have, of course, been carefully hoarded up, or destroyed in many cases, and are now rarely met with. The one of which I am the lucky possessor contains, besides other relevant matter, a MS. key to the characters in the handwriting of the great James Watt, to whom the magazine and the information would doubtless be furnished by some of his old literary associates in the North.
One of the victims who supposed himself injured, proceeded against Blackwood, and recovered damages to a considerable amount; numerous pamphlets and broadsides appeared on both sides, all of which are now of the utmost rarity. William Hone cited the article, as a religious parody, in his celebrated and successful defence from the charge of "printing and publishing a certain impious, profane and scandalous libel on that part of our Church-service called the Catechism, with intent to excite impiety and irreligion in the minds of his majesty's liege subjects, to ridicule and scandalize the Christian religion, and to bring into contempt the Catechism," before Mr. Justice Abbott, in Guildhall, Dec. 18th, 1817,—stating that it was "written with a great deal of ability," and that it was based on a certain chapter of Ezekiel.[1] Space does not allow me to say more on the subject, and I must content myself with referring those among my readers who may desire to see this once celebrated satire to the Noctes Ambrosianæ, vol. iv., where, with the elision of a few verses, it is reprinted; and to articles in Notes and Queries, third series, vol. v. pp. 314, 317; and vol vii. p. 469.
The most concise certainly, and perhaps not the least correct of the criticisms upon Hogg is that pronounced in the Noctes upon one of his novels, The Three Perils of Man, which is said to be "like all his things, a mixture of the admirable, the execrable and the tolerable." The critic adds, "Hogg is a true genius in his own style—one of the most wonderful creatures in the world, taking all things together." Perhaps it is to his beautiful poem, Kilmeny, that I should point as the best specimen of his peculiar power. This is an episode in the larger poem. The Queen's Wake, and purports to be a narrative of the reminiscences of a child who has been spirited away in her sinless purity, into fairy-land, and after a time permitted to return to the habits and duties of mundane life. In this beautiful piece the genius of Hogg is in its proper element. The story is told in a spontaneous strain of the most exquisite imaginative poetry, so vaguely picturesque in its descriptions, so abstract and ideal in its imagery, so resonant with tones which are not of this world, that the fancy is taken captive with its wild, unearthly charm.
Hogg is one of the chief compotators of the Noctes. Till he got to Edinburgh, he had led a very temperate life; but he was evidently to the manner born, and took to his grog like a poet. One of his first publishers, Jamie Robertson, he describes happily as "a kind-hearted, confused body, who loved a joke and a dram." The two worthies met each day to consult about the publication, and uniformly proceeded to "a dark house in the Cowgate," where they drank with the printers till Hogg's brain was so dizzy, that on leaving, he could hardly walk. Long before this, however, he records how, when the two Cunninghams, father and son, had sought him out when herding his master's ewes on a Nithsdale hill, the elder produced a "strong bottle," with which they retired into the lonely bothy, and talked, and boozed, far into the afternoon. It was
- ↑ First Trial of William Hone, page 18.
