JAMES HOGG was born near Ettrick, where he spent his early years as a tenant farmer, shepherd, and amateur musician and poet. He published Scottish Pastorals in 1801 and was recruited by Walter Scott to collect ballads for The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Hogg moved to Edinburgh in 1810 to start The Spy magazine, which failed the following year. His epic poem The Queen’s Wake led him to William Blackwood, who would soon launch his Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (later Blackwood’s Magazine). Blackwood’s was the primary engine for Hogg’s literary fame. Hogg contributed over one hundred works in Blackwood’s and appeared as the character of “The Ettrick Shepherd” in the Noctes Ambrosianae; his character was the most popular of the literary figures represented in the series (Richardson 187). Hogg also published numerous poetry collections and novels, most famously The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner in 1824. His 1831 quarrel with Blackwood led him to other publishers; they reconciled shortly before Blackwood’s death in 1834. Hogg died on 21 November 1835.

 

Hogg’s “Epitaphs on Living Characters,” published in the Scots Magazine in June 1810, depicted Francis Jeffrey as “Bonaparte the second . . . The one kept the monarchs of Europe in awe; But this to the genius of Europe gave law.” Jeffrey later reciprocated by writing a complimentary review of Hogg’s The Queen’s Wake in December 1814.

B.W.