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Indiana University Studies 



amusing rather than condemnable. He was a Hving carica- 

 ture in this respect. Scott writes of how Hogg dropped in 

 to breakfast: 



The honest grunter opines with a delightful naivete that Moore's 

 verses are far ower sweet — answered by Thompson that Moore's ear or 

 notes, I forget which, were finely strung. "They ais far ower finely 

 strung", replied he of the Forest, "for mine are just reeght." It re- 

 minded me of Queen Bess, when questioning Melville sharply and closely 

 whether Queen Mary was taller than her, and extracting an answer in 

 the alfirmative she replied, "Then your queen is too tall for I am just 

 the right height." 



He had a profound belief in himself and his powers, — a large share 

 of egotism. His vanity was in no way concealed; he wore it on his 

 sleeve, and it was a source of some amusement to his friends. But the 

 consciousness under it all of a latent struggling power of genius was 

 that which kept the heart in him to face the difiiculties of social posi- 

 tion, and defects of education, which few men in Scotland, or indeed in 

 the world of letters, have had the courage to battle with and the force 

 to overcome. The conviction was somehow in him from the first that 

 he could achieve a place among the poets of his native land, and, while 

 this feeling sustained him, it proved in the end to be well founded. His 

 poetic faculty was his one title to distinction; and we need not be sur- 

 prised that he was proud of it, or that he was touched to the quick by 

 any disparagement of his powers.' 



Hogg himself, in his Hfe of Scott, uses the phrase, ''before 

 my ruHng passion of egotism came across me''. He fully 

 realized the fact and the impossibility of conquering it, so he 

 fondled it, got the most amusement he could out of it, and 

 compelled others by the open simplicity of his character to do 

 the same. 



"Aye, ye're a learned man", he sometimes said to me in after years; 

 "there's nae doubt about that, wi' your Virgils and Homers and Dantes 

 and Petrarchs. But aiblins ye mind yon fragment upon the sclate that 

 ye despised t'ither morning. Eh, man, sin syne, it's ettling to turn out 

 the vera best thing I ever composed; and that's no saying little, ye ken.'" 



in the same memoir Gillies relates that he wanted to see 

 what Hogg had written on another occasion on his slate. The 

 request was refused because the work was only half done, 

 whereupon Gillies said that Scott and Erskine both consulted 

 the advice of friends. 



"That's vera like a man", replied Hogg, "that's frighted to gang by 

 himself, and needs someone to lead him! Eh, man, neither William 



^ Veitch's Introduction to Mrs. Garden's Memoir, page ix. 



2 Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, by R. P. Gillies, Vol. I, page 122. 



