Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/40

304 last of which he was wont to wade, from the title at the beginning to the names of printer and publisher at the end, without stint or omission.

At length, when he had reached his twenty-fourth year, Hogg commenced the life of a poet in earnest. He had now read much, although very miscellaneously; and his imprisoned ideas, after struggling for a vent, burst forth in the language of song. His first attempts were of a humble description, being chiefly ballads and songs, intended to be sung by the lasses of the district; while the name of "Jamie the poeter," by which they soon learned to distinguish him, was the "muses' meed" with which he rested satisfied for the present. It was easy, indeed, for him to compose verses: they sprang up in his mind as rapidly as prose does with ordinary mortals; but to embody them in form to the eye, so that others might read and learn them here was the crowning difficulty. We have already noticed his very scanty education in penmanship, and from want of occupation it had slumbered since his boyhood until now, that it was urgently called into full exercise. His writing, at the best, was a sort of laborious printing, letter by letter; while his model was the Italian alphabet, for want of a more concise character. To add to his difficulties, his chief opportunities for writing were derived from the chance intervals that occurred in the management of his unruly flock. Armed with a few sheets of paper, stitched together, in his pocket, and a phial, instead of an ink-horn, dangling from his buttonhole, he used to sally to the hill-side with his sheep; and as soon as a season for writing occurred, he stripped off coat and waistcoat, like one preparing for a desperate deed, and squared his elbows for the feat. In this way his earliest poems were committed to paper. One advantage of this slow and toilsome process was that it afforded sufficient time for reflection and correction; so that his MS., however uncouth, was not defiled with those many erasures and alterations that so sorely trouble the author, as well as perplex the printers. The word once down was as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. The habit thus established was of immense service to Hogg when he acquired greater facility in penmanship, and to this, perhaps, we may attribute the ready accuracy he afterwards acquired, both in prose and verse, and the numerous productions which he was enabled to give to the world in the midst of his other avocations.

It was now full time that Hogg should have higher models than Ettrick ballads, and better judges than the rude peasantry of the district. Accordingly, after he had harped and preluded for a twelvemonth, he was so fortunate as to hear of Robert Burns, who had died only a year before. His informant was a "half-daft man," who recited to him the whole of "Tarn O'Shanter," and told him that its author was the sweetest poet that ever was born; that he was now dead, and had left a place that would never be filled. Hogg, who was so delighted with "Tarn O'Shanter" that he quickly learned every line by heart, had now full proof that there was still higher poetry than his own, and a better poet than himself; and his whole enthusiasm thenceforth was to become the rival, or at least the worthy successor of Robert Burns. And why not? For had he not been born, of all days in the year, upon the 25th of January, the very birthday of Robert Burns? And was he not, in a great measure, an uneducated and self-taught man, even as Burns was? And, moreover, was not his own occupation of herding sheep every whit as poetical as following the plough, if not even more so? All this was such proof demonstrative, that he never afterwards seems to have lost sight of the hope that the Ettrick Shepherd would at last