So, in April, 1820, Hogg went to Dumfrieshire, and in the old mansion house of Mousewald Place, where Mr. Phillips, having retired from business, was then residing, was married to his Margaret.

Hogg did not find the pathway to marriage altogether smooth. He was now fifty years of age, and the correspondence shows that this fact gave him frequent misgivings. Suspicion and jealousy were rife from time to time, and once almost culminated in a serious quarrel. True love, however, surmounts such trivial rubs, and, once married, Hogg and his wife settled down to the most happy and mutually dependent of lives.

Almost the first occupation of Mrs. Hogg after her removal to Altrive was to nurse her husband; but his illness at this time was amusing rather than serious, for, at the age of fifty, he was taken down with the measles.

• Page 115.

CHAPTER 6

THE POETIC MIRROR, ETC.

THE removal from Edinburgh to Altrive necessitated a certain expenditure of money in stocking the farm. Hogg was bankrupt at the time, and he prepared The Poetic Mirror in order to make the money needed to stock his new farm. His plan was to issue a volume of poems, each poem written by one of the leading popular poets of the day. Many of them were quick to promise assistance, and Byron originally intended Lyra for The Poetic Mirror; but few of Hogg's brother bards were as quick to redeem as to give their promises, and Scott absolutely refused to have anything to do with the venture.

This refusal was the cause of their only serious quarrel. Hogg counted upon Scott's contribution as equivalent to the success of the volume. Scott refused to contribute because he considered it unwise and unmanly for Hogg to make money out of other people's work. Hogg's hasty temper, however, caused him to imagine that Scott's refusal was mere discourtesy. He wrote Scott an abusive letter and they were quite estranged for several months. Says Hogg:

I could not even endure to see him at a distance, I felt so degraded by the refusal, and I was at that time more disgusted with all mankind than I have ever been before, or have ever been since.

The result of this quarrel is related below in the words of Mr. Thomson.

It must have been about this time that the Ettrick Shepherd became a member of the Right and Wrong Club. The present was still a transition period of Scottish Society, in which much of the wildness and irregularity of the latter part of the eighteenth century continued to linger; even the embers of the Hellfire Club were not yet wholly extinguished; and symposia were frequent among literary characters and men of mark, which only forty years after would have been eschewed by the common people as disreputable. It was not therefore surprising that the social unsuspecting disposition of the Shepherd should involve him in some one of these vortices, and that for a season he should be whirled about in its giddy revolutions. This Right and Wrong Club was established one evening at dinner, and among some choice spirits, tainted with the leaven of the old school, with their entertainer, a young lawyer, afterwards a distinguished barrister, at their head; and their principle of association was, that whatever any of its members should

assert, was to be supported by the whole fraternity, whether right or wrong. The idea was so delightful, that they met next day at Oman's Hotel, to celebrate the formation of the club; they dined at five o'clock, and separated at two in the morning; and such was the hilarity which had prevailed among these mad revellers, most of them men of scholarship and genius, as well as bacchanals, that they agreed to have a daily meeting of the same kind. It is needless to add that such a paroxysm could not be lasting; and during five or six weeks over which these quotidian meetings extended, some of the members drank themselves into derangement, while others rushed headlong into engagements that ended in marriage. As for Hogg, whose head needed little stimulus beyond the poetry that was in it, he was soon laid up by inflammatory fever, which was not abated by their sympathetic visits, often made at two or three o'clock in the morning, after their meeting dissolved, and when they were in such a hazy or mischievous condition, that they generally broke all the knockers and bell-handles in the stair, amidst their search for the right door. Finding that in spite of their attentions their poet laureate did not recover, the Right and Wrong Club held a consultation upon the subject; and as their deliberation was probably at an early hour of the evening, they wisely resolved to discontinue their meetings until he joined them, and should that never happen, never to meet again. By this resolution, to which they stoutly adhered, the club was broken up. It was probably the last monstrosity of the kind by which the past history of Edinburgh is disfigured.

This severe attack of illness, by which the Shepherd was confined three weeks in bed had almost proved fatal, and was only surmounted by the strength of his constitution and the care of a skilful physician. In the meantime, Sir Walter Scott had heard of his illness; and although all intercourse between them had ceased, he never failed to call every day at Messers. Grieve and Scott's to inquire for the patient on his return from his official duties at Parliament House. Nor were these mere calls of ceremony, for one day, taking Mr. Grieve aside, he asked him if Hogg had proper attendance and good medical advice? Mr. Grieve assured him that he had both, and that in the doctor the patient had implicit confidence. "I would fain have called upon him", rejoined Sir Walter, "but I knew not how I would be received. I request, however, that he may have every proper attendance and want for nothing that can contribute to the restoration of his health. And in particular, I have to request that you will let no pecuniary consideration whatever prevent his having the best medical advice in Edinburgh, for I shall see it paid. Poor Hogg! I would not for all that I am worth in the world that anything serious should befall him." Mr. Grieve, as desired kept the secret, so that it was not till some time afterwards that the Shepherd by accident, got information of this interview. He was struck with the kindness of Sir Walter, and afflicted with the thought that he had quarrelled with such a friend, so that he could not rest until he had attempted a reconciliation. The result of this penitent and relenting feeling was the following characteristic letter:

"To Walter Scott, Esq., Castle Street.

"Gabriel Road, February 28, 1815.

"Mr. Scott,-1 think it is great nonsense for two men who are friends at heart, and who ever must be so-indeed it is not in the nature of things that they can be otherwise-should be professed enemies.

"Mr. Grieve and Mr. Laidlaw, who were very severe on me, and to whom I was obliged to show your letter, have long ago convinced me that I mistook part of it, and that it was not me you held in such contempt, but the opinion of the public. The idea that you might mean that (though I still think the reading will bear either construction), has given me much pain; for I knew I answered yours intemporately, and in a mortal rage. I meant to have inclosed yours, and begged of you to return mine, but I cannot find it, and am sure that some one to whom I have been induced to show it has taken it away. However, as my troubles on that subject were never like to wear to an end, I could not longer resist telling you that I am extremely vexed about it. I desire not a renewal of our former intimacy, for haply, after what I have written, your family would not suffer it; but I wish it to be understood that, when we meet by chance, we might shake hands, and speak to one another as old acquaintances, and likewise that we may exchange a letter occasionally, for I find there are many things which I yearn to communicate to you, and the tears rush to my eyes when I consider that I may not.

"If you allow of this, pray let me know; and if you do not, let me know. Indeed, I am anxious to hear from you, for 'as the day of trouble is with me, so shall my strength be.' To be friends, from the teeth forwards is common enough; but it strikes me that there is something still more ludicrous in the reverse of the picture, and so to be enemies:-and why should I be, from the teeth forwards, yours sincerely,

"James Hogg?"

This curious epistle, so indicative of pride struggling with shame in confessing a fault and craving forgiveness, was rightly estimated; and Scott instead of parading a lecture in return, answered by a short note, desiring him to think no more about the matter, and come to breakfast next morning. The pair, so strangely dissimilar, and yet in many points so alike, were united once more, and perhaps their renewed friendship was all the stronger for the interruption. But still, though desired to think no more about it, Hogg could not rest without an explanation of the quarrel, and on the day of that morning, he introduced it, while they walked round St. Andrew Square; but Scott parried the subject. The attempt was renewed by the Shepherd a few days after, in Sir Walter's study; but the latter again eluded it with such dexterity, that Hogg was left in the dark as before, and obliged to conjecture what could be the cause of the other's peremptory refusal of a contribution to The Poetic Mirror. This guess, however, did full honor to the character of Scott. "I knew him too well", he says, "to have the least suspicion that there could be any selfish or unfriendly feeling in the determination which he adopted, and I can account for it in no other way,

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than by supposing that he thought it mean in me to attempt either to acquire gain, or a name, by the efforts of other men; and that it was much more honorable, to use a proverb of his own, 'that every herring should hang by its own head'."

Meantime our attention has been diverted from the cause of the quarrel. Hogg, in looking over the contributions that had been sent in to form part of The Thistle and the Rose, as he first intended to call The Poetic Mirror, found that the contributions were not only few in number but poor in quality. His disappointment was great, but short-lived. His mighty self-conceit supplied him with a happy expedient. He determined to take Scott's suggestion and to let this herring hang by its own head. In an incredibly short space of time he himself wrote all but one or two of the poems that compose the volume. This book is certainly one of the most perfect achievements of the kind in the language. The various poems of which it is composed purport to be written by Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, Hogg, Coleridge, Southey, and Wilson. The reader should not be confused because this production is often compared with the Rejected Addresses. The two volumes are not to be compared. They are altogether different. The Rejected Addresses are parodies; the supposed contributions in The Poetic Mirror are forgeries, and, as such, actually imposed upon readers for a brief interval. A few stanzas are sufficient to illustrate the quality of the imitations.

[Scott]

WAT O' THE CLEUCH

Canto First

Wat o' the Cleuch came down through the dale,
In helmet and hauberk of glistening mail;
Full proudly he came on his berry-black steed,
Caparisoned, belted for warrior deed.

Oh, bold was the bearing, and brisk the career,
And broad was the cuirass, and long was the spear,
And tall was the plume that waved over the brow
Of that dark reckless borderer, Wat o' the Cleuch.

His housing, the buck's hide, of rude massy fold,

Was tasselled and tufted with trappings of gold;

1 Introduction to Hogg's Works, page xxxvi.

2 The Gude Grey Katt, Hogg's imitation of himself, is written in an ancient dialect, difficult to understand. A modernized version of the same, also written by Hogg, is published in Mrs. Garden's Memoir.