Among the many remarkable men which the humble walks of life in
Scotland have furnished to the list of poets, Hogg, the Ettrick
Shepherd, is one of the most extraordinary. There have been Allan
Ramsay, the barber, Burns, the ploughman, Allan Cunningham, the stone
cutter, Tannahill and Thom, the weavers. Had there been no Burns, Hogg
would have been regarded as a miracle for a rural poet; yet how
infinite is the distance between the two! Burns's poetry is full of
that true philosophy of life, of those noble and manly truths which
are expressions for eternity of what lives in every bosom, but can not
form itself on every tongue.
"His lines are mottoes of the heart,
His truths electrify the sage."
Such a poet becomes at once and forever enshrined in the heart of his
whole country; its oracle and its prophet. To no such rank can James
Hogg aspire. His chief characteristics are fancy, humor, a love of the
strange and wonderful, of fairies and brownies, and country tradition,
mixed up with a most amusing egotism, and an ambition of rivaling in
their own way the greatest poets of his time. He wrote The Queen's
Wake, in imitation of Scott's metrical romances, and bragged that he
had beaten him in his own line. Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers,
Campbell, all the great poets of the day he imitated, and that in a
wonderful manner for any man, not simply for a poor shepherd of
Ettrick. Scott had a poem on Waterloo, Hogg had a Waterloo too, and in
the same metre; Byron wrote Hebrew Melodies, and Hogg wrote Sacred
Melodies; and On Carmel's Brow, The Guardian Angels, The Rose of
Sharon, Jacob and Laban, The Jewish Captive's Parting, etc., left no
question as to the direct rivalry. His third volume was one published
as avowed poems by Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and
Wilson. He had conceived the scheme of getting a poem from each of
these popular authors, and publishing them in a volume, by which to
raise money for the stocking of a farm. Byron consented, and destined
Lara for Hogg's benefit; but Scott at once refused, not approving the
plan, for which Hogg most unceremoniously assailed him; and Byron
being afterward induced not to send Lara, Hogg set about at once, and
wrote poems for them and the others named, and published them under
the title of the Poetic Mirror. Of these poems, which were clever
burlesques rather than serious forgeries, I may speak anon; here I
wish only to point out one of the most striking characteristics of
Hogg, that of imitation of style. This was also shown in the famous
Chaldee Manuscript, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, and
created so much noise. But this great versatility of manner; this
ambition of rivaling great authors in their own peculiar fields,
marked a want of a prominent caste of genius of his own. There was an
absence of individuality in him. There was nothing, except that
singular egotism and somewhat extravagant fancy, which could lead you
on reading a poem of his to say, that is Hogg and can be no one else.
His poems are generally extremely diffuse; they surprise and charm you
on opening them, at the vigor, liveliness, and strength of the style,
but they are of that kind that the farther you go the more this charm
wears off; you grow weary, you hardly know why; you can not help
protesting to yourself that they are very clever, nay, wonderful; yet
there wants a certain soul, a condensation, a something to set upon
them the stamp of that genius which seizes on your love and admiration
beyond question or control. Accordingly, while you find every man and
woman in Scotland, the peasantry as much as the more cultivated
classes, having lines and verses of Burns's treasured in their
memories, as the precious wealth of the national mind, you rarely or
never hear a similar quotation from Hogg. "A clever, ranting chiel was
the shepherd," is the remark; his countrymen read, and admire, and do
justice to his genius, but he can not, with all his ambition, seat
himself in their heart of hearts like Robert Burns.
There is nothing so amusing as Hogg's autobiography. His good-natured
egotism overflows it. The capital terms on which he is with himself
makes him relate flatteries and rebuffs with equal _naïveté_; and
the familiarity with which he treats the greatest names of modern
literature, presenting the most grave and dignified personages as his
cronies, chums, and convivial companions, is ludicrous beyond every
thing. He opens his narrative in this style:--"I like to write about
myself: in fact, there are few things which I like better; it is so
delightful to call up old reminiscences. Often have I been laughed at
for what an Edinburgh editor styles my good-natured egotism, which is
sometimes any thing but that; and I am aware that I shall be laughed
at again. But I care not: for this _important_ memoir, now to be
brought forward for the fourth time, at different periods of my life,
I shall narrate with the same frankness as formerly; and in all
relating either to others or to myself speak fearlessly and
unreservedly out. Many of those formerly mentioned are no more; others
have been unfortunate; but of all I shall speak the plain truth, and
nothing but the truth."
Immediately afterward he adds--"I must apprise you, that, whenever I
have occasion to speak of myself and my performances, I find it
impossible to divest myself of an inherent vanity." Of this no one can
doubt either the truth or the candor of the confession. He tells us
that he was the second of four sons of Robert Hogg and Margaret
Laidlaw, the wife in Scotland often retaining her maiden name. That
his father was a shepherd, but, saving money, had taken the farms of
Ettrick-house and Ettrick-hall. At the latter place Hogg was born, he
says, on the 25th of January, 1772; but he assigns this date to his
birth out of his desire to resemble Robert Burns, so much as even to
have been born on the same day and month. He used to boast of this,
and even of some similar occurrence, as of having been in some sort of
danger at his birth through a storm, and the necessary help for his
mother being difficult to procure in night and tempest. He has
related, in his life, that he was born on the same day of the same
month as Burns, but on referring to the parish registry it did not
bear him out, but showed him to have been born on the 9th of December,
1770. He tells us that his father was ruined, and that they were
turned out of doors without a farthing when he was six years old, but
that a worthy neighboring farmer, Mr. Brydon of Crosslie, took
compassion on them, leased the farm of Ettrick-house, one of those
Hogg's father had occupied, and put him as shepherd upon it. Here the
embryo poet went to the parish school just by for a few months, and
then at Whitsuntide was sent out to service to a farmer in the
neighborhood, as a herd-boy. The account that he gives of himself, as
a lad of seven years old, in this solitary employment on the hills, is
curious enough. "My wages for the half-year were a ewe-lamb and a pair
of new shoes. Even at that early age my fancy seems to have been a
hard neighbor for both judgment and memory. I was wont to strip off my
clothes, and run races against time, or rather against myself; and in
the course of these exploits, which I accomplished much to my own
admiration, I first lost my plaid, then my bonnet, then my coat, and
finally my hosen, for as for shoes, I had none."
The next winter, he tells us, he went to school again for a quarter,
got into a class who read in the Bible, and "horribly defiled several
sheets of paper with copy lines, every letter of which was nearly an
inch long." This, he says, finished his education, and that he never
was another day at school. The whole of his career of schooling he
computes at about half-a-year, but says that his old schoolmaster even
denied this, declaring that he never was at his school at all! What a
stock of education on which to set up shepherd, farmer, and poet!
Like Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and other illustrious men, Hogg, of
course, fell in love in his very childhood, and, to say truth, his
relation of this juvenile passion is as interesting as that of any of
theirs. "It will scarcely be believed that at so early an age I should
have been an admirer of the other sex. It is, nevertheless, strictly
true. Indeed, I have liked the women a great deal better than the men
ever since I remember. But that summer, when only eight years old, I
was sent out to a height called Broadheads, with a rosy-cheeked
maiden, to herd a flock of new-weaned lambs, and I had my mischievous
cows to herd beside. But as she had no dog, and I had an excellent
one, I was ordered to keep close by her. Never was a master's order
better obeyed. Day after day I herded the cows and lambs both, and
Betty had nothing to do but to sit and sew. Then we dined together
every day, at a well near to the Shiel-sike head, and after dinner I
laid my head down on her lap, covered her bare feet with my plaid, and
pretended to fall sound asleep. One day I heard her say to herself,
'Poor little laddie! he's joost tired to death:' and then I wept till
I was afraid she would feel the warm tears trickling on her knee. I
wished my master, who was a handsome young man, would fall in love
with her, and marry her, wondering how he could be so blind and stupid
as not to do it. But I thought if I were he, I would know well what to
do."
By the time he was fifteen years of age he says he had served a dozen
masters, being only engaged for short terms, and odd jobs. When about
twelve years old, such was the flourishing state of his circumstances
that he had two shirts, so bad that he could not wear them, and
therefore went without, by this means falling into another difficulty,
that of keeping his trowsers up on his bare skin, there being no
braces in those days. Yet he had a fiddle, which cost five shillings,
with which he charmed the cow-houses and stable-lofts at night, after
his work was done. In his eighteenth year he entered the service of
Mr. Laidlaw, of Black-house, near St. Mary's Loch, on Yarrow. He had
been in the service of two others of the same family, probably
relatives by his mother's side, who was a Laidlaw, at Willensee, and
at Elibank, on the Tweed; and he now continued with Mr. Laidlaw, of
Black-house, ten years, as shepherd. William Laidlaw, the son of his
master, and afterward the bailiff of Sir Walter Scott, and also the
author of the sweet song of "Lucy's Flitting," was here his great
companion, and here they read much together, and stimulated in each
other the flame of poetry. These must have been happy years for Hogg.
The year after Burns's death he first heard Tam o' Shanter repeated,
and heard of Burns, as a ploughman, who had written beautiful songs
and poems. "Every day," says he, "I pondered on the genius and fate of
Burns. I wept, and always thought with myself, what is to hinder me
from succeeding Burns? I too was born on the 25th of January, and I
have much more time to read and compose than any ploughman could have,
and can sing more old songs than ever ploughman could in the world.
But then I wept again, because I could not write. However, I resolved
to be a poet, and follow in the steps of Burns!" A brave resolve, to
be a poet, in a man that could not write. Nevertheless, he composed
songs, and one of these, called M'Donald, had the luck to get sung at
a great masonic meeting at Edinburgh, and was taken up by a General
M'Donald, who fancied it was written upon him, and had it sung every
week at his mess. Hogg, now thirty-one years of age, resolved to
astonish the world with his genius, and the account of the way he took
is not a little amusing.
"In 1801, believing that I was then become a grand poet, I most
sapiently determined on publishing a pamphlet, and appealing to the
world at once. Having attended the Edinburgh market one Monday, with a
number of sheep for sale, and being unable to dispose of them all, I
put the remainder into a park until the market on Wednesday. Not
knowing how to pass the interim, it came into my head that I would
write a poem or two from my memory, and get them printed. The thought
had no sooner struck me than it was put in practice; and I was obliged
to select, not the best poems, but those that I remembered best. I
wrote several of these during my short stay, and gave them all to a
person to print at my expense; and having sold off my sheep on
Wednesday morning, I returned to the forest. I saw no more of my poems
until I received word that there were one thousand copies of them
thrown off. I knew no more of publishing than the man in the moon; and
the only motive that influenced me was, the gratification of my vanity
by seeing myself in print. All of them were sad stuff, although I
judged them to be exceedingly good. Notwithstanding my pride of
authorship, in a few days I had discernment enough left to wish my
publication heartily at the devil, and I had hopes that long ago it
had been consigned to eternal oblivion, when, behold! a London critic
had, in malice of heart, preserved a copy, and quoted liberally out of
it last year, to my intense chagrin and mortification;" _i.e._,
while Hogg was, but four years before his death, lionizing in London.
His adventures afterward in Edinburgh, publishing his subsequent
poems, are equally curious. How he published by subscription, and one
third of his subscribers took his books, but never paid for them. How
he set up a weekly literary paper--"The Spy," which he continued a
year. How he became a great spouter at a debating club called "The
Forum." How he wrote a musical farce, and a musical drama; all ending
in ruin and insolvency, till he brought out the Queen's Wake, and won
a good reputation. Here he with great simplicity tells us, that Mr.
Jeffrey never noticed the poem till it had got into a third edition,
and having given offense to Mr. Anster by comparing the two poets, he
never afterward took any notice of any of his writings. Whereupon,
Hogg says, proudly, he thinks that conduct can do him no honor in the
long run; and that he would match the worst poem he ever published
with some that Mr. Jeffrey has strained himself to bring forward. But
Hogg was now a popular man. His Queen's Wake went on into edition
after edition. He was introduced to Blackwood, who became his
publisher, and Hogg looked upon himself as on a par in fame with the
first men of his time. The familiar style in which he relates his
first acquaintance with Professor Wilson, will excite a smile.
"On the appearance of Mr. Wilson's Isle of Palms, I was so greatly
taken with many of his fanciful and visionary scenes, descriptive of
bliss and woe, that it had a tendency to divert me occasionally of all
worldly feelings. I reviewed this poem, as well as many others, in a
Scottish review then going in Edinburgh, and was exceedingly anxious
to meet with the author; but this I tried in vain for the space of six
months. All I could learn of him was, that he was a man from the
mountains of Wales, or the west of England, with hairs like eagle's
feathers, and nails like bird's claws, a red beard, and an uncommon
degree of wildness in his looks. Wilson was then utterly unknown in
Edinburgh, except slightly to Mr. Walter Scott, who never introduces
any one person to another, nor judges it of any avail. However, having
no other shift left, I sat down and wrote him a note, telling him that
I wished much to see him, and if he wanted to see me, he might come
and dine with me at my lodgings in the road of Gabriel, at four. He
accepted the invitation, and dined with Grieve and me; and I found him
so much a man according to my own heart, that for many years we were
seldom twenty-four hours asunder when in town. I afterward went and
visited him, staying with him a month at his seat in Westmoreland,
where we had some curious doings among the gentlemen and poets of the
lakes."
It was now that Hogg wrote his Poetic Mirror, in which he passed off a
number of poems as those of the most popular writers of the day. It
must be confessed that the different compositions display uncommon
ability, and if they were written as Hogg says, that is, a volume of
nearly three hundred pages 8vo. in three weeks, they are wonderful. As
is common with such poems, they catch the mannerisms of the authors
rather than their spirit. To have risen to an equal height of sublime
feeling and philosophical thought with such writers as Byron,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. would have been to place himself not on an
equality with them, but far beyond, for he must in himself have
combined the various lofty qualities of them all. Some of them, and
especially those attributed to Wordsworth, are admirably grave
quizzes. We may take one specimen:--
"A boy came from the mountains, tripping light,
With basket on his arm,--and it appeared
That there was butter there, for the white cloth
That over it was spread, not unobserved,
In tiny ridges gently rose and fell,
Like graves of children covered o'er with snow;
And by one clumsy fold the traveler spied
One roll of yellow treasure, all as pure
As primrose bud reflected in the lake.
'Boy,' said the stranger, 'wilt thou hold my steed,
Till I walk round the corner of that mere?
When I return I will repay thee well.'"
This stranger who has approached leaves the horse with the boy, and
never does return. All the hot day the boy stands holding the horse on
the dusty road, till the steed, taking alarm at a thunder-storm,
breaks away,--
"And never more
Was in those regions seen."...