Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/46

310 mean fellow named ... A third of it has been taken off, and laid into another farm; the remainder is as yet inappropriated. Now, there is a certain poor bard, who has two old parents, each of them upwards of eighty-four years of age, and that bard has no house nor home to shelter these poor parents in, or cheer the evening of their lives. A single line from a certain very great and very beautiful lady, to a certain Mr. Riddle [the Duke's chamberlain], would insure that small pendicle to the bard at once. But she will grant no such thing! I appeal to your Grace if she is not a very bad lady that? I am your Grace's ever obliged and grateful,", "Ettrick Bank, March 17, 1814.

This curious application, which the Duchess received only a few months before her death, remained unanswered not from remissness, however, but the fear of "seeing herself in print," should she vouchsafe a reply. She sent the letter to Sir Walter Scott, requesting him to inform his poetical friend of the Duke's unwillingness to displace a tenant, and assure him withal of her wish to serve him whenever a suitable opportunity occurred. On Scott's first visit to the Duke after the death of the Duchess, the case of Hogg was introduced, and his Grace feelingly said, "I must now consider this poor man's case as Tier legacy." The ultimate result of this resolution was the establishment of Hogg, three years afterwards, in a snug farm on Altrive Lake, at a merely nominal rent, where he might have every opportunity of securing comfort and independence.

In the meantime, however, it was necessary for Hogg to bestir himself to keep poverty both from hearth and door. Notwithstanding the fame of the "Queen's Wake," its publication was attended with so many mischances, that the profits were inadequate and at wide intervals. Besides, it must be remembered that money, which can make to itself wings even in the custody of the prudent, has its chances of escape multiplied fifty-fold when in the keeping of a poet, and such a poet as the Ettrick Shepherd, whose knowledge of man and life was anything but practical. In 1815 his "Pilgrims of the Sun" appeared. But, notwithstanding its many powerful descriptions and poetical passages, the reception which the public gave to the work betokened disappointment: their hopes had been raised so high by the "Wake," that anything short of it had little chance of success. In America, however, it had a better reception, where the sale of 10,000 copies extended the author's reputation, but without bettering his finances. A rebuff like this would have deterred most authors; but Hogg had such an implicit faith in his own genius, that he believed himself to be right in his estimate of the poem, and the whole literary world in the wrong, and that the publishers were in a conspiracy to arrest the progress of the "Pilgrims." This was soon after followed by "Mador of the Moor," a poem in the Spenserian stanza, and which he reckoned his masterpiece of versification. But here again the world out- voted him, for "Mador of the Moor" was reckoned inferior even to its predecessor a judgment which has never as yet been reversed.

"My next literary adventure," says Hogg in one of his autobiographies, "was the most extravagant of any. I took it into my head that I would collect a poem from every living author in Britain, and publish them in a neat and elegant volume, by which I calculated I might make my fortune." It was easy to ask, but to obtain such a favour was the difficulty; for the best poets refused a contribution of any kind, while those of a second or third rate, who