Sundays made gloomy by the Bible and the Shorter Catechism (a strangely misapplied adjective some later-day boys used to think), and, he too, no doubt, suffered. But the old songs and the old tales sung and told by his mother round the cottage fireside sank much more deeply into his heart than the Gospel narratives or the mysteries of Calvinism, and so we have one poet more where we might have had merely another Dryasdust of the type of the old Scottish professor of theology, who would have found his greatest delights, as George Eliot puts it, on the dead-level of the commonplace.

Hogg was herding in his sixth year, after having received his six months' schooling. One lamb and a pair of shoes constituted his half-year's fee; and while he probably had the shoes, his father no doubt claimed the lamb. He continued this mode of life for many years, each summer as it came round finding him under a new master, until when he had reached the borders of manhood he could boast of having had altogether about a dozen different homes. When he was just out of his teens he secured an engagement as shepherd with the father of Willie Laidlaw, then a latent poet like himself, at the farm of Blackhouse, a wild and romantic region on the Douglas Burn, a few miles north from "lone St. Mary's silent lake." Here some of the happiest years of his life were spent, and here he got his first real intellectual stimulus. James Laidlaw was a man of more than ordinary intelligence. He had what very few farmers can boast of—a well-stocked library, of which he allowed the free use; and Hogg tells with what delight he took some of the volumes, especially "The Gentle Shepherd" of Allan Ramsay, to the hills, read them as best he could, and dreamed over them till the ambition that he might become an author came into his head. Thus, to the friendship of Nature-not by any means new to the young man-was now added the friendship of books, and the result of having such good company very soon appeared. Another thing came as a stimulus. A half-witted character known as Jock Scott met him one day on the hillside, and immediately began to recite "Tam o' Shanter." Burns had at this time been twelve months in his grave, yet, extraordinary as the fact may appear, such was Hogg's isolated position and neglected education that he had never so much as heard his name, much less met with any of his works. And now, at the revelation of genius in "Tam o' Shanter" big tears of joy and surprise coursed down his quivering cheek, and the immortal epic had to be repeated again and again, until the greater part of it had been got by heart. The effect on the Shepherd was magical: he would be the successor of Burns, for could he not "tell more stories

and sing more songs than ever ploughman could in the world?" He had a very good opinion of himself, this shepherd of the Ettrick hills. But is anything ever lost by a lofty, by even an unattainable, ambition? Hogg certainly came far short of the goal he thus early aimed at, but he has left behind him not a few things which Burns would assuredly have been proud to own; and, after all, his vanity was not any more excessive than that of Byron or of Wordsworth, while he had a good deal more excuse for the failing than either of these had.

To resolve to become a poet was, however, an easier matter than the writing down of the poems when fancy had given them birth. It is amusing, and not a little pathetic, too, to read of the full-grown man seated among the heather, trying to form the letters with the stump of an old pen, and an inkhorn stuck in a hole in his waistcoat. Still, it is the province of genius to overcome difficulties, and Hogg's persevering efforts soon made him as expert at writing down his thoughts as he was gradually becoming at giving them form in his mind. His first songs, rude and rugged in rhythm, are for the most part still unprinted, but they delighted the peasant boys and girls of Ettrick, and that was probably all the reward the singer then looked for, his heart being yet as pure as that of a child, and his kind and simple character still untouched by the dangerous flatteries of the world.

Hogg's first published song, curiously enough, was a martial outburst about the threatened invasion of Great Britain by Napoleon Bonaparte. It bore the appropriately patriotic-looking title of "Donald Macdonald," and one verse of it ran thus :

Wad Bonaparte land at Fort William,
Auld Europe nae langer should grane.
I laugh when I think how we'd gall him
Wi' bullets, wi' steel, and wi' stane;
Wi' rocks o' the Nevis and Gairy
We'd rattle him aff frae our shore,
Or lull him asleep in a cairny

An' sing him" Lochaber no more."

It was not a very meritorious production, but it had what might be called a living interest, and it was sung in many a gathering throughout the country. Its fame travelled further: it even reached the camp, and became popular there. commanded the northern division of the be sung at his mess every week-day. with glee when it was given out in the and often he joined in the chorus himself. Somehow, the idea got

General Macdonald, who English army, caused it to He used to snap his fingers robust tones of his officers,

into his head that it was composed in honour of himself, and to that belief he clung to his dying day. The poet once heard the production sung in a theatre at Wigan, and when it had been encored he could not resist the temptation of telling his neighbour, a burly Yorkshireman, that he was the author. The statement, of course, called forth only an incredulous smile, and the worthy Englishman told Hogg's landlady afterwards that he took the poet for a half-crazed pedlar! The success of "Donald Macdonald" was responsible for Hogg's first volume of verse, a booklet of sixty-two pages, issued from the least literary-like quarter of Edinburgh, to wit, the Grassmarket, in 1801. It was a hastily got-up work, and had no more success than such forced ventures generally have. But it took well with the country-people, who knew something of the author, and it served the further and perhaps better purpose of introducing him to Sir Walter Scott, Allan Cunningham, and other literary leaders of the time. Sir Walter was then sheriff of Selkirkshire, and the first meeting of the two men took place at Ramseycleuch, where the author of "Waverley " afterwards said he had discovered "a brotherpoet, a true son of Nature and genius."

If we had not waived the question of Hogg's right to the title of "Shepherd," something might now be said in support of his claim to it by putting forward the fact that about this time he wrote a treatise on sheep, which secured him a prize of £300 from the Highland Society. This was a much larger sum than he had ever possessed in his life, and in a foolish moment he decided to spend it by going in for farming on his own account. Things would have perhaps turned out rightly enough, but Hogg's ambition led him to take a farm three times larger than he was able to stock, and the result was a disastrous failure. In truth, Hogg had none of the qualifications necessary for the making of a successful farmer. Leaving aside the question of his literary bent, he was more attached to the gun and the fishing-rod than to the plough, and he knew as little about the management of servants as about the management of money. We are told that he kept three big lads, but did not look after them. If the work was not properly done he would get angry with them, and immediately after sit down and tell them stories or recite to them his latest poem! One day he was told that a valuable mare was seriously ill, and the suggestion was made that he should set off for the veterinary surgeon at once. "I canna attend to her just now," replied the easy-minded Shepherd, "for I'm gaun up the hill to shoot a hare for dinner." And so the dinner was secured, while the mare was lost! Happily for himself, Hogg was of a joyous tempera

ment, and his reverses never preyed in the smallest degree on his spirits. He believed, in his own mind, that he had always done everything for the best, and so long as no man could accuse him of dishonesty he laughed at the futility of his calculations, and contentedly let his earnings go as they came, determined to make more money as soon as possible, although it should go the same way as before. This uniform happiness was partly owing to a good constitution, and partly arose, as he is careful to remind us, "from a conviction that a heavenly gift conferring the powers of immortal song was inherent in my soul."

It was the effort to conquer circumstances that led Hogg, on the failure of his farming schemes, to take up his residence in Edinburgh, with the view of making a living, in one way or other, by his pen. One hardly knows what he did at this time, and one hardly cares to inquire, lest it should be found that he had become. the veriest literary hack in the Scottish capital. We know that for three years he earned a very precarious income by writing songs, poems, and prose tales, and by editing a weekly periodical called "The Spy," which expired after a dreary existence of twelve months. At length, in 1813, came "The Queen's Wake," which at once turned the tide, and changed the author from a literary hack to a literary lion. Up to this time Hogg had been regarded simply as "a clever sort of good-for-nothing body," but he now took his place among the literati of his country. Men wondered to find an uneducated, rough-looking shepherd sing so eloquently; and the general feeling of his country friends was pretty well expressed by one of their number who, meeting the poet on the High Street of Edinburgh a few days after the publication of the work, saluted him with the remark: "Man, wha wad hae thocht that there was sae muckle in that sheep's head o' yours?" "The Queen's Wake" is the best of all Hogg's larger works. It consists of a series of tales supposed to be told or sung by a number of old minstrels before Mary Queen of Scots at Holyrood, all strung together so gracefully that the reader is surprised both by the delicacy and the genius of the author. "Kilmeny," a tale of Fairyland, sung by a Highland bard from Loch Earn side, is incomparably the finest piece in the entire production, and, had Hogg written nothing else, his place as one of the greatest poets of his country would still have been assured. Regarded as the work of a man who had but six months' schooling, and who could read and write but imperfectly when almost out of his teens, it is one of the greatest marvels of genius in the wide realms of literature. For the whole poem, Scott says the Shepherd should

have received from £100 to £200, but his publishers failed—as, alas he too often found they had a knack of doing-and he got nothing. In short, he discovered that poetry, though it might lead to glory, was not in his case to lead to guineas, and as even genius must dine and dress, he turned his thoughts once more to his native Ettrick.

He had reached his forty-fourth year when the Duke of Buccleuch set him into a small farm called Altrive Lake, on the banks of balladhaunted Yarrow, "a habitation once more," as Hogg himself says, 'among my native moors and streams, where every face was that of a friend, and each house was a home." Six years later he took unto himself a wife, and was fortunate in drawing a prize in the matrimonial lottery. The wives of some of the poets, as we all know, have not been the happiest of mortals, but this was not the case with the wife of Altrive Lake. The Shepherd says that he always liked the women better than the men-what poet does not? and his sweetest songs seem to be the flowers of his own experience. "So smooth and happy," he says, "has my married life been, that on a retrospect I cannot distinguish one part from another, save by some remarkably good days of fishing, shooting, and curling on the ice." Having got the wife, Hogg foolishly thought that with her help he might manage a second farm, and accordingly took a lease of Mount Benger, which lies next to Altrive Lake. Like all his previous ventures in the same line, this too ended in failure, and after living for several years at Mount Benger, he gave it up and returned to Altrive Lake, where he permanently resided until his death in 1835. All this time he was earning a good income by his pen-for he knew something of the "pot-boiler," like many other literary men— but the bad seasons and the worse investments swallowed everything up. Nor must we forget that his profuse hospitality helped greatly to drain his purse. He kept simply an open door for all and sundry who chose to enter. Henry Scott Riddell tells how a certain individual came to dine with the Shepherd and his family only, and how before the day was over no fewer than fourteen additional visitors turned up to share in the dinner. No wonder if his fortunes became embarrassed!

The launch of Blackwood, in 1817, at once provided a medium for some of the Shepherd's literary work. The famous "Chaldee Manuscript" appeared in an early number, and, as everybody knows, led to prolonged strife and great bitterness of feeling. The object of the article was to describe, in the style of a Scripture allegory, the beginning and early history of the magazine, and the discomfiture of