At the plough, the poetic genius of his country encountered Burns, and threw her inspiring mantle over him. Among the Southern Highlands, in the pastoral solitudes of Ettrick, nature presented to the perusal of our shepherd one of the most romantic and beautiful pages in her expansive volumethe only volume he could peruse; for, at the age of twentyone, he was unable either to write or read. In haunts "The most remote and inaccessible By shepherds trod," he tended his sheep during all his prime of life, in seclusion and in loneliness. Destitute of learning, with few opportunities of instruction, removed equally from the advantages and incumbrances of literature, in the most poetic region of his own poetic land, he made him friends-of the mountain, which bore him on its majestic summit :-of the deep vale, on whose refreshing verdure his eye delighted to repose, when fatigued with the unclouded azure of the sunny sky at summer noontide :-- of that sky itself, that spread its magnificent canopy above, still immeasurably above him,-however high the mountain on which he stood, although the brow of one were but the other's base, and only to advance were to ascend, in sublime distance far over the utmost elevation of the loftiest hills:-of the clouds that flitted in gorgeous pageantry over "the heavens' blue," ever and anon forming, as it were, a grotesque pavilion, wherein rode some giant spirit, terrible in the blackness of his darkness; or some huge upfolded chariot, drawn by steeds of no mortal breed, and unlike the steeds of earth, wherein haply was borne some unknown god, from one end of the heaven to the other, charged with a mysterious mission to other lands; or battlement, or palacetower, whereabout battle raged, and war deepened in more sombre volumes of enfolding wrath; or other mountains, whose foundations were in the wind, that bore them onward in their unwieldy magnitude; then vanished, as if their fantastic mutations had been only shadowed forth by the capricious fancy, which they mocked with vain shadows and faithless visions. With the spring, hallowed by fäery visit at moonlight, the brook that babbled of their secrets all the livelong day to the hills down which it flowed, the cave in which the breezes gathered, and whistled for sport and company,-he made acquaintance. These were his companions, and he invested them with humanity. They were to him being, and passion, and feeling, and appetite. For them had he affection:yea, for the very mists on the mountain top he felt a love, and gathered them around him as a mantle, as if for him, and to invest him with a regality, they were created, that he might be the monarch of all that region's grandeur, and all that solitude's sublimity. As much as the cotter loves his cottage fire and -cottage hearth, he loved his lonely, bleak, and elevated home, Las much as men love the voice of friends, the earliest words of children, and the warm welcome of wives and mothers, he loved the voice of the elements, to commune with the mountain torrent, and to talk with the mighty, winds in their own language; and, when silence and serenity lay upon the scene, to shout unto the mountain echoes that they might answer him, as men in their companionable hours call on each other for a song or jest,-and this was his merriment. And for his song? He lacked not matter for song to cheer him in his sequestration from the noisy crowd. The Border Wars,-the *proud distinctions of Clanship, ballad, and legend, and tradition,-were familiar to him from earliest childhood. The scattered population of that simple district had store of them. Ballad, legend, and tradition, composed all the learning they possessed, all the lore our poet knew; and in which the bases of his reputation were originally laid, and on which it will be permanently established. These he soon began to imitate and versify. Thus was his intellect exercised and strengthened; and when not engaged with these, he looked abroad upon nature's works, then turned his introverted speculations into himself, and felt the individual majesty of his own spirit, and became conscious of an internal energy mightier than that wherewith the elements were actuated, and which has since sustained him in his course of noble daring and resolve, "That column of true majesty in man.” f It is said, that for many years he seldom beheld the divine countenance of humanity, except upon the Sabbath morning, when he descended from his mountain pasture to renew his weekly allowance of provision. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the earliest productions of the "Ettrick Shepherd" but little incident, and human character, or passion, should be found. If we were not well aware of the necessary activity of *the imagination, and how, in the absence of all external impressions, it directs its view inward into the soul in which it lives, and makes acquaintance with the deeper mysteries of our nature; and of the importance of the advance accomplished in the acquisition of knowledge, when, under such circumstances, man is made to know more of himself, by knowing less of -men, and the ways of men in general; man being but a counterpart of man, and in each man the same natural elements of 5 being and consciousness, and into which simple elements the complications of society are ultimately reduced and resolved: we say, if we were not well aware of all this, and of the extensive scale on which these simple radiments of knowledge may be applied, we might well wonder at the manifestation of so much incident, and character, and passion, as were exhibited in the earlier productions of the mountain bard: the son of silence and of solitude But not "From the cheerful ways of men Cut off;" "For the book of knowledge fair as It is only necessary to mention, to convey to the recollection of the reader, an adequate idea of the astonishing and extensive influence which the poetry of Scott exercised over the public mind. The peculiar manner in which it operated on the mind of such a man James Hogg, may be more easily conceived than described. If the old ballad of Chevy Chase had such an effect upon the polished Sir Philip Sydney, he "never heard the old song of Percie and Douglas that he found not his heart moved more than with a trumpet, though sung by some blind old crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style," what impression must the Border Minstrelsy of Scott, (connected as it was with his earliest and dearest associations, and the feudal feelings of clanship, which the lore wherewith he was exclusively conversant tended to perpetuate), have made on the sensitive imagination of the Shepherd of Ettrick! Oh, an impression much deeper, inexpressibly more intense, than even that "old song," thus "evill apparelled in the dust and cobweb of an uncivill age," would have wrought in the bosom of the gallant Defender of Poetry, "had it been trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindare!" It will be mentioned as an honourable trait in the biography of the Minstrel of the Scottish Border, that, denuding himself of that literary jealousy which is the besetting sin of too many authors by profession, he had sufficient courage by his approbation and support to assist in rearing so powerful a rival in his own peculiar line of poetic art as James Hogg. It was not, however, before the publication of the "Queen's Wake" that the shepherd poet justified the anticipations of his distinguished patron; then, indeed, he proved that the zeal of the patron was as honorable to the decision of his judgment as it had been to the feelings. of his heart. The present poem of Queen Hynde will do more than justify that zeal; it will enable the object of it to stand without support, if indeed he has not been long able to do so, and entitle him to be con sidered as a man of great genius and eminent ability on his own account, beautiful in his own unborrowed plumes, and mighty in his own native energy and power. One would have thought that the peculiar and interesting circumstances under which our poet has grown up and strengthened, would have disarmed even an hireling critic of the most vulgar periodical in existence, of all severity and hyper-criticism, although the publication had been as much beneath par as the present is above it. What then are we to think of the Westminster Review, and the redoubtable writer of the article on James Hogg's "Queen Hynde?" The reviewer has particularly objected to the following passage from Queen Hynde-perhaps the latter part of it may be too applicable to him and his craft to gain his good word for the whole, or any part, of the book in which it unfortunately Occurs: He once was crown'd by virgin's hand The laureate of his native land, First, he debars, without redress, Next, he debars all those who sew He next debars (God save the mark!) Boastful of eyesight, harping on, sottov, BED All those who read and doze by day, t All those must next excluded be He next debars all those who dare, 1 Oft hast thou grieved his heart full sore |