ROBERT PEARSE GILLIES.

M

JAMES HOGG.

OST truly, if Burns was deservedly considered a wonder on account of the disadvantages which he surmounted in early life, Hogg was, by parity of reasoning, a supernatural wonder, seeing that, up to the age of twenty, he could scarcely read his Bible, and at that epoch first taught himself writing, by copying with great effort from printed books. From this date onwards, I believe his literary career to have been sui generis, and altogether unexampled! I never forget a remark of Mr. Southey's, when he honored me with a visit at a time of year when Edinburgh was deserted, namely, that among all our literary characters the only one whom he then felt particularly desirous to meet again was the Ettrick Shepherd. With very pardonable vanity, Hogg repeatedly wrote memoirs of himself. He has recorded the feelings of surprise, delight, and triumph with which he heard one of his own ballads chanted by a country girl, who had no suspicion that the Shepherd, whom she met daily, was its author. But it may be noted as a yet more remarkable instance of his unexpected influence, that long before James Hogg was generally known, my learned uncle, Dr. Gillies, who had never even heard of his name, nevertheless got hold in London of his afterwards well-known stanzas, commencing

"My name it is Donald Macdonald,

I live in the Hielands sae grand," etc.

and these he treasured in memory, and sang as often as he felt himself in jovial or patriotic mood.

I don't think that any two poets could be more unlike in disposition and temperament than Burns and Hogg. The former was from youth to manhood a prey to alternating fits of excitement and despondency; he wrote for the most part with care and difficulty, and in his productions there was condensed force. Hogg, on the contrary, had his joyous moods, seemingly without any reaction of gloom; with the help of "the sclate," he composed with great facility, and had a dislike to corrections afterwards; his temper was sustained and equable ; his ambition, though steadfast, was of a quiet character, and though baffled, as it often happened, in his purpose, he was never for a moment cast down.

Surely there never has been any instance of the pursuit of literature under circumstances more untoward than those which the Shepherd so cheerfully encountered. Take, for example, the difficulties attending his first attempt at publication. Being appointed to the vastly pleasant and poetical task of driving a herd of cattle from Ettrick to Edinburgh (for All Hallow Fair) in the dreary month of November, he suddenly conceived the notion of getting a volume into print, but having no manuscript in hand, he tried during his walks to remember the verses, and as often as they recurred ran into a shop to borrow a stump of pen and morsel of paper to note them down. In this way copy was provided; luckily for his purpose, he found a good-natured printer, and an octavo volume, or pamphlet, was produced in a week, with which he returned in triumph to the Forest.

Walter Scott could not persuade himself that the author of this brochure could ever live by mere verse-making, and as a better speculation, recommended that the author should turn his thorough knowledge of sheep-farming to account in districts where it was not so well understood as in Ettrick and Yarrow. In furtherance of this plan Hogg took a walk from Ettrick, across hill and dale, into Argyleshire, whence he embarked for the island of Harris, intending, if he met with en

couragement, to take a farm there, but nothing came of it. The next we hear of him is that he had found some kindly disposed though humble friends, at Edinburgh, and had with their help put together a volume of poetry, entitled the "Forest Minstrel," moreover that, to the utter amazement of the said friends, he had set up a new weekly paper, entitled "The Spy," consisting of strictures on the state of manners, morals, and literary taste in the modern Athens, and varied by original stories and poems. Wonderful to tell, this work, written by himself alone (in large quarto sheets with double columns), went on regularly for a year or more. A new weekly. journal, to be penned exclusively by one and the same hand, would have been a stout undertaking for any literary man; it was altogether marvelous on the part of a lonely, illiterate shepherd.

About this time James Hogg tenanted a room at a suburban residence near Stockbridge. It was a weather-beaten, rather ghostly, solitary-looking domicile, like an old farm-house in the country. At this tranquil abode he finished, within an incredibly short time, the “Queen's Wake,” which, as he said, when once begun, "went on of itself." Indeed, he always ascribed a separate vitality and volonté to his compositions, so that it was not his business to carry them on; on the contrary, they carried on their author, and carried him away, till at last he wondered even more than others did, at his own work! "Aye, ye 're a learned man," he sometimes said to me in after years; "there's nae doubt about that, wi' your Virgils and But aiblins ye mind yon

Homers and Dantés and Petrarchs.
fragment upon the sclate that ye despised t'ither morning.
Eh, man, sin syne, it 's ettling to turn out the vera best thing
I ever composed; and that 's no saying little, ye ken!"

The "Queen's Wake," when completed, was so extraordinary that it soon found a publisher. It appeared in 1813, just after I had migrated from Castle Street to Northumberland Street, and I shall never forget the impression it made on my mind at the first perusal. Till then Hogg had only been talked of as an eccentric being, uncouth and rude in manners, who

had written divers clever songs and ballads, which appeared in magazines and newspapers. But the "Queen's Wake" instantly lifted him up to an entirely new and unexpected grade on the Scottish Parnassus. Almost every poem of length which came out in those days, was less or more an imitation of Scott or Byron. But Hogg decidedly struck a key-note of his own. There was a freshness, a vigor and variety, bold and joyous spirit in the long ballads here strung together, which riveted the attention of every one not impassive to poetical impressions. I treasured up this volume, and watched for an opportunity to make the author's acquaintance personally, which did not present itself till the following summer.

As I had little or no acquaintance with the select society which the Ettrick Shepherd frequented at Edinburgh, I followed Professor Wilson's advice, and called on him without ceremony at an apartment which, having left Stockbridge, he then rented from a hackney coachman under the North Bridge. To my agreeable surprise, I was received as cordially, and with as little ceremony, as if there had been a previous acquaintance betwixt us of many years. I found with him his publisher, Mr. Goldie, who soon took his leave; and on my surmising that my visit had interrupted business, he desired me to be quiet on that score, as no visits could be more unimportant to him than those of his publisher. "I have been trying this half hour," said he “to bring him to business, but ye micht as weel try to grip an eel by the tail."

"But the 'Queen's Wake' ought to be a fortune to its author," said I; "and it will not always do for a poet to rest content with deserving reward which he never gains."

"The fortune will no come oot o' Goldie then," said the Shepherd; "he has never paid saxpence yet, unless it be to the printer, and even that 's no settled. But aiblins ye think owre muckle o' the ‘Queen's Wake.' It's tolerably gude, I 'll no deny that; but, eh man, that 's naething compared wi' what I am able to do! I hae a grand poyem upon the sclate yenoo, that fashes me rather, for it wants to rin on faster than I can copy with the pen. Ye 'll think but little o' the 'Queen's Wake' when ye come to see that!"