The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

2i6 Ihe Highland Monthly.
THE SOCIAL LIFE AND LITERATURE
OF THE BORDERS.
SOME
By Dr AITKEN.
few months after the death of Burns, one of those
half-witted lads, who lived by moving from farm to
farm, and acted as " the special correspondent" of the period,
carrying, as they did, the news from glen to glen, found a
shepherd lad lying on the hillside, tending his sheep, with
somewhat rude writing materials before him. This was
James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. In the course of their
conversation, the wanderer—like those of his class, never in
a hurry—repeated to the shepherd, " Tarn O'Shanter ;" and
the vivacity, the realism, the power of the poem, so struck
Hogg that he determined his every effort should be turned
to filling the place of the man whose power affected him so
much. From that moment appears to have come the
ambition, expressed by him in a letter addressed to his great
friend and constant adviser, Mr Laidlaw, eleven years after-
wards. " I am even persuaded," he wrote, " we will see a
monument ; may God help me, I'll not see it, but that you
will see it—a monument erected to my memory in Ettrick,
as high as you or me." Of the struggles Hogg had to
overcome before he obtained the position he aspired to, it is
impossible to speak in detail ; but few have realised more
fully than he the truth of the lines, written by another
Scottish poet, now almost forgotten
" Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar
Ah, who can tell how many a soul sublime
Has waged with Fortune an eternal war !"
—
!