II

HOGG

"What on earth," it was once asked "will you make of Hogg?" I think that
there is something to be made of Hogg, and that it is something worth
the making. In the first place, it is hardly possible, without studying
"the Shepherd" pretty close, fully to appreciate three other persons,
all greater, and one infinitely greater, than himself; namely, Wilson,
Lockhart, and Scott. To the two first he was a client in the Roman
sense, a plaything, something of a butt, and an invaluable source of
inspiration or at least suggestion. Towards the last he occupied a very
curious position, never I think quite paralleled elsewhere--the position
of a Boswell who would fain be a Boswell and is not allowed to be, who
has wild notions that he is really a greater man than Johnson and
occasionally blasphemes against his idol, but who in the intervals is
truly Boswellian. In the second place, he has usually hitherto been not
criticised at all, but either somewhat sneered at or else absurdly
over-praised. In the third place, as both Scott and Byron recognised, he
is probably the most remarkable example we have of absolute
self-education, or of no education: for Burns was an academically
instructed student in comparison with Hogg. In the fourth, he produced,
amid a mass of rubbish, some charming verse and one prose-story which,
though it is almost overlooked by the general, some good judges are, I
believe, agreed with me in regarding as one of the very best things of
its kind, while it is also a very curious literary puzzle.

The anecdotic history, more or less authentic, of the Ettrick Shepherd
would fill volumes, and I must try to give some of the cream of it
presently. The non-anecdotic part may be despatched in a few sentences.
The exact date of his birth is not known, but he was baptized on 9th
December 1770. His father was a good shepherd and a bad farmer--a
combination of characteristics which Hogg himself inherited unimpaired
and unimproved. If he had any early education at all, he forgot it so
completely that he had, as a grown-up man, to teach himself writing if
not reading a second time. He pursued his proper vocation for about
thirty years, during the latter part of which time he became known as a
composer of very good songs, "Donald Macdonald" being ranked as the
best. He printed a few as a pamphlet in the first year of the century,
but met with little success. Then he fell in with Scott, to whom he had
been introdu