14 



Indiana University Studies 



him to procure a better position and better wages. He never 

 failed to carry a warm recommendation from an old master 

 to a new one. 



In 1785 he went to serve a Mr. Scott at Singlee. While 

 here he managed to save five shillings with which he bought a 

 fiddle on which he used to practice at night in the cowhouse. 

 And Mrs. Garden relates how from that time till his death he 

 was never without such an instrument and seldom long with- 

 out affording himself the pleasure of playing. 



From Singlee he went to Elibank on the Tweed below In- 

 nerleithan, where he served as a man-of -all-work under Mr. 

 Laidlaw during 1785-7. He then went to Mr. Laidlaw's father 

 at Willanslee, upon whose wild and barren farm he remained 

 till 1790. Here, for the first time in his life, he was employed 

 as a shepherd. The days of his youth were passed, and hence- 

 forth he could undertake the responsibilities of a man, and 

 claim a man's remuneration. 



One who, to use Hogg's own phrase, ''dabbled so much in 

 verse" is likely to show an unusual relish for it at first. Tho 

 true of Hogg in regard to his early liking for the metrical 

 Psalms, it is true no further. He was fortunate in finding 

 at Willanslee a master and mistress who took a kindly inter- 

 est in his personal welfare. They lent him books and for the 

 first time his literary horizon widened beyond the Bible. But 

 interest in what he read lay wholly on the side of prose. 



It was while serving here. . . . that I first got a perusal of the 

 Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace, and the Gentle Shejjherd. 

 . . . The truth is I made exceedingly slow progress in reading them. 

 The little reading I had learned I had nearly lost, and the Scottish 

 dialect quite confounded me; so that, before I got to the end of a line 

 I had commonly lost the rhyme of the preceeding one; and if I came 

 to a triplet, a thing of which I had no conception, I commonly read to 

 the foot of the page without perceiving that I had lost the rhyme alto- 

 gether. . . . The late Mrs. Laidlaw of Willanslee took some notice 

 of me, and frequently gave me her books to read while tending the 

 ewes; these were chiefly theological. The only one I remember any- 

 thing of is Bishop Burnet's Theory of the Conflagration of the Earth. 

 Happy it was for me that I did not understand it! for the little of it 

 that I did understand had nearly overturned my brain altogether. 

 . . . Mrs. Laidlaw also sometimes gave me the newspapers which I 

 pored on with great earnestness, beginning at the date and reading 

 straight on, through advertisements of houses and lands, balm of Gilead, 

 and everything; and, after all, was often no wiser than when I began. 



I was about this time obliged to write a letter to my elder 



