Throughout the year Hogg had been in weak health, and before the failure of his publisher took place he died, 21 Nov. 1835, and was buried near his birthplace in Ettrick churchyard. His widow received a royal pension in 1853, and on 28 June 1860 a substantial monument to the Ettrick Shepherd was inaugurated, on the slope behind Tibbie Shiels's retreat, and overlooking St. Mary's Lake and the Loch o' the Lowes.
Hogg deserved the approbation he received from his distinguished compeers. Scott probably understood him best, and invariably advised him well, receiving him heartily after a period of alienation owing to the ‘Poetic Mirror,’ and acting as peacemaker when Hogg became exasperated with Blackwood and the magazine. Wilson had a real and deep affection for the Ettrick Shepherd, as the idealism of the ‘Noctes’ shows, and it is to be regretted that he did not write Hogg's biography, as at one time he intended. Southey's honest outspoken criticism and commendation were as heartily received by Hogg as they were given, and Wordsworth's memorial tribute strikes a true note of appreciation in crediting him with a ‘mighty minstrelsy.’ The spontaneity, freshness, and energy of Hogg's verse are readily apparent. Certain of his lyrics, such as ‘When the Kye comes Hame,’ ‘Auld Joe Nicholson's Nanny,’ ‘Flora Macdonald's Farewell,’ and those on Jacobite themes, come as readily to the Scottish peasantry as the songs of Burns. ‘The Queen's Wake’ is remarkable for its descriptive excellence and imaginative setting. The other poems, and the prose tales, especially those bearing on the people and the superstitions of the Scottish border land, are less known than they deserve.
A water-colour sketch of Hogg by S. P. Denning is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
[Hogg's Autobiography; Lockhart's Life of Scott, passim; Memoir prefixed to Blackie's edition of Hogg's Works, 2 vols., 1865, by Rev. Thomas Thomson; Mrs. Garden's Memorials of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd; Mrs. Gordon's Christopher North, i. 197, ii. 215–23; Ferrier's preface to Noctes Ambrosianæ and various notes; Professor Veitch's History and Poetry of the Scottish Border and Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry, ii. 229–45; Principal Shairp's Sketches in History and Poetry; Dr. S. Smiles's Life of John Murray, 1891, where much of Hogg's correspondence with Murray is printed; George Saintsbury's Essays, 1890.]
HOGG, JAMES (1806–1888), publisher, son of James Hogg, was born near Edinburgh on 26 March 1806, and educated under the Rev. Thomas Sheriff, who became minister of Fala, in the presbytery of Dalkeith, in 1828, and died in 1836. On 24 Aug. 1818 Hogg was bound apprentice to James Muirhead, printer, Edinburgh. He subsequently entered the book house attached to the ‘Caledonian Mercury,’ where the printing of the seventh edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ had been commenced in 1827, and became reader on the ‘Caledonian Mercury.’ In 1837 he commenced business on his own account as a printer and publisher in Edinburgh. The first publication which bears his imprint is ‘The Honest Waterman,’ a small tract brought out in 1837. On 1 March 1845 appeared the first number of ‘Hogg's Weekly Instructor,’ an unsectarian periodical of promise. In 1849 the title was changed to the ‘Instructor;’ later on it was known as ‘Titan.’ The last number is dated December 1859, and the entire work is comprised in twenty-nine volumes. Hogg was his own editor, being in the later part assisted by his eldest son, James. He also published the principal works of George Gilfillan [q. v.] In 1849 he made the acquaintance of Thomas de Quincey. To the ‘Weekly Instructor’ De Quincey contributed his ‘Autobiographic Sketches’ and other papers, and then agreed with Hogg to bring out his ‘Collected Works’ [see under De Quincey, Thomas]. In 1858 Hogg's printing office was discontinued, and in the autumn of that year his sons John and James, who had been taken into partnership, established a branch publishing office in London, whither Hogg afterwards removed the whole business. Besides other works, including the ‘Churchman's Family Magazine,’ the firm now published several series of successful juvenile books, and the periodical entitled ‘London Society,’ which was projected by James Hogg, jun., in February 1862, and attained at one time a circulation of twenty-five thousand monthly. The firm of James Hogg & Sons was dissolved in July 1867. Hogg died at the residence of his son John, The Acacia, Crescent Road, St. John's, Kent, on 14 March 1888. He married, 13 Nov. 1832, Helen Hutchison (1803–1890) of Hutchiestown Farm, near Dunblane.
[Bookseller, 7 April 1888, p. 363; Nicoll's Landmarks of English Literature, 1883, pp. 454–5; H. A. Page's (i.e. A. H. Japp's) Thomas de Quincey's Life, 1877, i. 396, ii. 1–33, 339; information from John Hogg, esq.]
HOGG, Sir JAMES MACNAGHTEN McGAREL, first Lord Magheramorne (1823–1890), eldest son of Sir James Weir Hogg [q. v.], was born at Calcutta 3 May 1823. He was educated at Eton. In May 1842 he matriculated at Christ Church, but left Oxford in 1843 to join the 1st life--
