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Indiana University Studies 



Among the few of many Scottish worthies of whom I give memories 

 in these pages, surely I must not omit "the Ettrick Shepherd". How^ I 

 should have enjoyed a day with him on the Braes of Yarrow. Even 

 now, across all these years that I have passed, I can hear his hearty 

 voice and jovial laugh, and see his sunburnt face not yet paled by a 

 month of "merrie companie" in London. "I like to talk about myself", 

 so begins his Autobiogrcijjhy. No doubt he was an egotist, but so is 

 every shepherd when he talks of sheep; so is a mariner when he speaks 

 of peril in sailing a ship; so are all men who dwell on matters which 

 constitute their "personality", and which they understand better than 

 others do. In short, so are all teachers. The accusation of egotism, 

 and also that of plagiarism, are easily made, but are not so easy of 

 proof. Few men have thoroughly triumphed over difficulties; none came 

 more triumphantly out of them. James Hogg was a more marvellous 

 man than Eobert Burns; far less great as a poet, certainly; but mar- 

 vellous in the dauntless energy with which he struggled against circum- 

 stances, yet more adverse than those of Burns, and reached — not an 

 untimely grave, but a secure position in the world of letters. Hogg was 

 as much as Southey "a man of letters by profession"; and surely one of 

 the most remarkable men of the century that passed away when 



"Ettrick mourned her shepherd dead." 



A wrestle with fortune, indeed, was his! chequered yet successful, 

 and marked during the whole of his fairly long life by good spirits, 

 that were partly the result of a good constitution, and greatly, perhaps, 

 derived from his sanguine self-esteem. 



I remember one of the evenings he passed with us ... . The 

 visit of the Ettrick Shepherd to London took place in 1832. It is 

 scarcely too much to say that the impression he produced in literary 

 circles may be likened to that which might have been created by the 

 temporary presence of Ben Nevis on Blackheath. A striking sight it 

 was to see the Shepherd feted in aristocratic salons, mingling with the 

 learned and polite of all grades — clumsily, but not rudely. He was 

 rustic without being coarse; not attempting to ape the refinement to 

 which he was unused; but seemed perfectly aware that all eyes were 

 upon him, and accepting admiration as a right.*" 



But it does not appear that his resentment was either deep or long- 

 continued, though he speaks of never being able to forgive Wordsworth. 

 Hogg was essentially a kindly, generous, and warm-affectioned man, cap- 

 able of attaching to himself friends of very opposite characters ; genial in 

 society though not a brilliant or copious talker, and, in his own home 

 at Altrive and Mount Benger, hospitable almost to a fault. Obviously, 

 too, he was a loving and well-loved man in his home circle, where he 

 found his best happiness. His shrewd views of people and things, and 

 his qraint modes of expression, redolent of the vernacular of the Forest 

 and tinged with poetry, — in a word, the singular individuality of his 

 character made him an object of interest to numerous friends and ac- 

 quaintances all over Britain." 



1^ S. C. Hall. 



" Professor Veitch. 



