here he _d._ greatly lamented. As might be expected from his
almost total want of regular education, H. was often greatly wanting in
taste, but he had real imagination and poetic faculty. Some of his lyrics
like _The Skylark_ are perfect in their spontaneity and sweetness, and
his _Kilmeny_ is one of the most exquisite fairy tales in the language.
Hogg was vain and greedy of praise, but honest and, beyond his means,
generous. He is a leading character, partly idealised, partly
caricatured, in Wilson's _Noctes Ambrosianae_.

HOGG, THOMAS JEFFERSON (1792-1862).--Biographer, _s._ of John H., a
country gentleman of Durham, _ed._ at Durham Grammar School, and Univ.
Coll., Oxf., where he made the acquaintance of Shelley, whose lifelong
friend and biographer he became. Associated with S. in the famous
pamphlet on _The Necessity of Atheism_, he shared in the expulsion from
the Univ. which it entailed, and thereafter devoted himself to the law,
being called to the Bar in 1817. In 1832 he contributed to Bulwer's _New
Monthly Magazine_ his _Reminiscences of Shelley_, which was much admired.
Thereafter he was commissioned to write a biography of the poet, of which
he completed 2 vols., but in so singular a fashion that the material with
which he had been entrusted was withdrawn. The work, which is probably
unique in the annals of biography, while giving a vivid and credible
picture of S. externally, shows no true appreciation of him as a poet,
and reflects with at least equal prominence the humorously eccentric
personality of the author, which renders it entertaining in no common
degree. Other works of H. were _Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff_, and a
book of travels, _Two Hundred and Nine Days_ (1827). He _m._ the widow of
Williams, Shelley's friend, who was drowned along with him.

HOLCROFT, THOMAS (1745-1809).--Dramatist, _s._ of a small shoemaker in
London, passed his youth as a pedlar, and as a Newmarket stable boy. A
charitable person having given him some education he became a
schoolmaster, but in 1770 went on the provincial stage. He then took to
writing plays, and was the first to introduce the melodrama into England.
Among his plays, _The Road to Ruin_ (1792) is the best, and is still
acted; others were _Duplicity_ (1781), and _A Tale of Mystery_. Among his
novels are _Alwyn_ (1780), and _Hugh Trevor_, and he wrote the well-known
song, _Gaffer Gray_. H. was a man of stern and irascible temper,
industrious and energet