WHEN James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, visited London, in January, 1832, he produced in "literary circles a sensation almost as great as might have been created by the removal of Ben Nevis to Blackheath. The world of London was idle then, and the incident became an event.

It was a rare and curious sight to see the Shepherd fêted in aristocratic salons; mingling among the learned and polite of all grades clumsily, but not rudely; he was rustic, without being coarse; not attempting to ape the refinement to which he was unused; but seeming perfectly aware that all eyes were upon him, and accepting admiration as a right.*

He was my guest several times during that period of unnatural excitement which there can be no question shortened his life; and at my house he met many of his literary contemporaries, whom he might not otherwise have known.

In society, where, as I have intimated, he was easy and self-possessed, because natural, his glowing and kindly countenance, his rousing and hearty laugh, the quaintness of his remarks, his gentle or biting satire, the continual flow of homely wit, the rough, but perfectly becoming manner in which he sung his own Jacobite songs, all gained for him, personally, the golden opinions previously accorded to his writings; and the visit of James Hogg to the Metropolis was not a failure, but a suc

cess.

On the 25th January, 1832, a public dinner was given to him in the great hall of the Freemasons' Tavern; nominally it was to commemorate the birthday of Robert Burns, but really to receive the Shepherd. There were many men of note present; among others, two of the sons of Burns, Lockhart, Basil Hall, Allan Cunningham, and others of equal or lesser note; the most conspicuous of the guests being Mr. Aiken, then consul at Archangel, to whom Burns had, half a century before, addressed his famous lines 66 Epistle to a young Friend."

The dinner had been ordered for two hundred; but long before it appeared on the table, four hundred persons had assembled to partake of it; it will be easy to conceive the terrible confusion that ensued, as steward after steward rushed about the room, seizing food wherever he could find it, and bearing it off in triumph to the empty dishes laid before his friends, over which it became necessary for him to stand guard, while the wrathful clamour of those who had nothing was effectually drowned by the bagpipes- two pipers pacing leisurely round the hall; it was no wonder, therefore, if the guests were indignant, for each had paid twenty-five shillings for his ticket of admission, and certainly many were sent hungry away.

Sir John Malcolm, a gallant Scottish soldier who had gained "the bubble reputation" in the east, and who, as an author, added bays to his laurels, was in the chair.

When the usual toasts had been given, THE toast of the evening was announced; but the toast-master had no idea that a guest thus honoured, was nothing more than a simple shepherd, and consequently conceived he was doing his duty best, when to the assembled crowd he announced " bumper toast to the health of Mister Shepherd;" there was a roar throughout the building, and the hero of the day joined in the laugh as heartily as the guests.

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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 grey eye, an expansive forehead, sandy hair, and with ruddy cheeks, which the late nights and late mornings of a month in 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. appearance that evening may be described by one word - and that word purely English. It was HEARTY!

His

He expressed his "great satisfaction at meeting so numerous and respectable an assembly met in so magnificent an edifice for such an object." He was proud that he had been born a poet, proud that his humble name should have been associated with that of his mighty predecessor Burns. That indeed was fame, and nobody, henceforward, would venture to insinuate that he had not acquired some share of true greatness after the honour which had been conferred upon him by the literary public of such a metropolis. He loved literature for

its own sake, and he gloried in his connection with his country. The muse, it was true, had found him a poor shepherd, and a poor shepherd he still remained after all, but in his cultivation of poetry, he was influenced by far prouder motives, and more elevated considerations, and he was not without his reward. After expatiating on his literary labours, the shepherd concluded by repeating his thanks for the favours he had experienced, and hoped that the overflowings of a grateful heart would not be the less acceptable because they might be conveyed in "an uncouth idiom, and barbarous phraseology." *

racy"

The applause that followed his “ remarksa brief history of his life and his expressions of wonder at finding himself where he was, and how he was, might have turned a stronger brain than that of James Hogg.t

I have always understood that this was his first and only visit to London, and so I believe it is described by all his biographers. But in his autobiography he states "I went to England during the summer," the date is not given; it seems to have been in the year 1801, and he does not intimate that he went so far as London. Yet in Lucy Aiken's "Memoirs and Remains," I find this story told by her in a letter to Mr. E. Aiken. It is dated 1817.

"Mrs. Opie, who is still in London, was holding one of her usual Sunday morning levees, when up comes the footman, much ruffled, to tell her that a man in a smock frock was below who wanted to speak to herwould take no denial - could not be got away. Down she goes to investigate the matter. The rustic advances-nothing abashed. James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd.' The poet is had up to the drawing-room, smock frock and all, and introduced to everybody. Presently he pulls out a paper-some verses which he had written that morning, and would

'I am

*I copy this passage from the Times, of January

26, 1833.

He does not appear to have written much in reference to his stay in London. A passage on the subject, however, occurs in one of his Lay Sermons (to which I shall refer presently) that may be worth quoting, "I must always regard the society of Lon. don as the pink of what I have seen in the world. I met most of the literary ladies, and confess that I liked them better than the blue stockings of Edinburgh. Their general information is not superior to that of their northern sisters; perhaps it may be said that it is less determined; but then they never assume so much Among the nobility and gentry, I felt myself most at home, and most at my ease. There was no str ining for superiority there. The impression left on my mind by mingling with the first society of London, is that of perfection, and what I would just wish society to be."-Lay Sermon on Good Breeding..

read, if agreeable. With a horrid Scotch accent and charity boy twang, he got through some 'Mr. staves, nobody understanding a line. Hogg,' said Mrs. Opie, 'I think if you will excuse me, I could do more justice to your verses than yourself;' so takes them from him, and with her charming delivery, causes them to be voted very pretty. On inquiry it is found that the shepherd is on a visit to Lady Cork, the great patroness of lions."

For this very circumstantial statement, I believe there is no foundation whatever; certainly in that year, 1817, Hogg was not in London, and one is at a loss to comprehend whether some pretender imposed on good Mrs. Opie and her friends, or whether the story is pure invention.

Hogg has given us an autobiography, from his birth up to a late-but not a very late-period of his life. His vanity was so inartificial as to be absolutely amusing; he avowed and seemed proud of it, as one of his natural rights. "I like to write about myself" that sentence begins his autobiography; and the sensation is kept up to the end. Accordingly, he speaks, "fearlessly and unreservedly out; "but bating his belief that he beat Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth, on their own ground, and that he originated Blackwood's Magazine — enough remains to exhibit a man of great natural powers, who merits the high place he obtained in the literary history of his age and country. It is, indeed, a record of wonderful triumphs over difficulties almost without parallel.

He stated himself to have been born on the 25th January, 1772: but the parish register gives the date of his birth — 9th December, 1770. There is, consequently, a confusion as to the actual time, as there is about the actual place, some according the honour to "Ettrick Hall," others to "Ettrick House," each of which, notwithstanding its high-sounding title, was a humble cottage not far removed from a hut. The unpoetic name, Hogg, which he was always better pleased to exchange for that of the "Ettrick Shepherd," is said to have been derived from a far away ancestor a pirate, or a sea king, one Haug of Norway. He was born a shepherd, of a race of shepherds, the youngest of four sons. His father was in no way remarkable,† but,

The birthday of Robert Burns was the 25th January. Hogg dearly loved to be likened to his great countryman, and it is believed in this case,

the wish was father to the thought; " that he post dated his birth. The point, however, is by no means settled, and we have a right to give James the benefit of the doubt.

In 1814, Wordsworth, during his visit to Scat

as with all men of intellectual power, he inherited mental strength from his mother, Margaret Laidlaw, "a pious, though uneducated woman, who loved her husband, her children, and her Bible; her memory was stored with border-ballads; she was a firm believer in kelpies, brownies, and others of the good people," stories concerning which from his earliest infancy she poured into the greedy ears of her son. They were the seed that bore the fruit.

He had a few months' schooling - the school house being close to his cottage door. At seven years old, however, it was needful that he should do work; and he was hired by a neighbouring farmer, his half year's wages being "one ewe lamb, and a pair of shoes."*

From his childhood he had a perpetual struggle with untoward fate; "chill penury repressed his noble rage; " from his birth almost to his death, as his biographer writes, "he was always in deep waters, where nothing was above the surface but the head; " yet the historian of his singular and wayward life has little to say to his discredit, and nothing to his dishonour. He has to record more of temptations resisted than of culpabilities encouraged; and although by no means a man of regular habits, Hogg never so far yielded to dissipation as to be ignored even by the very scrupulous among his countrymen. Wayward indeed he was; he quarrelled with his true friend, Scott, but the magnanimous man sought reconciliation with his irritable brother. To Wilson, another true friend, he wrote a letter which, according to his own admission, was full of abusive epithets;" with all the publishers he was perpetually at war.

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In judging a character, regard must be had to the circumstances under which it is formed; and Hogg might have been pardoned by posterity if he had fallen far more short than he did of the high standard which it is perhaps necessary for our teachers to set up; while it is certain that his voluminous and varied writings were designed and are calculated to uphold the Cause of Righteousness and Virtue.

He was employed, almost from infancy,

land, had "refreshment" at the cottage of Hogg's father," a shepherd, a fine old man, more than eighty years of age."

Scott, writing to Byron, says of Hogg, "Hogg could literally neither read nor write till a very late period of his life, and when he first distinguished himself by his poetical talent, could neither spell nor write grammar;" and Lockhart states that he had" taught himself to write by copying the letters of a printed book, as he lay watching his flock by

the hill-side."

in tending sheep, herding cows- doing anything that a very child could do- and ran about, ill-clad, bare-footed, learning from Nature, and Nature only, eating scanty meals by wayside brooks, and drinking from some crystal stream near at hand; serving twelve masters before he had reached his fifteenth year, enduring hunger often, suffering much from over-toil, sleeping in stables and cow-houses, associating only with four-footed beasts over which he kept watch and ward, picking up, how and when he could, a little learning, hearing from many from his mother especially

the old ballad-songs of Scotland, and acquiring in early youth, the cognomen of "Jamie the Poeter," writing poems as he tended his unruly flock; and at length rising out of the mire in which circumstances seemed to have plunged him to become notorious - nay, famous -as one of the men of whom Scotland, so fertile of great and glorious women and men, is rightly and justly proud.

These are the eloquent words of his eloquent countryman, Professor Wilson, in reference to the earlier career of Hogg:

:

'The most remote and inaccessible By shepherds trode.'

And living for years in solitude, he unconsciously formed friendships with the springs, the brooks, the caves, the hills, and with all the more fleeting and faithless pageantry of the sky, that to him came in the place of those human affections from whose indulgence he was debarred by the necessities that kept him aloof from the cottage fire, and up among the mists on the mountain-top.

To feel the full

power of his genius, we must go with him

'Beyond this visible diurnal sphere," and walk through the shadowy world of the imagination... The still green beauty of the pastoral hills and vales where he passed his youth inspired him with ever-brooding visions of fairy-land-till, as he lay musing in his lonely shieling, the world of fantasy seemed, in the clear depths of his imagination, a lovelier reflection of that of nature, like the hills and heavens more softly shining in the waters of his.

native lake."