HOGG, James (1770-1835), a Scottish poet, best known by his title of the “Ettrick Shepherd,” was born on the banks of the Ettrick in Selkirkshire in 1770. His ancestors had been shepherds for centuries. He received hardly any school training, and seems to have had difficulty in getting books to read. After spending his early years under different masters, first as cow-herd and afterwards as shepherd, he was engaged in the latter capacity by Mr Laidlaw, tenant of Blackhouse, in the parish of Yarrow, from 1790 till 1799. He was treated with great kindness, and had access to a large collection of books, which he soon exhausted, and then subscribed to a circulating library in Peebles. While attending to his flock, he spent a great deal of time in reading. His first printed piece was “The Mistakes of a Night,” which appeared in the Scots Magazine for October 1794, and was succeeded by Scots Pastorals in 1801. A year or two after this publication Hogg became acquainted with Sir Walter Scott—a connexion which had a powerful influence for good on the peasant poet. He again appeared before the public in 1807 as the author of the Mountain Bard, to which Scott wrote an introductory notice. By this work, and by a Treatise on the Diseases of Sheep, Hogg realized about £300. With this money he unfortunately embarked in farming in Dumfriesshire, and in three years was utterly ruined, and had to abandon all his effects to his creditors. He returned to Ettrick, and there found only cold and estranged looks. He could not even obtain employment as a shepherd; so he set off in February 1810 to push his fortune in Edinburgh as a literary adventurer. In the same year he published a collection of songs, which, being dedicated to the countess of Dalkeith, and recommended to her ...notice by Scott, was rewarded with a present of 100 guineas. He then commenced a weekly periodical, The Spy, which he continued from September 1810 till August 1811. The appearance of the Queen’s Wake in 1813 established Hogg’s reputation as a poet; it was followed by Mador of the Moor, The Pilgrims of the Sun, and The Poetic Mirror. The duchess of Bucci euch, on her death-bed in 1814, had asked the duke to do something for the Ettrick bard; and the duke gave him a lease for life of the farm of Altrive in Yarrow, consisting of about 70 acres of moorland, on which the poet built a house and spent the last years of his life. He took possession of it in 1817; but his literary exertions were never relaxed. Before 1820 he had written The Brownie of Bodsbeck, and two volumes of Winter Evening Tales, besides collecting, editing, and writing part of two volumes of Jacobite Relics, and contributing largely to Blackwood’s Magazine. In 1820 he married Miss Margaret Phillips, a lady of a good Annandale family, and found himself possessed of about £1000, a good house, and a well-stocked farm. Hogg’s connexion with Blackwood’s Magazine kept him continually before the public. The wit and mischief of some of his literary friends made free with his name, and represented him in ludicrous and grotesque aspects; but the effect of the whole was favourable to his popularity. He visited London in 1831, and was feasted by the nobility, literati, and public men of the metropolis. On his return a public dinner was given to him in Peebles,—Professor Wilson in the chair,—and he acknowledged that he had at last “found fame.” His health, however, was seriously impaired. With his pen in his hand to the last, Hogg in 1834 published a volume of Lay Sermons, and in 1835 two volumes of Montrose Tales. His illness ultimately assumed the form of dropsy, and after a short confinement he died November 21, 1835, having nearly completed his sixty-fifth year. He was buried in the churchyard of his native parish Ettrick. His fame had seemed to fill the whole district, and was brightest at its close; his presence was associated with all the Border sports and festivities; and as a man James Hogg was ever frank, joyous, and charitable.
His Shepherd's Calendar is the best of Hogg’s prose works; but it is mainly as a great peasant poet that he lives in literature. Nothing can be more exquisite than some of his lyrics and minor poems—his “Skylark,” “When the Kye comes Hame,” his verses on the “Comet” and “Evening Star,” and his “Address to Lady Ann Scott.” The Queen's Wake unites his characteristic excellences—his command of the old romantic ballad style, his graceful fairy mythology, and his aerial flights of imagination. The story of Kilmeny stands at the head of all our fairy tales, and is inimitable for its scenes of visionary splendour, purity, and bliss, linked to the fairest objects of earthly interest and affection. In such compositions Hogg seems completely transformed; he is absorbed in the ideal and supernatural, and might have claimed over all his contemporaries the Delphic laurel for direct and immediate inspiration.
See a memoir by Professor Wilson, prefixed to an edition of Hogg’s works published by Blackie & Co. in 1850; Wilson’s Nοctes Ambro- sianoe ; Gilfillan’s First Gallery of Literary Portraits ; Cunningham’s Biog. and Crit. Hist, of Lit. ; and the general index to Blackwoods Magazine. A collected edition of Hogg’s Tales appeared in 1838 in 6 vols., and a second in 1851; his collected Poems were published in 1850 and in 1852. For an admirable account of the social entertainments Hogg used to give in Edinburgh, see Memoir of Robert Chambers, by Dr William Chambers, pp. 263-270.
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