—with which, perhaps, insufficient counterpoise, I must leave the vexed question for the consideration of my readers.
Maginn had a high opinion of the Ettrick Shepherd. Of him, he said, "In his simplicity consisted his excellence. Had he attempted anything great he would have made himself ridiculous. He was every inch a man; full of fun and feeling, without the heaviness of Scott."
It is pleasing to know that this artless, genuine child of Nature saw no reason to be discontented, in retrospect, with the part it had been allotted him to play on this world's stage. "One may think," said he, on writing his Memoir, in 1832, "that I must have worn out a life of misery and wretchedness; but the case has been quite the reverse. I never knew either man or woman who has been so uniformly happy as I have been; which has been partly owing to a good constitution, and partly from the conviction that a heavenly gift, conferring the powers of immortal song, was inherent in my soul. Indeed, so uniformly smooth and happy has my married life been, that, on a retrospect, I cannot distinguish one part from another, save by some remarkably good days of fishing, shooting and curling on the ice." The autobiographical sketch,—a piece of inimitable artlessness and egotism,—from which I have transcribed the foregoing passage, was prefixed by Hogg to "vol, i."—it was the only one published—of a projected selection of "the author's most approved writings," which was to be completed in twelve volumes, appearing on alternate months, and "printed uniformly with the Waverley Novels." The title was Altrive Tales; collected among the Peasantry of Scotland and from Foreign Adventurers. By the Ettrick Shepherd. With Illustrations by George Cruikshank (London, James Cochrane and Co., Pall Mall, 1832, 8vo). Some of the Tales had appeared before, and some were to be original; and the assemblage was made, "not as an ostentatious display," as the Shepherd declares in his prospectus, "but as an Inheritance to his Children, and a Legacy to his Country." The design, I presume, did not appear to promise success; it was never carried out, as I have stated, and three years later, at his farm at Altrive, on Nov. 21, 1835,—
"Death upon the braes of Yarrow,
Closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes,"—
and James Hogg departed from the life in which he had found so much innocent enjoyment. His "Poetical Works," with his life by Professor Wilson, were published by Blackie, in 1850-2, 5 vols. 12mo, and there is an account of him in Chamber's Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts, No. 123. There is an earlier gathering of his smaller poetical pieces, a charming little volume for the pocket, now scarce enough, entitled. Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd. Now first collected. (Blackwood, Edinburgh, and Cadell, London, 1831, small 8vo.) Each ballad is introduced to the reader by a short prose note, written in a tone of the most delicious and artless vanity. One, "The Minstrel Boy," he says, "was written as a per contra to Mr. Moore's song to the same air; but either he, or his publishers, or both, set up their birses, and caused it, and a great many more to be cancelled,—the most ridiculous of all things in my opinion, I ever knew. It was manifestly because they saw mine were the best." Of another, "The Maid of the Sea," he says, that he was forced by Moore to cancel it also, "for nothing that I know of, but because it
