Stephenson: The Ettrick Shepherd 



45 



While thus recalling for the amusement of an idle hour, some of the 

 whimsical scenes in which we have met James Hogg, let it not be sup- 

 posed that we think of him only with a regard to his homely manners, 

 the social good nature, and the unimportant foibles by which he was 

 characterised. The world amid which he moved was but too apt, espe- 

 cially of late years, to regard him in these lights alone, forgetting that 

 beneath the rustic plaid there beat one of the kindest hearts and most 

 unperverted of minds, while his bonnet covered the head from which 

 sprung Kilmeny and Donald MacDonald. Hogg, as an untutored man, 

 was a prodigy, much more so than Burns, who had comparatively a 

 good education; and now that he is dead and gone, we look around in 

 vain for a living hand capable of waking the national lyre/' 



We remember among the things of this life that are worth remem- 

 bering, his sturdy form, and shrewd, familiar face; his kindly greetings, 

 and his social cheer, his summer angling, and his winter curling, his 

 welcome presence at kirk and market, and Border game, and, above all, 

 we remember how his gray eye sparkled as he sang, in his own simple 

 and unadorned fashion, those rustic ditties in which a manly vigor of 

 sentiment was combined with unexpected grace, sweetness and tender- 

 ness/^ 



There was a homely heartiness of manner about Hogg and a Doric 

 simplicity in his address, which was exceedingly prepossessing. He 

 sometimes carried a little too far the privileges of an innocent rusticity, 

 as Mr. Lockhart has not failed to note in his life of Scott; but, in gen- 

 eral his slight deviations from etiquette were rather amusing than other- 

 wise. When w^e consider the disadvantages with which he had to con- 

 tend, it must be admitted that Hogg was in all respects a very remark- 

 able man. In his social hours, a naivete, and a vanity that disarmed 

 displeasure by the openness and good-humour with which it was avowed, 

 played over the surface of a nature which at bottom was sufficiently 

 shrewd and sagacious; but his conversational powers w^ere by no means 

 pre-eminent. He never indeed attempted any colloquial display, al- 

 though there v/as sometimes a quaintness in his remarks, a glimmering 

 of drollery, a rural freshness, and a tinge of poetical coloring, which 

 redeemed his discourse from commonplace, and supplied to the consum- 

 mate artist who took him in hand the hints out of which to construct 

 a character'' at once original, extraordinary, and delightful — a character 

 of which James Hogg undoubtedly furnished the germ, but which, as it 

 expanded under the hands of its artificer, acquired a breadth, a firm- 

 ness and a power to which the bard of Mount Benger had certainly no 

 pretension.^' 



^- Robert Chambers. 



Henry Glassford Bell. 

 " Refers to the Ettrick Shepherd in the Noctcs Ambrosianae. 



Ferrier. 



