participation in my beverage of rum punch.

For a poet to refuse his glass was to me a phenomenon ; and I confess I doubted in my own mind, and doubt to this day, if perfect sobriety and transcendent poetical genius can exist together. In Scotland I am sure they cannot. With regard to the English, I shall leave them to settle that among themselves, as they have little that is worth drinking." There's a noble Scottish note for us! And the justice of Hogg's literary opinion is sustained by the fact that all Southey's great epics are dead as coffin-nails. to his bibulous judgment, it concerns "those who labour under the disadvantage of having been born on the south side of the Tweed" to controvert it if they can; let them but send liberal samples of their best in every kind to the present writer, and he will give an impartial verdict.

As

In these years Hogg generally had a summer tour in the Highlands, tours which well served him in his authorship. He went on thenceforth writing poems, tales, and sketches, which need not be here particularised, as they are easily accessible in the edition noted at the beginning of these articles. In the spring of 1814, having no home wherein to shelter his parents, each over eighty-four years of age, he wrote to his generous patroness, Harriet, Duchess of Buccleuch, indirectly asking for a farm; she kept his want in mind, but died in August; the good Duke then said to Scott: "My friend, I must now consider this poor man's case as her legacy," and presented him with the small farm of Altrive Lake, in the wilds of Yarrow. The Duke's letter said: "The rent shall be nominal;" in fact no rent was ever mentioned or

paid. Hogg had now a "cosie bield," and, with a little more prudence and a little less simple goodnature, might have had a comfortable livelihood for the rest of his days. Having married an excellent wife in 1820, a young family grew around him, and he extended his farmimg operations by leasing MountBenger for nine years, losing more than £2000 on it before he got free. Then his literary engagements and undertakings, though they brought him very considerable sums of money (he reckons £750 in a certain two years, besides small sums in cash), probably cost him much, by distracting his attention from his farms and carrying him frequently to Edinburgh. Last, and worst of all, those profitless pests the idle notoriety-hunters, were devastators not only of his time but also of his substance; for, there being no inn in the neighbourhood, they made his poor cottage, which he had to enlarge, their inn—an inn without charges, abusing his hospitality most damnably, after the manner of their kind. A friend once going to dine with the family, no one else to be present, counted fourteen others feeding there before the day was done. The Shepherd, accompanying a friend one evening, looked back on his home, buzzing with company, and said: "My bit house is e'en now just like a bee-skep, fu' o' happy leevin' creatures— and nae doubt, like a bee-skep, it will hae to cast some day, when it can haud its inhabitants nae langer.' To the question of Allan Cunningham, "What is your pen about now, Mr. Hogg?" he answered, "Pen! it might as well be in the goose's wing; I cannot get writing any for the visits of my friends: I'm never a day without some." And if he could not

get writing any we may be sure he could not get farming much, through these same admirable "friends," the devouring locusts borne on the winds of vanity.

But I anticipate. While waiting to take over Altrive, he devised how to get capital for working it, and his devise was to obtain pieces from the most popular poets of the day, and publish them in a volume. He doubtless would have cheerfully given a piece to help any brother bard in similar case. Some gave, others promised but did not give; and in the end he wrote all the "Poetic Mirror" himself, under the names of the various poets. Scott, who had an aversion to joint-stock authorship, and one of whose favourite proverbs was "Every herring should hang by its own head," firmly refused to take part in the first scheme; Hogg, in a furious fit of childish rage, wrote to him, beginning "Damned Sir," and ending "Believe me, Sir, yours with disgust," &c. The great-hearted took no notice; but Hogg, with that candour which redeems all his faults, tells us how when he lay dangerously ill with an inflammatory fever (the result of five or six weeks of the Bacchanalian "Right and Wrong Club"), Scott called every day on returning from the Parliament House to inquire after him, and enjoined Mr. Grieve to let no pecuniary consideration whatever prevent his having the best medical advice, "for I shall see it paid;" and further enjoined that Hogg should not be told. of this. "I would fain have called, but I knew not how I would be received;" "and this, too," says Hogg, "after I had renounced his friendship, and told him that I held both it and his literary talents in contempt!" Hogg learnt all this some time after

by accident, and, vehement in penitence as in wrath, wrote to his outraged patron and friend: "I desire not a renewal of our former intimacy, for haply, after what I have written, your family would not suffer it; but I wish it to be understood that, when we meet by chance, we might shake hands and speak to one another as old acquaintances, and likewise that we may exchange a letter occasionally, for I find there are many things which I yearn to communicate to you, and the tears rush to my eyes when I consider that I may not." Scott's answer was a brief note telling him to think no more of the affair, and to come to breakfast the next morning. Hogg went, and more than once tried to come to a full explanation, but Scott always parried and evaded and baffled him, and was his best friend to the last. Hogg tells us further: "Mr. Wilson once drove me also into an ungovernable rage by turning a long and elaborate poem of mine on 'Field of Waterloo' into ridicule, on learning which I sent him a letter which I thought was a tickler. There was scarcely an abusive epithet in our language that I did not call him by. My letter, however, had not the desired. effect; the opprobrious names proved only a source of amusement to Wilson, and he sent me a letter of explanation and apology, which knit my heart closer to him than ever."

Hogg claimed "the honour of being the beginner, and almost sole instigator of Blackwood's Magazine," admitting that when he first mentioned the plan to Old Ebony, that enterprising publisher said that he had been for some time revolving a similar scheme. Hogg undoubtedly originated the “Chaldee Manu

script," of which, as it appeared, Ferrier gives him about forty verses (though he sent many more), the rest being mainly due to Wilson and Lockhart. Hogg had many a tiff with Blackwood and his associates, who put the Shepherd's name to all sorts of things he never wrote, and who, Lockhart especially, were continually mystifying him; and he had another quarrel with Wilson, i.e., a quarrel all on his own side, about the way in which he was exhibited in the "Noctes," though these, by the notoriety they gave him, must have immensely increased his literary earnings. The "Chaldee MS." Hogg always looked upon as an innocent joke, and could never understand why people got in a rage about it.

In 1832 Hogg visited London to arrange for a complete edition of his works, and stayed there three months. He was of course lionised more than enough; and among other things entertained at a public dinner, at which some two hundred noble and distinguished persons did him honour; but was most pleased because the day was the anniversary of Burns' birth, and two sons of Burns sat on the left of the president (Sir John Malcolm), and after dinner he brewed punch in the punch-bowl of Burns, brought from Paisley for the occasion. The projected edition, to be illustrated by George Cruickshanks (so I find it spelt), came to grief with the first volume, through the failure of the publisher, who failed a second time with another series entrusted to him by the kindhearted, indiscreet Shepherd. On his return he was welcomed with a public dinner at Peebles, his good friend John Wilson in the chair. His vigorous constitution was now breaking up; and at length, after