ronage of Harriet, Duchess of Buccleuch, and,
his claims being warmly supported by Scott and specially recommended by
the Duchess on her deathbed to her husband, Hogg received rent free, or
at a peppercorn, the farm of Mossend, Eltrive or Altrive. It is agreed
even by Hogg's least judicious admirers that if he had been satisfied
with this endowment and had then devoted himself, as he actually did, to
writing, he might have lived and died in comfort, even though his
singular luck in not being paid continued to haunt him. But he must
needs repeat his old mistake and take the adjacent farm of Mount Benger,
which, with a certain reckless hospitable way of living for which he is
not so blamable, kept him in difficulties all the rest of his life and
made him die in them. He lived twenty years longer; married a
good-looking girl much his superior in rank and twenty years his junior,
who seems to have made him an excellent wife; engaged in infinite
magazine- and book-writing, of which more presently; became the
inspirer, model and butt of _Blackwood's Magazine_; constantly
threatened to quarrel with it for traducing him, and once did so; loved
Edinburgh convivialities more well than wisely; had the very ill luck to
survive Scott and to commit the folly of writing a pamphlet (more silly
than anything else) on the "domestic manners" of that great man, which
estranged Lockhart, hitherto his fast friend; paid a visit to London in
1832, whereby hang tales; and died himself on 21st November 1835.

Such, briefly but not I think insufficiently given, is the Hogg of
history. The Hogg of anecdote is a much more considerable and difficult
person. He mixes himself up with or becomes by turns (whichever phrase
may be preferred) the Shepherd of the _Noctes_ and the Hogg who is
revealed to us, say his panegyrists, with "uncalled-for malignity" in
Lockhart's _Life of Scott_. But these panegyrists seem to forget that
there are two documents which happen not to be signed either "John
Gibson Lockhart" or "Christopher North," and that these documents are
Hogg's _Autobiography_, published by himself, and the _Domestic Manners
of Sir Walter Scott_, likewise authenticated. In these two we have the
Hogg of the _ana_ put forward pretty vividly. For instance, Hogg tells
us how, late in Sir Walter's life, he and his wife called upon Scott.
"In we went and were received with all the affection of old friends. But
his whole discourse was addressed to my wife