CHAPTER 3 



THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD 



Hogg's striking face was never handsome even tho he pos- 

 sessed so marked a likeness to Sir Walter Scott that Pro- 

 fessor Wilson says that one would have thought them broth- 

 ers. Yet the countenance of this shepherd was open, sincere, 

 and thoroly manly despite its homeliness. He was a man of 

 exceedingly strong physique and great endurance, a tramp 

 over the mountains for thirty miles being a mere nothing in 

 his estimation. In height he was five feet ten and a half 

 inches, and broad chested. It is told that once in an assem- 

 bly of considerable size the chests of all those present were 

 measured, and his was the second, Sir Walter Scott being 

 first. Later in life his hair became darker brown and then 

 grayish, his eyes were blue and his complexion ruddy. He 

 used regularly to compete at the outdoor athletic contests of 

 the St. Ronan's games and always acquitted himself with 

 credit. 



Writes Mr. S. C. Hall some years later: 



Up rose a man hale and hearty as a mountain breeze, fresh as a 

 branch of hillside heather, with a visage unequivccally Scotch, high 

 cheek bones, a sharp and clear gray eye, an expansive forehead, sandy 

 hair with ruddy cheeks, which the late nights and the late mornings of 

 a month of London had not yet sallowed. His form was manly and 

 muscular, and his voice strong and gladsome, with a rich Scottish ac- 

 cent, which he probably on that occasion rather heightened than de- 

 pressed. 



Lockhart speaks thus of Hogg: 



His hands and face are still brown as if he lived entirely sub dio. 

 His very hair has a coarse stringiness about it, which proves beyond 

 dispute its utter ignorance of all the arts of the friseur; and hangs in 

 playful whisps and cords about his ears in a style of the most perfect 

 innocence imaginable. His mouth, which when he smiles nearly cuts 

 the totality of his face in twain, is an object that would make Chevalier 

 Ruspini die with indignation: for his teeth have been allowed to grow 

 where they listed and as they listed, presenting more resemblance in 

 arrangement (and color, too) to a body of crouching sharp-shooters, 

 than to any more regular species of array. The effect of a forehead 

 towering with a true poetic grandeur above such features as these, and 

 of an eye that illuminates their surface with the genuine lightnings of 

 genius .... these are things which I cannot so easily transfer 

 to my paper. 



(35) 



