Stephenson: The Ettrick Shepherd 97 



which I cannot bear, and you must bring off the old man, by some 

 means or other, no matter how extravagant or ridiculous in such a 

 ballad as yours; but by all means bring off the fine old fellow, for the 

 present termination of the ballad is one I cannot brook." I went home 

 and certainly brought off the old man with flying colors, which is by 

 far the best part of the ballad. I never adopted a suggestion of his, 

 either in prose or verse, which did not improve the subject. 



Speaking of The Spy, Hogg says : 



That work being long ago extinct, and only occasionally mentioned 

 by myself, as a parent will sometimes mention the name of a dear, 

 unfortunate, lost child, who has been forgotten by all the world beside. 



[Scott read the proofs of The Three Perils of Man.] "Well, Mr. 

 Hogg, I have read over your proofs with a great deal of pleasure, and, 

 I confess, with some little portion of dread. In the first place, the 

 meeting of the two princesses at Castle Weiry is excellent. I have not 

 seen any modern thing more truly dramatic. The characters are 

 strongly marked, old Peter Chisholme's in particular. Ah! man, what 

 you might have made of that with a little more refinement, care, and 

 patience! But it is always the same with you, just hurrying on from 

 one vagary to another, without consistency or proper arrangements." 



"Dear Mr. Scott, a man canna do the thing he canna do." 



"Yes, but you can do it. Witness your poems where the arrange- 

 ments are all perfect and complete; but in your prose works, with the 

 exception of a few short tales, you seem to write merely by random, 

 without once considering what you are going to write about." 



"You are not often wrong, Mr. Scott, and you were never righter in 

 your life than you are now, for when I write the first line of a tale or 

 a novel, I know not what the second is to be, and it is the same way 

 in every sentence throughout. When my tale is traditionary, the work 

 is easy, as I then see my way before me, though the tradition be ever 

 so short, but in all my prose works of imagination, knowing little of the 

 world, I sail on without star or compass." 



This brief memoir, which is so short that it can be read in 

 an hour, has been quoted so fully, partly because of the pub- 

 licity given to it by Lockhart, and partly because it is out of 

 print and has never been reprinted. For the latter reason 

 the following extracts from the Lay Sermons are here set 

 down. This volume contains Hogg's only extensive attempt at 

 the essay form of writing, and the style of it is interesting 

 from comparison with his stories. The book is divided into 

 eleven chapters as follows : Good Principles, Young Women, 

 Good Breeding, Soldiers, To Young Men, Reason and Instinct, 

 To Parents, Virtue the Only Source of Happiness, Marriage, 

 Reviewers, and Deistical Reformers. 



My design in all this is to reconcile my younger brethren of the 

 human race to a state of old age to which they are all fast approach- 



7—21943 



