SONGS, BY THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. NOW FIRST COLLECTED. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM STODART, NO. 6 CORTLANDT-STREET. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 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 an. nals 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. ner. "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. 66 'My bed," says he, "being always in stables and cow-houses, I disturbed nobody but myself." In these employments his life passed on without any remarkable or strongly influencing circumstance, till he had |