Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/429

 JAMES HOGG 413 to tell the truth, though I am ashamed to acknowledge it, I suspected that the allegation might be too true." There was a real ferment in the district for a time, and it is said that legal proceedings were meditated and attempted against the unhallowed evocators, the cause of such stupendous disasters. It may be mentioned here that in 1793 he had a bit of travel which considerably influenced him, having gone with a flock of his master's sheep to Strathfillan, in Perthshire, and viewed the wild grandeur of the mountains and glens of the West Highlands. Here is another bit of peasant Ufe worth recording; as Mr. Thomson says, " It was the third Eclogue of Virgil starting into life among the braes of Ettrick — it was Menalcas, Damoetus, and Palaemon preparing to pipe over again, with the stake of a kid against a bicker of beech-wood!" It had better be given in Hogg's own words: "In the spring of 1798 [Mr. Thomson makes it 1796], as Alexander Laidlaw, my brother William, and myself were resting on the side of a hill above Ettrick Church, I happened to drop some hints of my superior talents in poetry. William said that as to putting words into rhyme it was a thing he never could do to any sense ; but that if I liked to enter the lists with him in blank verse, he would take me up for any bet I pleased. Laidlaw declared he would venture likewise. This being settled, and the judges named, I accepted the chal- lenge ; but a dispute arising respecting the subject, we were obliged to resort to the following mode of decision. Ten subjects having been named, the lots were cast, and that which fell to be elucidated by our matchless pens was the stars ! — things which we knew