Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

CHAPTER VII.
THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.
AN INHERENT VANITY—A KIND PATRONESS— " A FREQUENT GUEST AT HIS
grace's table"—AN UNCOMPROMISING CRITIC— "THE TENT "—JAMIE
LAIDLAW'S PRATER FOR COW WAT—AT ABBOTSFORD— LAIDLAW, HOGG,
AND SCOTT—A UNIQUE USE TO MAKE OF A PUBLISHER—WRITING FOR
ANOTHER MAGAZINE—A PRINTER'S FINE FEELINGS—THE MYSTERY OF
THE FIFTY POUNDS—QUARRELS AND RECONCILIATION 'MAGA' BECOMES
A SERIOUS PERIODICAL— A SHEPHERD WITHOUT ANY GUILE— A NEW
WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS—DELTA— " FEMININE PRIBBLE-PRABBLE "—THE
shepherd's HOME—MRS HOGG.
It would be impossible in any record of ' Blackwood
to leave out the Shepherd, who, whatever he might
be in himself, was one of the most characteristic
figures in the group which brought it into being
—
— '
as he also takes a very definite place, in his often
rude and rustic individuality, in that which surrounds
Scott. This is immortality enough, one would think,
for such a man, and extreme and extraordinary pro-
motion ;
but the Shepherd would not have thought so,
who held his head as high as any, and thought himself
badly treated, and was apt to babble about envy and
injury, when the first place was not open to him. In
his mature age Wilson (and indeed Lockhart too, and
the other hands which worked at first on the * Noctes ')