Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/427

 JAMES HOGG 4I I with chivalrous and romantic traditions, with ballads and songs of rich geniality, beauty, and humour — the latter were yet more brutally starved in mind and spirit than in body, with a poaching exploit for their highest romance of daring. The contrast came out conspicuously in their merry-meetings : those of the former merry indeed, with sweet song and swift dance; those of the latter a heavy, beery muddlement, whose dance was an uncouth lurching shuffle, whose song was the dreariest of long-drawn tuneless doggerel. Poor " ill-used race of men that till the soil ! " well might one of them declare at their Conference recently, " Mr. Arch has taught us more in five years than the parsons did in five hundred." Hogg, with his brother, the two Laidlaws, and a few others, " formed themselves into a sort of literary society, which met periodically, at one or other of the houses of its members, where each read an essay on a subject previously given out ; and after that, every essay was minutely investigated and criticised." In his interesting paper on " Storms," full-charged with personal experience, he tells us that one of these meetings was fixed for Friday, the 23rd January, 1794, and to be held at Entertrony, a wild and remote shieling at the very source of the Ettrick. " I had the honour of being named as preses — so, leaving the charge of my flock with my master, off I set from Blackhouse, on Thursday, a very ill day, with a flaming bombastical essay in my pocket, and my tongue trained to many wise and profound remarks, to attend this extraordinary meeting ; though the place lay at the distance of twenty miles, over the wildest hills in the kingdom. I remained that night