Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

SCOTT AND HOGG. 249
"Perhaps my last of Chiefswood," he adds sadly at
the end of this letter, which is dated 22nd September
1831. It is at least the last of the Blackwood letters
dated from that spot so full of memories, the joyful
little house which "the Sheriff" had been wont to
rouse from its morning quiet by the happy barks and
gambols of his careering dogs, and his own kind shout
of good morrow. Now the light was darkened, and
the cheerful visitor came no more.
And here is the brief and dignified record of what
might have been a bitter quarrel. Something had
been said in the ' Quarterly ' concerning Hogg which
had seemed to Wilson and Blackwood a censure upon
the Professor and the Magazine ; while Wilson on his
side had given utterance, in the casual incidental way
in which he often delivered the most savage blows,
to some unpardonable strictures upon Scott, specially
ungracious at the moment. Lockhart makes his own
apology and explanation very generously, while in-
dicating the much harsher offence on the other side :
I can't let your letter go without expressing my concern that
what was said in the ' Q. E.' should have given either you or
the Professor any real uneasiness. I was working at the time
for Hogg with the wigs of the Eoyal Society of Literature, and
finding the dramatic ^ character in my way at every turn, wrote
that sentence simply, and merely in reference 'to his interests,
and without the least wish to escape from any share of the
blame. I described Hogg as I saw him a few days before I
left Scotland in October, at Altrive, wet, weary, and melancholy.
Before the review appeared he, to be sure, had contrived to
1 No doubt the introduction of the Shepherd in the ' Noctes,' where
so many things were put into his mouth which, as he bitterly complains,
he never said, though at the same time it covered him with robes of poetic
glory to which he had as little right.
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