Stephenson: The Ettrick Shepherd 



89 



It is also, perhaps, the most original, for, thruout all Hogg's 

 mimicry there is the desire to vary enough not to lay himself 

 open to the charge of forgery, except in The Poetic Mirror; 

 and it is when such a desire finds full play that Hogg rises 

 above the merit of a mere imitator in prose. 



The characters are extremely well drawn. Walter Laidlaw, 

 a farmer at Chapelhope, is bulky, simple-hearted, generous, and 

 well knows his own good qualities, yet is free of vain conceit. 

 Maron Linton is a simpering fool, nose-led by a profligate 

 priest. Katharine, the sound-hearted, generous daughter, is 

 less satisfactory, and only just escapes the charge of being- 

 colorless and insipid. Roy McPherson, with his peculiar 

 dialect, his love of genealogy, and pride in Laidlaw who must 

 be the chief of a clan because he, McPherson, knows no other 

 man of the same name, is a creation that Scott himself need 

 not have blushed for. The other characters are mere 

 sketches, but they are drawn in bold outline and with striking 

 vigor. The eccentric old domestic Nanny was said by Scott to 

 be the best character Hogg ever painted, an observation that 

 was certainly true at the time the book was written. 



Few persons would lay the volume down without reading it 

 to the end. Yet a second reading at once reveals the char- 

 acteristic faults that the Shepherd never overcame. Sir 

 Walter often accused Hogg of not taking pains enough; but 

 the error was irremediable. Hogg wrote a tale just as he 

 heard it or imagined that he had heard it and, tho the present 

 story is open to objections, one is compelled to confess that it 

 is true. One cannot understand how it is that, while Walter 

 and his daughter are for a long time engaged in shielding two 

 separate bands of Covenanters, both hiding in the same hills, 

 each patron stealing from the same larder — why it is that 

 they never stumbled on the same path or suspected the inclina- 

 tion of each other's minds. Hogg might well say, "Such was 

 the tale as it was told to me", and the manner of telling forces 

 the reader to acknowledge, ''that there must be some explana- 

 tion for it so happened". 



.The Siege of Roxburgh was originally published under the 

 name of The Three Perils of Man, This volume was the next 

 long tale to follow The Brownie of Bodsbeck, to which it was 

 in many respects inferior. With two exceptions (The Con- 

 fessions of a Fanatic and The Three Perils of Womaji) Hogg 

 was, as has been said, essentially a short story writer. His 



