onger,
'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death, upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes.

* * * * *

"No more of old romantic sorrows,
For slaughter'd youth or love-lorn maid,
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,
And Ettrick mourns with her their Shepherd dead!"

Within two bow-shots of the place where lately stood the cottage of his
birth, the remains of James Hogg are interred in the churchyard of
Ettrick. At the grave a plain tombstone to his memory has been erected
by his widow. "When the dark clouds of winter," writes Mr Scott Riddell,
"pass away from the crest of Ettrick-pen, and the summits of the
nearer-lying mountains, which surround the scene of his repose, and the
yellow gowan opens its bosom by the banks of the mountain stream, to
welcome the lights and shadows of the spring returning over the land,
many are the wild daisies which adorn the turf that covers the remains
of THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. And a verse of one of the songs of his early
days, bright and blissful as they were, is thus strikingly verified,
when he says--

'Flow, my Ettrick! it was thee
Into my life that first did drop me;
Thee I 'll sing, and when I dee,
Thou wilt lend a sod to hap me.
Pausing swains will say, and weep,
Here our Shepherd lies asleep.'"

As formerly described, Hogg was, in youth, particularly good-looking and
well-formed. A severe illness somewhat changed the form of his features.
His countenance[43] presented the peculiarity of a straight cheekbone;
his forehead was capacious and elevated, and his eye remarkable for its
vivacity. His hair, in advanced life, became dark brown, mixed with
gray. He was rather above the middle height, and was well-built; his
chest was broad, his shoulders square, and his limbs well-rounded. He
disliked foppery, but was always neat in his apparel: on holidays he
wore a suit of black. Forty years old ere he began to mix in the circles
of polished life, he never attained a knowledge of the world and its
ways; in all his transactions he retained the simplicity of the pastoral
character. His Autobiography is the most amusing in the language, from
the honesty of the narrator; never before did man of letters so minutely
reveal the history of his foibles and failings. He was entirely
unselfish and thoroughly benevolent; the homeless wanderer was sure of
shelter under hi