Stephenson : 



The Ettrick Shepherd 



75 



The pibroch rang- 



With border clang- 

 Along the hills of heather; 



And fresh and strong 



The thistle sprung 

 That had begun to wither. 



With the exception of a few songs and short poems, Hogg 

 produced no more verse of consequence subsequent to the pub- 

 lication of The Queen's Wake. Volume I of The Jacobite 

 Relics appeared in 1819 and Volume II in 1821. The collec- 

 tion is valuable only so far as it preserves the text of political 

 songs that would otherwise have been lost. The voluminous 

 notes by Hogg are oftentimes historically inaccurate, and are 

 of no literary value. Queen Hynde, his longest composition 

 in verse, is the most formless and monotonous. Hogg never 

 possessed the ability to exercise sustained effort in verse. The 

 Queen's Wake is, in reality, but a succession of short poems 

 written at various times and loosely strung together. His 

 three other long poems, The Pilgrims of the Sun, Mador of the 

 Moor, and Queen Hynde, all show decided lack of inspiration, 

 and have fallen into deserved obscurity. Songs, 1831, and A 

 Queer Book, 1832, complete the list of volumes of verse pub- 

 lished during the Shepherd's lifetime. They are both merely 

 collections of poems that had been already published. 



The Poetic Mirror was published in 1816, and in 1818 ap- 

 peared the first of Hogg's important compositions in prose. 

 In spite of the subsequent volumes of verse, Hogg may be 

 considered from this date as a prose writer, an aspect that 

 will be examined in a subsequent chapter. 



