how, to say the least and mildest, the
faults and foibles of the curious personage known as "the Shepherd of
the _Noctes_" were not the parts of the character on which Wilson need
have spent, or did spend, most of his invention. Even if the "boozing
buffoon" had been a boozing buffoon and nothing more, Hogg, who
confesses with a little affected remorse, but with evident pride, that
he once got regularly drunk every night for some six weeks running, till
"an inflammatory fever" kindly pulled him up, could not have greatly
objected to this part of the matter. The wildest excesses of the
_Eidolon_-Shepherd's vanity do not exceed that speech to Scott which
Professor Veitch thinks so true; and the quaintest pranks played by the
same shadow do not exceed in quaintness the immortal story of Hogg being
introduced to Mrs. Scott for the first time, extending himself on a sofa
at full length (on the excuse that he "thought he could never do wrong
to copy the lady of the house," who happened at the time to be in a
delicate state of health), and ending by addressing her as "Charlotte."
This is the story that Mrs. Garden, Hogg's daughter, without attempting
to contest its truth, describes as told by Lockhart with "uncalled-for
malignity." Now when anybody who knows something of Lockhart comes
across "malignant," "scorpion," or any term of the kind, he, if he is
wise, merely shrugs his shoulders. All the literary copy-books have got
it that Lockhart was malignant, and there is of course no more to be
said.[7] But something may be done by a little industrious clearing
away of fiction in particulars. It may be most assuredly and confidently
asserted that no one reading the _Life of Scott_ without knowing what
Hogg's friends have said of it would dream of seeing malignity in the
notices which it contains of the Shepherd. Before writing this paper I
gave myself the trouble, or indulged myself in the pleasure (for perhaps
that is the more appropriate phrase in reference to the most delightful
of biographies, if not of books), of marking with slips of paper all the
passages in Lockhart referring to Hogg, and reading them consecutively.
I am quite sure that any one who does this, even knowing little or
nothing of the circumstances, will wonder where on earth the "ungenerous
assaults," the "virulent detraction," the "bitter words," the "false
friendship," and so forth, with which Lockhart has been charged, are to
be found. But any one who knows