THE ETTT.ICIC SHEPHSSD. 



277 



attend tho second. But Rost of | quest of employment as overseer of 



Gotha resorted to a stratagem, 

 which was successful in procuring 

 the attendance of Jacobs. At the 

 age of seventy-five, he undertook 

 his four days' journey, travelling 

 forty miles a day, and calling, as 

 he went, on his literary friends at 

 .Frankfort, Darmstadt, and Heidel- 

 berg. When this amiable old man 

 and popular writer the favourite 

 of all parties arrived, he could 

 not decline addressing the assem- 

 bled classical teachers of his coun- 

 try, mostly of the younger genera- 

 tion. He spoke in an afl'ecting 

 strain of eloquence, which was re- 

 ceived with unusual applause. 

 After the meeting, the principal 

 members of the society appointed 

 Hermann of Marburg to draw up 

 a special communication in Latin, 

 addressed to Jacobs, testifying, in 

 the warmest terms, their respect 

 for him as one of the most accom- 

 plished of classical scholai'S, and 

 their personal regards for him as a 

 man and as a friend. This cir- 

 cumstance called him out, in an- 

 other public speech, on a subse- 

 quent day, so that the occasion 

 was a kind of jubilee to that noble 

 representative of the past genera- 

 tion. 



JAMES HOGG AND SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



Speaking of Scott's acquaintance 

 with the Ettrick Shepherd, Mr. 

 Lockhart relates the following 

 anecdotes of the latter: Shortly 

 after their first meeting, Hogg, 

 coming into Edinburgh with a flock 

 of sheep, was seized with a sudden 

 ambition of seeing himself in type, 

 and he wrote out that same night 

 Willie and Katie, and a few other 

 ballads, already famous in the 

 "Forest, which some obscure book- 

 seller gratified him by printing ac- 

 cordingly; but they appear to have 

 attracted no notice beyond their 

 original sphere. Hogg then made 



i j i TT "it i 



some extensive sheep-farm ; 

 though Scott had furnished 



but, 

 him 



with strong recommendations to 

 various friends, he returned with- 

 out success. He printed an account 

 of his travels, however, in a set of 

 letters in the Scots Magazine, which, 

 though exceedingly rugged and un- 

 couth, had abundant traces of the na- 

 tive shrewdness and genuine poeti- 

 cal feeling of this remarkable man. 

 These also failed to excite attention; 

 but, undeterred by such disappoint- 

 ments, the Shepherd no sooner read 

 the third volume of the Minstrelsy, 

 than he made up his mind that the 

 Editor's Imitations of the Ancients 

 were by no means what they should 

 have been. " Immediately," he says, 

 in one of his many memoirs of him- 

 self, "I chose a number of tradi- 

 tional facts, and set about imitating 

 the manner of the ancients myself." 

 These imitations he transmitted to 

 Scott, who warmly praised the 

 many striking beauties scattered 

 over their rough surface. The next 

 time that Hogg's business carried 

 him to Edinburgh, he waited upon 

 Scott, who invited him to dinner in 

 Castle Street, in company with 

 William Laidlaw, who happened 

 also to be in town, and some other 

 admirers of the rusticgcnius. When 

 Hogg entered the drawing-room, 

 Mrs. Scott, being at the time in a 

 delicate state of health, was reclin- 

 ing on a sofa. The Shepherd, after 

 being presented, and making his 

 best bow, forthwith took possession 

 of another sofa placed opposite to 

 hers, and stretched himself there- 

 upon at all his length; for, as he 

 said afterwards, 'I thought I could 

 never do wrong to copy the lady of 

 the house.' As his dress at this 

 period was precisely that in \vhich 

 any ordinary herdsman attends 

 cattle to the market, and as his 

 hands, moreover, bore most legible 

 marks of a recent sheep-smearing, 



an excursion into the Highlands, in the lady of the house did not observe 



