HOGG, WILLIAM,
an ingenious translator into Latin of English poems, lived in the
seventeenth century, and was a native of Gowrie, In Perthshire. To
better his condition he went to London, but being disappointed in
his views, he was reduced to great distress. Dr. Birch states that
he died of want in the streets. In 1690 he published at London
‘Paraphrasis Poetica in tria Johannis Miltonis viri clarissimi
Poemata, viz. Paradisum Amissum, Paradisum Recuperatum, et Samsonum
Agonistem,’ an edition of which was printed at Rotterdam in 1699. Of
this version of Milton the notorious Lauder made considerable use in
his dishonest attempt against the reputation of that great poet. The
other principal translations of Hogg are, ‘Liber Primus Principis
Arcturi,’ (a Rich. Blackmore, Esq. Aur.) Latine red. 1706;
‘Paraphrasis in Jobum Poetica,’ 1682; ‘Satyra Sacra, sive
Paraphrasis in Ecclesiasten Poetica.’ Part of his sacred poetry is
reprinted in the ‘Poetarum Scotorum Musae Sacrae.’
HOGG, JAMES,
the Ettrick Shepherd, one of the most remarkable of Scotland’s
self-taught poets, was born in a cottage on the banks of the
Ettrick, Selkirkshire, January 25, 1772, the anniversary of the
natal day of Burns. His progenitors were all shepherds, an
occupation which his father, like himself, followed for many years.
He received but a scanty education, and spent only about half a year
at school. At seven years of age he was sent to herd cows, and his
boyhood was devoted to keeping sheep upon the hills. Among the first
books that he read were ‘The Life of Wallace,’ and ‘The Gentle
Shepherd,’ which he was disappointed were not written in prose
instead of verse. He also read Bishop Burnet’s ‘Theory of the
Conflagration of the Earth,’ which he sates nearly “overturned his
brain.” His first attempts at versification were made in the spring
of 1796; and his first published song was ‘My name it is Donald
M’Donald,’ composed, in 1800, on the threatened invasion of
Bonaparte, which soon became very popular. In 1801, when attending
the sheep market at Edinburgh, he ventured to publish a small volume
of poems, which, however, was soon consigned to oblivion. The
attention of Sir Walter, then Mr. Scott, being drawn to the poetical
talent of Mr. Hogg, by his advice he published, in 1807, a volume of
ballads, under the title of the ‘Mountain Bard.’ These compositions,
emanating from a rough untutored mind, bore many latent indications
of that high poetical imagination which afterwards shone out so
brightly in ‘Kilmeny;’ and the work being successful, with its
profits and a premium which he gained from the Highland Society for
an ‘Essay on Sheep,’ published the same year, he was tempted to
embark in an agricultural speculation, which unfortunately proved a
failure.
Disappointed in
his views, he now determined upon settling in Edinburgh, and
following the precarious calling of an author. Accordingly he
arrived in that city in February 1810, and the same year he
published a volume of songs, called ‘The Forest Minstrel,’ from
which, however, he derived no pecuniary benefit. At this period,
when poverty was pressing hard upon him, he found kind and steady
friends in Messrs. Grieve and Scott, hatters, whose well-timed
benevolence, we are told, supplied all his wants. His next adventure
was a literary publication called ‘The Spy,’ chiefly devoted to
moral essays, tales, poetry, and sketches of life. But Hogg at this
time knew nothing of men and manners, and very little of
contemporaneous literature; and his periodical did not outlive the
year of its birth.
In the
spring of 1813 he produced his ‘Queen’s Wake,’ a legendary poem,
which consists mainly of a series of metrical tales written in
imitation of the old Scottish ballads, and connected and diversified
by a fiction of considerable ingenuity, in which the bards and
minstrels of Scotland are represented as contending for prizes
before Mary Queen of Scots and her court at Holyrood. Overlooking a
few defects of style, the ‘Queen’s Wake’ is undoubtedly one of the
finest poems in the language; and by far the best and most
imaginative piece in the volume is the beautiful episodical tale of
‘Kilmeny,’ which for sweetness and simplicity cannot be excelled. In
the course of a short time the ‘Queen’s Wake’ went through several
editions, and at once secured for the author a degree of popularity
and fame that has seldom fallen to the lot of a modern writer. His
portrait is subjoined.
[portrait of James Hogg]
In 1815, Mr. Hogg published ‘The Pilgrims of the Sun,’ a poem
of unequal merit, although in some passages worthy of his now
established reputation. In 1816 appeared ‘Mador of the Moor,’ in the
Spenserian stanza, which is greatly inferior to its predecessor. The
Shepherd next applied himself to collect original pieces from the
principal living poets of Great Britain, but the refusal of Sir
Walter Scott to assist him in the project, with other untoward
circumstances, caused him to change his plan, and write imitations
of the whole himself. The ‘Poetic Mirror,’ published anonymously,
was the result of this bold attempt. It comprised many pieces of
great excellence, and soon passed into a second edition. It was
followed by ‘Dramatic Tales,’ in two volumes, a work which, with the
exception of ‘The Hunting of Badlewe,’ a tragedy previously printed
separately, contains little surpassing the ordinary standard. In
1818 he published ‘The Brownie of Bodsbeck, and other Tales in
Prose,’ 2 vols. In 1819 he brought out the first volume of the
‘Jacobite Relics,’ the second volume of which appeared in 1821. In
1820 ‘Winter Evening Tales, collected among the Cottagers in the
South of Scotland,’ made their appearance. This work was one of his
most successful publications. In 1822, when George IV. Visited
Scotland, Hogg welcomed his sovereign in ‘The Royal Jubilee, a
Scottish Masque,’ which took no permanent hold of public attention.
In 1814 the Shepherd had received, at a nominal rent, from the
duke of Buccleuch, the small farm of Altrive Lake, in the wilds of
Yarrow, which continued to be his residence till his death. After
his marriage, in 1820, he determined once more to farm on a large
scale, and accordingly took a lease for nine years of the adjoining
farm of Mount Benger. Having lost about Ł2,000 by his agricultural
speculations, to raise money, he wrote, in a few months, two
extravagant Border romances, each in three volumes, the one entitled
‘The Three Perils of Man,’ for which he received Ł150; and the other
‘The Three Perils of Woman,’ which produced the same sum. In 1824 he
published anonymously a book abounding in horrors, called
“Confessions of a Fanatic,’ which had a tolerable sale, though he
reaped no benefit from it. In 1825 he gave to the world ‘Queen Hynd,’
an epic poem, by no means one of his happiest efforts. About this
time he wrote, for Blackwood’s Magazine, a series of interesting
prose sketches under the title of ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar,’
published separately in two volumes in 1829.
In 1832, in which year appeared his ‘Queer Book,’ Mr. Hogg
visited London, and during his short sojourn in the metropolis, he
was “the observed of all observers,” and was honoured with a public
dinner. In 1834 he produced a volume of ‘Lay Sermons,’ and shortly
after ‘Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott.’ In the following year,
during the short period that the conservatives were in power, Sir
Robert Peel transmitted to him Ł100 as an earnest of an annual
pension to that amount, which he did not live to enjoy. His
constitution had been long sinking under the united effects of
pecuniary embarrassments and intense literary labour, and he died at
Altrive Lake, November 21, 1835. He had married, in 1820, Margaret,
youngest daughter of Mr. Phillips of Longbridgemoor, Annandale, who,
with five children, survived him. In 1854, his widow received a
pension from government of Ł50, in consideration of her husband’s
services to literature.
Hogg was fond of all athletic exercises and field sports, and
was long made to figure conspicuously in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’ of
Blackwood’s Magazine, which gave his name a celebrity beyond that
acquired by his own writings. He wrote two interesting
autobiographies of himself, which will be found published with his
works.
