of the day, and his visits to England and the Continent, important though they were to himself, it is unnecessary to speak in a short biographical sketch. He died at Glasgow, on the 10th of June, 1846, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.
HOGG, James.—This delightful poet of nature's own rearing, who, of all our national bards under similar circumstances, ranks nearest to Burns, was born in Ettrick Forest, on the 25th of January, 1772. Whence he derived his most unpoetical of names it is not easy to determine, unless we are to suppose that it was the name of some honoured follower of the Conqueror, subsequently fattened into its present form by the rich fruits of the conquest, or finally by a profitable emigration into Scotland in the days, it may be, of Malcolm Canmore. But upon this dangerous question we have no particular wish to enter. At all events, we know that James Hogg was fully sensible of this grunting incongruity in connection with the tuneful avocation of minstrel, and therefore chose for himself the name of the Ettrick Shepherd as the more fitting appellative. Whatever may have been the good fortune of his earliest ancestors in Scotland, we well know that none of it descended to himself; for his predecessors had been shepherds as far back as he could trace them. His father, who followed the same humble calling, had been so successful in it as to save some money, which he invested in a farming speculation soon after James was born. The young poet, who was the second of four sons, was therefore sent to school, and would probably have received the usual amount of education bestowed upon the children of our Scottish peasantry, had it not been for a reverse of fortune, by which his father was stripped of all his earnings. This happened when James was only six years old ; and he was taken from school in consequence of his parents and their children being "turned out of doors," as he informs us, "without a farthing in the world." After a resting-place had been found, James was obliged to enter into service at the early age of seven. His occupation was to herd a few cows, upon a half-year's wage of a ewe lamb and a pair of new shoes. In this lonely occupation, with nothing but his cows for companions, the imaginative boy could find no better amusement than to run races against time, or rather against himself. For this purpose he was wont to strip like a regular athlete, until his clothes were lost piece by piece, so that he was reduced to primitive nudeness; and it was only by a diligent search of the other servants that the lost articles were found. After a year spent in this kind of servitude, he was sent once more to school. Hitherto his education had ad- vanced so far as reading in the "Shorter Catechism " and the Proverbs of Solomon; but now he was transferred into a higher class, where the Bible itself was the text-book of lessons. He also learned writing, after a fashion, in a large coarse hand, where every letter was nearly an inch in length. A quarter of a year spent in this way completed his education ; all that was afterwards to be done depended upon his own efforts.
Having thus received a more limited tuition than usually happens to the children even of the poorest in our country, Hogg was again obliged to return to the occupation of a cow-herd, the lowest grade of rural employment; and after serving in this capacity for several years, under different masters, he was raised to the more honourable office of a shepherd. But long before he attained this promotion, and while still a mere boy, the first stirrings of the poetical spirit came upon him; and like almost every poet, past, present, and to come, his inspirations were awoke by female beauty, tenderness, and worth. He had already found the being who afterwards was, in all likelihood, the "bonny Kil-
