e, solemn
sort of a day, and the dense clouds hung curtaining down the mountain
sides, like our living pall as it were--I scarcely know how--but we
felt dismally until we took a dram and got into a perspiration, with
tugging up the sinuosities of the cliff's, to the summit of the
waterfall. Loch Skein, where we were galvanized, electrified,
magnetized, and petrified, all at once, by the quackery, clackery,
flappery, quatter, splatter, clatter, scatter, and dash-de-blash, and
squash, of a flock of wild ducks, on its reedy, flaggy surface; O,
what a _scutter_ was there! Our hearts, too full, leapt into our
mouths, but our guns were turned into tons of lead, and ere we could
heave them up to our shoulders of clay, the thousand had fled into the
eternal grey mist of the mountain, like the dispersion of a confused
dream. There we stood like two sumphs, (as Hogg calls those who are
ganging a bit aglee in their wits) gaping and staring at each other
with a look which said, why did not _you_ shoot? Our dogs too stood
as stiff as two pumps, with tails standing out like the handles!
_Apropos_--talking of Hogg, the poet, we called to see him in his
half-acre island in Eltrive Lake, and truly we met with that burning
hot reception which we had anticipated from _Blackwood's Magazine_
description of him. We had no _notes of introduction_ except the notes
which our guns pricked upon the echoes of Ettric Forest, and which
James Hogg heard and answered with a view-hallo, for us to "come awa
doon the brae an' tak' a dram o'speerits," and so we did, and in true
Highland style; he met us at the door and gave us a drain from the
bottle, first gulping a glass himself of that double-strong like &
fire-eater, without a twink of the eye or a wince of the mouth; and
then with a grip o' the daddle, which made the fingers crack, he
pulled us into his bonnie wee bit shooting box of a house, with a
"Come awa ben ye'll be the better o' a bite o' venison pasty;" so in
we went, and were introduced to his bonnie wife and sousy barnes,
which latter, Jammie Hogg nursed as though he lov'd 'em frae the
uttermost ends o' his sowl.

Campbell has it against Byron, that "the poetic temperament is
incompatible with matrimonial felicity." Fudge, fudge, Mr. Campbell,
did you ever visit James Hogg?

Well, we sat down to take a snack with James and an extraordinary
monkey of his, which he has dressed in the garb of a Highland soldier,
and which too, sat down at t