SONGS, BY THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. NOW FIRST COLLECTED. Janie's Hoge FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. NEW-YORK: NO. 6 CORTLANDT-STREET. THE history of JAMES HOGG exhibits a triumph of genius and perseverance over the difficulties of original situation in life and defective education, such as is seldom exhibited in the annals of literature. His father had been originally a respectable farmer and sheep-dealer in Ettrick, Scotland, but was ruined in his pecuniary circumstances when the subject of this notice was a child. The poverty of the family may be conceived from the fact, that young Hogg became a cowherd at seven years of age, and was afterwards a shepherd. Whilst he followed these occupations, he endured many hardships, some of which he himself describes in a very amusing man"Time after time," says he, "I had but two shirts, which grew often so bad, that I was obliged to quit wearing them altogether; for when I put them on, they hung in long tatters as far as my heels. At these times, I certainly made a very grotesque figure; for, on quitting the shirt, I could never induce my breeches to keep up to their proper sphere." His small amount of wages he carried to his parents; but when he arrived at the age of fourteen, he saved five shillings, with which he bought an old violin. When the labors of the day were over, he amused himself by playing his favorite Scottish tunes. "My bed," says he, "being always in sta. bles and cow-houses, I disturbed nobody but myself." ner. In these employments his life passed on without any remarkable or strongly influencing circumstance, till he had attained the age of eighteen, when he first commenced the reading of poetry. This important era he thus describes : "It was while serving with Mr. Laidlaw in the eighteenth year of my age, that I first got a perusal of The Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace and The Gentle Shepherd; and, though immoderately fond of them, yet (what you will think remarkable in one who has since dabbled so much in verses) I could not help regretting deeply that they were not in prose, that every body might have understood them; or, I thought, if they had been in the same kind of metre with the psalms, I could have borne with them. The truth is, I made exceedingly slow progress in reading them. The little reading that I had learned, I had nearly lost, and the Scottish dialect quite confounded me; so that, before I got to the end of a line, I had commonly lost the rhyme of the pre ceding one; and, if I came to a triplet, a thing of which I had no conception, I commonly read to the foot of the page without perceiving that I had lost the rhyme altogether. Thus, after I had got through them both, I found myself much in the same predicament with the man of Eskdale muir, who borrowed Bailey's dictionary from his neighbor. On returning it, the lender asked him what he thought of it. 'I don't know,' replied he; I have read it all through, but cannot say that I understand it; it is the most confused book that I ever saw in my life." Young Hogg's literary attainments will be illustrated still more strikingly by the following confession: "To give you some farther idea of the progress I had made in literature, I was, about this time, obliged to write a letter to my elder brother; and, having never drawn a pen for such a number of years, I had actually forgot how to make sundry of the letters of the alphabet, which I had either to print, or patch up the words in the best way that I could without them." 1 His progress, however, was not to be stopped by ordinary difficulties. He took every opportunity of improving him、 self. Mrs. Laidlaw lent him some books and newspapers, which he read whilst tending the ewes. In 1790, he hired himself as a shepherd to another Mr. Laidlaw, with whom he lived nine years. Mr. Laidlaw possessed many valuable books, all of which the young shepherd was allowed to read. His first attempts to write verse were made in the spring of 1793. These were chiefly pastorals and ballads. In 1795, he wrote a comedy entitled The Scotch Gentleman. Hogg's manner of composing this comedy is told by himself in a very naïf manner. "Whether my manner of writing it out was new, I know not, but it was not without singularity. Having very little spare time from my flock, which was unruly enough, I folded and stitched a few sheets of paper, which I carried in my pocket: I had no inkhorn, but, in place of it, I borrowed a small vial, which I fixed in a hole in the breast of my waistcoat, and having a cork affixed by a piece of twine, it answered the purpose full as well. Thus equipped, whenever a leisure moment or two offered, I had nothing to do but to sit down, and write my thoughts as I found them. This is still my invariable practice in writing prose. I cannot make out one sentence by study, without the pen in my hand to collate the ideas as they arise: I seldom or never write two copies of the same thing. My manner of composing poetry is very different, and, believe, much more singular. Let the piece be of what length it will, I correct and compose it wholly in my mind ere I put pen to paper, when I write it down as fast as the A B C." It was not, however, until the year 1801, that he ventured upon the publication of any of his productions. He then published a work under the name of Pastorals, Poems, &c. His next publication was The Mountain Bard, by which, and by his work on sheep, he was rendered master of nearly £300, which appeared at that time a sum so inexhaustible, that he rented two large farms, which required for their proper management a much larger capital. He failed in this new attempt, and in utter desperation set |