help to make this ballad the very essence of uncanny realism. Two compositions of a very different kind are The Farewell to Ettrick and The Author's Address to his Old Dog Hector. No shepherd is ever without his dog, but no shepherd, one fancies, ever loved dogs with a love like this shepherd. Dogs are on every page of his life and works. No tenderer, more sympathetic tribute of genuine affection for the four-footed companions of the hills ever flowed from the pen of a poet than this address to "my auld towzy, trusty friend". Hogg was ever a master of pathos, and his pathos sprang from his deepest heart. It was the sight of so many dead larks in a London market that inspired the most beautiful of all his lyrics. It is not surprising, then, that the thought of breaking all the old home ties on the occasion of the emigration to Harris should have prompted such a tender, touching Farewell. Were Hogg's reputation as a poet to rest upon the pages of The Mountain Bard, these three poems alone would constitute a sufficient claim to the title of a poet of true and varied power.

Hogg never possessed ready money without feeling a remarkable desire to "blow it in", if such slang be permitted, for no other phrase so well expresses the headless, exuberant, slapdash way in which he set about to spend his little fortune without consideration. He had acted thus in the Harris scheme in which he recklessly threw away all his earnings of ten years at Blackhouse; he repeated the experience now; and he was doomed to do it more than once again as the years rolled on.

Nothing would do but Hogg must set up as a farmer on his own responsibility as his father had unwisely done before him. Hogg seems to have been a trusty shepherd, but he possessed none of the canny Scotchman's talent for affairs. He expended all the fortune that he had derived from the publication of the two volumes, in a farm in Dumfrieshire that was far beyond his means to stock. It remained but halfstocked, and was also conducted in a careless way that from the first foretold ruin and destruction. Scott tells us that Hogg's partner was shiftless and given to drink; and here is a picture drawn by an eye-witness that not only shows the condition of affairs on the Shepherd's farm but also explains as well much of his inmost character.

Hogg from being a shepherd on the farm of Mitchel-Slack took, in company with Edie Brydon, the farm of Lockerben. When I paid a

It was

second visit to Lockerben my pretty housekeeper was then gone. the time of sheep-shearing, which was just finished. Masters and men were sitting round a small cask of whisky, drinking it raw out of a teacup. They were all rather merry. I sat with them for some time and was regaled with some excellent mutton ham, cakes and butter, whisky and water. I had a surveying engagement at Moffat, about ten miles across a rough moor. A number of the company were going the same route. Mr. Brydon was of the party and fortified his pocket with a bottle of whisky, which was finished on our journey. I was obliged to attend to some papers for the greater part of the night, but I heard the distant sound of reveling. The establishment at Lockerben was soon after broken up-how could it stand?-and Mr. Hogg, with a small reversion took on lease a farm on the water of Scar, in the parish of Penpoint, about seven miles west from Lockerben. Corfardine was its name. I happened to be at Eccles with Mr. Maitland a few days, and one forenoon paid him a visit, distant about three miles. The ground was covered with snow; and, on entering the farm, I found all the sheep on the wrong side of the hill. Hogg was absent, and had been so for some days, feasting, drinking, dancing, and fiddling, &c., with a neighboring farmer. His housekeeper was the most ugly, dirty goblin I had ever beheld; a fearful contrast to his former damsel. He arrived just as I had turned my horse's head to depart.

"Come in", said he; "the lads will soon be home." The inside of his house corresponded with its out. A dirty looking fellow rose from a bed, who was desired to go and look after the sheep. "I have been up", he said, "all night in the drift." "You have been so", said I, "to very little purpose. Your hirsel is on the wrong side of the hill."

He ordered some ham and some bread and butter; but it came through such hands that I could not eat. Over our glass of whisky we had a long conversation. I strongly recommended him to give up his farm and come to Edinburgh, and attend to the publication of The Mountain Bard, which he said agreed with his own opinion, for that he had in contemplation a long poem about Queen Mary."

Three years of this was enough. Then Hogg, having become a bankrupt, literally ran off from his creditors and appeared once more in the Ettrick country. His notion was to hire again as a shepherd, but no one would have him. The people of his native vale looked upon such foolish extravagance as not only sinful but absolutely criminal. They would have nothing to do with him. Wherever he went he met with the cold shoulder. All summer nothing was doing for him. At last he made the seemingly rash resolution of going to

Morrison's Reminiscences of Scott, Hogg, etc., Tait's Magazine, Vol. 10, page 574. The reader will notice a slight slip as to dates in the above quotation. The article, which is very obscure as to dates, says "about this time, 1809" occurred the conversation referred to. The Mountain Bard, however, was published in 1807. Doubtless Morrison confused the above with some conversation that had taken place while Hogg was still at Mitchel-Slack.

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Edinburgh to set up his shingle as a man of letters. He says in the Autobiography that he always intended to use literature as a crutch, never as a staff, and that he only violated his rule as a last resort. Hogg was certainly a genius, and at the time of his first appearance in Edinburgh as a permanent resident had won an enviable tho local fame as a poet. But he was a self-made genius, inordinately vain, not widely read, and possessed little or no critical ability. Yet, with all these points against him, his first serious venture was to edit and conduct a weekly literary journal. Nothing shows so well the real caliber of this man as the fact that he acquitted himself of this task with credit.

CHAPTER 3

THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD

HOGG's striking face was never handsome even tho he possessed so marked a likeness to Sir Walter Scott that Professor Wilson says that one would have thought them brothers. Yet the countenance of this shepherd was open, sincere, and thoroly manly despite its homeliness. He was a man of exceedingly strong physique and great endurance, a tramp over the mountains for thirty miles being a mere nothing in his estimation. In height he was five feet ten and a half inches, and broad chested. It is told that once in an assembly of considerable size the chests of all those present were measured, and his was the second, Sir Walter Scott being first. Later in life his hair became darker brown and then grayish, his eyes were blue and his complexion ruddy. He used regularly to compete at the outdoor athletic contests of the St. Ronan's games and always acquitted himself with credit.

Writes Mr. S. C. Hall some years later:

Up rose a man hale and hearty as a mountain breeze, fresh as a branch of hillside heather, with a visage unequivocally Scotch, high cheek bones, a sharp and clear gray eye, an expansive forehead, sandy hair with ruddy cheeks, which the late nights and the late mornings of a month of London had not yet sallowed. His form was manly and muscular, and his voice strong and gladsome, with a rich Scottish accent, which he probably on that occasion rather heightened than depressed.

Lockhart speaks thus of Hogg:

His hands and face are still brown as if he lived entirely sub dio. His very hair has a coarse stringiness about it, which proves beyond dispute its utter ignorance of all the arts of the friseur; and hangs in playful whisps and cords about his ears in a style of the most perfect innocence imaginable. His mouth, which when he smiles nearly cuts the totality of his face in twain, is an object that would make Chevalier Ruspini die with indignation: for his teeth have been allowed to grow where they listed and as they listed, presenting more resemblance in arrangement (and color, too) to a body of crouching sharp-shooters, than to any more regular species of array. The effect of a forehead towering with a true poetic grandeur above such features as these, and of an eye that illuminates their surface with the genuine lightnings of genius. these are things which I cannot so easily transfer

to my paper.

Hogg had many amiable characteristics and some that were less commendable. He was extremely careless, not only in business affairs but also in the details of his literary work. We have already seen how improvidently he embarked in the emigration scheme to Harris, and the deplorable waste in Dumfrieshire of what little money he had realized from The Mountain Bard and the book on sheep. Later in life when the Duke of Buccleugh kindly presented Hogg with the small farm of Altrive Lake rent free for life, nothing would do but he must embark in further ventures that brought again ruin upon him and his family. He rented the neighboring farm of Mount Benger on the hillside above where now stands the Gorden Arms. He rented it against the advice of all his friends, sunk in it every penny he had, and, after a few years of struggle, returned to Altrive, once more a bankrupt. Still later, towards the end of his life, just after a publisher had failed, carrying with him what little hope of remuneration Hogg entertained at the time from a new literary venture, the Shepherd trusted the same publisher with a second work, and, had he lived a few months longer, the careless poet would have experienced another financial failure that practically threw the survivors of his family into temporary poverty. Many of these misfortunes were quite due to Hogg's misguided confidence in his own wisdom and to his arrogant refusal to take the friendly advice of those who were far better qualified to judge. But it should be said to his credit that his buoyancy of spirit rose superior to all calamity. Sometimes he was momentarily cast down, but depression with him was always short-lived. He generously blamed himself and never others, even when others were to blame. He would take the bull by the horns in a sturdy, robust fashion, set to work anew, and never wasted his time in vain lamentation over what could not be helped.

It is said that when he gave directions to the architect who planned the cottage at Altrive Lake he stipulated that the flues should be so constructed as to pass all the smoke out of one chimney. But this ruse, commendable in theory for the man who wished to convince his inquisitive neighbors that no one was at home save the occupant of the kitchen and thus preserve his time in quiet for literary work, was not successful in practice. Like Daft Jock, they found him out.