Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/443

 paid. Hogg had now a "cosie bield," and, with a little more prudence and a little less simple good-nature, might have had a comfortable livelihood for the rest of his days. Having married an excellent wife in 1820, a young family grew around him, and he extended his farmiing operations by leasing Mount-Benger for nine years, losing more than £2000 on it before he got free. Then his literary engagements and undertakings, though they brought him very considerable sums of money (he reckons £750 in a certain two years, besides small sums in cash), probably cost him much, by distracting his attention from his farms and carrying him frequently to Edinburgh. Last, and worst of all, those profitless pests the idle notoriety-hunters, were devastators not only of his time but also of his substance; for, there being no inn in the neighbourhood, they made his poor cottage, which he had to enlarge, their inn—an inn without charges, abusing his hospitality most damnably, after the manner of their kind. A friend once going to dine with the family, no one else to be present, counted fourteen others feeding there before the day was done. The Shepherd, accompanying a friend one evening, looked back on his home, buzzing with company, and said: "My bit house is e'en now just like a bee-skep, fu' o' happy leevin' creatures—and nae doubt, like a bee-skep, it will hae to cast some day, when it can haud its inhabitants nae langer." To the question of Allan Cunningham, "What is your pen about now, Mr. Hogg?" he answered, "Pen! it might as well be in the goose's wing; I cannot get writing any for the visits of my friends: I'm never a day without some." And if he could not