Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/448

 432 CRITICAL STUDIES a quaintness of humour, and a thousand Uttle touches of absurdity, which afforded him more entertainment, as I have heard him say, than the best comedy that ever set the pit in a roar." The national monument came somewhat earUer than Christopher North, in 1824, predicted : " My beloved shepherd, some half- century hence your effigy will be seen on some bonny green knowe in the forest, with its honest face look- ing across St. Mary's Loch, and up towards the Grey Mare's Tail, while by moonlight all your own fairies will weave a dance round its pedestal." In the " Memoir of Robert Chambers," already cited, an article is reprinted from Chambers's Journal (started in 1832), entitled "The Candlemaker Row Festival," written by him soon after the death of the Shepherd, and giving some pleasant particulars con- cerning him when about sixty years old. I select and condense from this the following : Hogg in his latter days visited Edinburgh for a week or two once or twice a year ; nominally staying at Watson's Selkirk and Peebles Inn, in Candlemaker Row, really dining, supping, and breakfasting with his many friends. These were of all stations, from Scott and the Black- wood men to humble shopkeepers, poor clerks, and poorer poets ; and amongst all the Shepherd was the same plain, good-humoured, unsophisticated man as he had been thirty years when tending his flocks among his native hills. (This agrees not with Lock- hart's implication ; and I would here rather take the word of the printer than of his offended high mighti- ness of the Quarterly.) Feeling uneasy that his residence at Watson's was thus reduced to a mere affair of lodging, he made up for it by gathering on