e of the modern ballad imitations therein and sent his criticisms to
Scott. They were sound criticisms, for Hogg had an intimate knowledge of
popular poetry and a quick perception of what was genuine and what was
spurious in such compositions. Sir Walter called him in aid of his third
volume and found his services of value.

As a Border minstrel, Hogg ranks next to Scott--is, in fact, a sort of
inferior Scott. His range was narrower, but he was just as thoroughly
saturated with the legendary lore of the countryside, and in some
respects he stood closer to the spirit of that peasant life in which
popular poetry has its source. As a ballad poet, indeed, he is not
always Scott's inferior, though even his ballads are apt to be too long
and without the finish and the instinct for selection which marks the
true artist. When he essayed metrical romances in numerous cantos, his
deficiencies in art became too fatally evident. Scott, in his longer
poems, is often profuse and unequal, but always on a much higher level
than Hogg. The latter had no skill in conducting to the end a fable of
some complexity, involving a number of varied characters and a really
dramatic action. "Mador of the Moor," _e.g._, is a manifest and not very
successful imitation of "The Lady of the Lake"; and it requires a strong
appetite for the romantic to sustain a reader through the six parts of
"Queen Hynde" and the four parts of "The Pilgrims of the Sun." By
general consent, the best of Hogg's more ambitious poems is "The Queen's
Wake," and the best thing in it is "Kilmeny." "The Queen's Wake" (1813)
combines, in its narrative plan, the framework of "The Lay of the Last
Minstrel" with the song competition in its sixth canto. Mary Stuart, on
landing in Scotland, holds a Christmas wake at Holyrood, where seventeen
bards contend before her for the prize of song. The lays are in many
different moods and measures, but all enclosed in a setting of
octosyllabic couplets, closely modelled upon Scott, and the whole ends
with a tribute to the great minstrel who had waked once more the long
silent Harp of the North. The thirteenth bard's song--"Kilmeny"--is of
the type of traditionary tale familiar in "Tarn Lin" and "Thomas of
Ercildoune," and tells how a maiden was spirited away to fairyland, where
she saw a prophetic vision of her country's future (including the
Napoleonic wars) and returned after a seven years' absence.

"Late, late in a gloamin' w