themselves to the pastoral life. Robert Hogg, the poet's father, was a
person of very ordinary sagacity, presenting in this respect a decided
contrast to his wife, Margaret Laidlaw, a woman of superior energy and
cultivated mind. Their family consisted of four sons, of whom the second
was James, the subject of this Memoir. The precise date of his birth is
unknown: he was baptised, according to the Baptismal Register of
Ettrick, his native parish, on the 9th of December 1770.[28]

At the period of his marriage, Robert Hogg was in circumstances of
considerable affluence; he had saved money as a shepherd, and, taking on
lease the two adjoining pastoral farms of Ettrick-hall and
Ettrick-house, he largely stocked them with sheep adapted both for the
Scottish and English markets. During several years he continued to
prosper; but a sudden depression in the market, and the absconding of a
party who was indebted to him, at length exhausted his finances, and
involved him in bankruptcy. The future poet was then in his sixth year.
In this destitute condition, the family experienced the friendship and
assistance of Mr Brydon, tenant of the neighbouring farm of Crosslee,
who, leasing Ettrick-house, employed Robert Hogg as his shepherd. But
the circumstances of the family were much straitened by recent reverses;
and the second son, young as he was, and though he had only been three
months at school, was engaged as a cow-herd, his wages for six months
being only a ewe-lamb and a pair of shoes! Three months' further
attendance at school, on the expiry of his engagement, completed the
future bard's scholastic instructions. It was the poet's lot, with the
exception of these six months' schooling, to receive his education among
the romantic retreats and solitudes of Nature. First as a cow-herd, and
subsequently through the various gradations of shepherd-life, his days,
till advanced manhood, were all the year round passed upon the hills.
And such hills! The mountains of Ettrick and Yarrow are impressed with
every feature of Highland scenery, in its wildest and most striking
aspects. There are stern summits, enveloped in cloud, and stretching
heavenwards; huge broad crests, heathy and verdant, or torn by fissures
and broken by the storms; deep ravines, jagged, precipitate, and
darksome; and valleys sweetly reposing amidst the sublimity of the awful
solitude. There are dark craggy mountains around the Grey-Mare's-Tail,
echoing to the roar of