Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/43

Rh attached to a militia ensign's commission. Disappointed in this, his next ambition was a place in the Excise; but although in this case Scott exerted himself with all his influence, the Ettrick Shepherd soon found that he had as little chance of becoming an exciseman as a soldier. It was perhaps as well for him that this further assimilation to Burns was not accomplished.

Thus frustrated in all his efforts, Hogg now resolved to embrace authorship as a profession. It was his last resource, for nothing remained to him but his pen, and he had already tried its efficacy. Full of this purpose, he threw his plaid over his shoulders, turned his back on Ettrick Forest, and entered Edinburgh as if he had dropped from the clouds. Prudence, experience, tact; a graceful conciliatory manner, and money-making money-saving habits—in each and all of these, indeed, he was wofully wanting; all that he brought to the tug of life, which was now to begin in earnest, was high enthusiastic genius and indomitable perseverance. He was now at the age of thirty-eight, and therefore too old to study the graces, or unlearn the habits of his former life. His first application was to journalists, publishers, editors of magazines, and booksellers; but after going the round in quest of literary occupation, lie found himself rebuffed at every point. At last he resolved to try a volume of poetry; but so much had he discontinued for years the practice of verse-making, that he was obliged to draw for materials upon his early compositions. The result was the "Forest Minstrel," a collection of songs, of which two-thirds were his own; but as they were almost wholly the crude productions of his early days, they acquired little popularity, and brought him no profit—if we are to except the kindness of the Countess of Dalkeith, to whom they were dedicated, who sent him a present of a hundred guineas through the hands of Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards befriended him still more substantially when she became Duchess of Buccleugh. Chagrined at the bad success of his "Forest Minstrel," he resolved to abandon publishers as the enemies of all genius, and turn to the printers; but these he found as stiffnecked as the former class, for they would not print his lucubrations without the name of a bookseller as publisher on the title-page. His proposal also was little calculated to win them, for it was, to publish a weekly newspaper called the "Spy," devoted to belles-lettres, morals, and criticism. Such a journal, and by such a man!—the whole trade cried out against it. At length, in his researches, he stumbled upon an obscure book- seller, who undertook the office of printing and publishing, and the "Spy" in due time came forth; but its language by the third or fourth number waxed so unruly and indecorous, that many of the subscribers sent in their resignation. But Hogg, who was stiffly confident in his own good intentions, and unable to comprehend what he reckoned their unreasonable fastidiousness, persisted in his delinquency, until he managed to drive all the subscribers out of the field, and bring the " Spy" to an untimeous end before it. had lived and fretted for a short twelvemonth.

Hogg had now plunged into the unfathomed sea of authorship, and found that he must sink or swim as the case might be. He still felt his deficiency for a literary life, and laboured earnestly to amend it; but as he was too old for a regular training ab initio, he endeavoured to attain his end by a short cut, and for this purpose attended a forum, or debating society, that had been set up by a few aspiring young men in Edinburgh, who opened their meetings to the public at the rate of sixpence a-head as the price of admission. Here the Shepherd, who entered with his wonted ardour into the work, became a