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Indiana University Studies 



Edinburgh to set up his shingle as a man of letters. He says 

 in the Autobiography that he always intended to use litera- 

 ture as a crutch, never as a staff, and that he only violated 

 his rule as a last resort. Hogg was certainly a genius, and 

 at the time of his first appearance in Edinburgh as a perma- 

 nent resident had won an enviable tho local fame as a poet. 

 But he was a self-made genius, inordinately vain, not widely 

 read, and possessed little or no critical ability. Yet, with all 

 these points against him, his first serious venture was to edit 

 and conduct a weekly literary journal. Nothing shows so well 

 the real caliber of this man as the fact that he acquitted him- 

 self of this task with credit. 



