
himself, in all his rustic simplicity and reality, to the wondering
coteries of London. It is needless to add how he was welcomed and feted.
He was not only a lion, but such a lion as the whole kingdom of
Cockaigne had never been privileged to witness; and they could not
sufficiently admire the whole man, combining, as he did, such warmth of
heart and richness of thought, with such genuine unvarnished simplicity
of speech, appearance, and bearing. He was a real shepherd after all—and
he was the shepherd. But in spite of all this flattery and
welcome with which he was received by wonder-loving London during a
three months’ stay, his ill luck, which abode with him to the last, made
his coming a mere holiday visit, and nothing more. As soon as the first
volume of the "Altrive Tales" appeared, the publisher failed, and the
work was stopped, so that, with hopes utterly blighted in a matter upon
which he had placed so much reliance, he fell back upon the precarious
resource of magazine writing. Two years after he published a volume of
Lay Sermons, or rather Essays, which issued from a London press, but
brought him slender remuneration. A third attempt, which he made the
following year (1830), was the publication of the "Montrose Tales," in
three volumes. This was also published by the same luckless bookseller
in whose hands the "Altrive Tales" had become bankrupt; but a fresh
insolvency, only eight months after the new work had appeared, sent the
author’s hopes of profit to the winds. Certainly none but a genuine
child of nature to the last—one holding to the very end of his days the
confiding faith of infancy and the unexperienced simplicity of boyhood,
in spite of all that had come and gone—could have so failed, and failed
continually! But such was Hogg; and if before a bargain he neither
doubted nor suspected, so, after its failure, he neither desponded nor
despaired. He was always elate with cheerfulness and hope, and ready for
new adventure.
But the most elastic bow,
however enduring, must finally yield; and Hogg, who had now reached his
sixty-fourth year, and enjoyed such a state of robust health, activity,
and vigour as falls to the lot of few poets, combined with a
constitutional cheerfulness of temperament, such as the most fortunate
might have envied, was to close his eventful career. Much as he had
written, the wonder had continued to the last that one so educated and
circumstanced could write so well. His closing days, which at first gave
no premonition of their result, found him employed in compiling a small
volume of sacred poetry, while his walks in the moors, amidst the fresh
heather-bells and the bleating of flocks, made him feel as if the season
of decay were still distant. But his complaint, which was an affection
of the liver, so rapidly increased, that after an illness of four weeks
he died at his cottage of Altrive Lake, on the Yarrow, on the 21st of
November, 1835, leaving a widow and five children, dependent upon the
gratitude of a country whose scenes he has described, and whose worth he
has eulogized so eloquently. [After a lapse of nearly twenty years, the
widow of the Ettrick Shepherd was pensioned by the government.] His
works, of which we have not enumerated the full amount in poetry and
prose, have since been published at Glasgow, entire in eleven volumes.
Thus passed away a man whose name will continue to be coeval with that
of Ettrick or the Yarrow, and whom Scotland at large, as long as she
cherishes the remembrance of her past national genius, will never
willingly forget.
The Works of the Ettrick Shepherd
Willie & Keattie
Scottish Pastorals, Poems, Songs, etc.
Mostly written in the Dialect of the South by James Hogg (1801)
Memorials of James
Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd
Edited by his daighter Mrs Garden with Preface by Professor Veitch.
Third Edition with Introduction by Sir George Douglas, Bart (1904)
The
private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner
By James Hogg with a detail of curious traditionary facts, and other
evidence, by the editor (1824) (pdf) |