Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/49

Rh of extravagant incident and beautiful description ; and soon after, a similar work in three volumes, entitled the "Three Perils of Women." Before these works were published, the coronation of George IV. occurred, and Sir Walter Scott, thinking that a memorial of this august spectacle from the pen of the Ettrick Shepherd would be a rich originality, and might produce him a golden requital, solicited and obtained a place for Hogg, as well as himself, in the Hall and Abbey of Westminster, to witness the coronation. With this permission was coupled an invitation from Lord Sidmouth, to dine with him after the solemnity, when the two poets would meet the Duke of York and a few other Jacobites. Here was an opportunity of princely patronage such as few peasant-poets have enjoyed; and Scott accordingly announced the affair to Hogg, requesting him to join him at Edinburgh, and set off with him to the great metropolis. But poor Hogg! he wrote "with the tear in his eye," as he declared, to say that his taking such a journey was impossible and why? because the great yearly Border fair, held in St. Boswell's Green, in Roxburghshire, happened at the same period, and he could not absent himself from the meeting! In the following year (1822) the king's visit to Edinburgh occurred; and Hogg, either infected with the national epidemic, or to vindicate his loyalty, that had slumbered so strangely at the time of the coronation, produced a poetical welcome to the memorable advent, entitled "The Royal Jubilee, a Scottish Masque." As such courtly masques are but forced productions at the best, that of the Shepherd was scarcely better than the best laureate lays, if we except a few genuine poetical touches here and there, such as royal favour can seldom purchase. In speaking of this effusion, the Shepherd naively adds, "I got no money for it; but I got what I held in higher estimation his majesty's thanks for this and my other loyal and national songs. The note is written by Sir Robert Peel, in his majesty's name, and I have preserved it as a relic."

After this Hogg continued for several years to write in prose and verse for the periodicals, "sometimes receiving liberal payment," he tells us, " and sometimes none, just as the editor or proprietor felt disposed." But the periodical to which he chiefly adhered, and of which he had been one of the original founders, was Blackwood's Magazine. And who that has read the Noctes Ambrosiance can fail to recollect the full portrait of the Shepherd given there as he dressed and looked, as he thought, spoke, and acted; even as he ate, drank, and slept? Overcharged the picture certainly was, and of this he vehemently complained; but still, how few have sat to such a limner, and have received such justice, where justice was most required? Still more reasonably he complained of the many sentiments attributed to him which he never conceived, as well as the tales and songs which he had never composed, although they were given as his own in these widely-admired Nodes. He now collected his own veritable prose contributions to Blackwood, and published them in two volumes, under the title of the "Shepherd's Calendar," a work more vigorously written, and which attained a higher popularity than any of his former prose productions.

But, in the meantime, what had become of the Ettrick Shepherd's farming?—The reader may well conclude that all this authorship was either cause or effect that it either brought his farm to nought, or was the desperate resource of utter failure in all his agricultural endeavours. Both conjectures are but too correct. His extensive connection with the literary society of Edinburgh, and the taste he had acquired for popular laudation, made the occupations of a fanner