Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/414



brief notice of Wilson and the "Noctes" may be fitly followed by some account of the original of the leading character in those exuberant dialogues. Christopher North himself intended and engaged to write a Memoir of his dear Shepherd, who owed much to him and to whom he also owed much; and this Memoir was even announced as accompanying a certain edition of Hogg's Poems, but it never got written. The Rev. Thomas Thomson tells us that his "Life of the Ettrick Shepherd" has been composed "partly from communications with his family, partly from oral intimations of the few friends who still survive, and partly from his own reminiscences which he appended to several of his publications, and