Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/50

314 a perfect weariness to his heart, so that he was more frequently to he found among the intellectual throng of the metropolis, than with the ploughmen and shepherds of Mount Benger. Nor was it better when he betook himself to his rural home ; for every idle tourist, every lion-hunter, every wandering poet, every effete or embryo scribbler, must needs make a pilgrimage to the wonderful poet of Altrive Lake; and Hogg, whose heart overflowed with hospitality, entertained them at his board, and not only squandered upon them his hard- won resources, but, what was more valuable, his time also. It is not wonderful, therefore, that when his lease of Mount Benger had expired, he found himself, at the age of sixty, not a sixpence richer than when he began the world. One resource was still in prospect. It was now the fashion to bring out the well-established works of our popular authors in reprints of monthly volumes, by which plan the gleaning was often more abundant than the original harvest; and Hogg resolved to avail himself, like others, of such a promising opportunity. For this purpose he entered into negotiation with a London publisher, to bring out a selection of his prose productions in volumes every two months, under the title of "Altrive Tales;" and, to perfect the engagement, he resolved to repair in person to the metropolis. This he did on the 1st of January, 1832, when, for the first and last time in his life, he who had appeared to the English admirers of the "Queen's Wake" as a poetical myth, and not an uneducated shepherd of real flesh and blood, presented himself, in all his rustic simplicity and reality, to the wondering coteries of London. It is needless to add how he was welcomed and feted. He was not only a lion, but such a lion as the whole kingdom of Cockaigne had never been privileged to witness; and they could not sufficiently admire the whole man, combining, as he did, such warmth of heart and richness of thought, with such genuine unvarnished simplicity of speech, appearance, and bearing. He was a real shepherd after all and he was the shepherd. But in spite of all this flattery and welcome with which he was received by wonder-loving London during a three months' stay, his ill luck, which abode with him to the last, made his coming a mere holiday visit, and nothing more. As soon as the first volume of the "Altrive Tales" appeared, the publisher failed, and the work was stopped, so that, with hopes utterly blighted in a matter upon which he had placed so much reliance, he fell back upon the precarious resource of magazine writing. Two years after he published a volume of Lay Sermons, or rather Essays, which issued from a London press, but brought him slender remuneration. A third attempt, which he made the following year (1835), was the publication of the "Montrose Tales," in three volumes. This was also published by the same luckless bookseller in whose hands the "Altrive Tales" had become bankrupt; hut a fresh insolvency, only eight months after the new work had appeared, sent the author's hopes of profit to the winds. Certainly none but a genuine child of nature to the last one holding to the very end of his days the confiding faith of infancy and the unexperienced simplicity of boyhood, in spite of all that had come and gone could have so failed, and failed continually! But such was Hogg; and if before a bargain he neither doubted nor suspected, so, after its failure, he neither desponded nor despaired. He was always elate with cheerfulness and hope, and ready for new adventure.

But the most elastic bow, however enduring, must finally yield; and Hogg, who had now reached his sixty-fourth year, and enjoyed such a state of robust health, activity, and vigour as falls to the lot of few poets, combined with a