The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Social Life of the Borders.
more necessary from the misconception of his character
contained in the once celebrated " Noctes x-\mbrosian?e,"
though I think the wit of the Noctes now seems vapid, and
their fine writing somewhat stilted. In fact, reading these
works now one is inclined to wonder they left the impres-
sion they did. It is difficult, indeed, to characterise the
audacity with which Hogg was treated, and it was unjustifi-
able in men like Lockhart and Wilson so to treat him,
whate\cr Hogg's conduct may have been, or however his
vanity may have shown itself They were his friends, and
he was attached to them with all the warmth of his irregular
and impulsi\-e nature, and they repaid him by making
him a source of amusement to the public. To Lockhart,
with his dandyism and his cynical nature, we can under-
stand how the somewhat untutored manners of Hogg were
so objectionable, but he designated him The Hogg, which
the Shepherd retaliated by describing him as " a mis-
chievous Oxford Puppy," though at the same time he tells
us, with his usual candour, how he dreaded Lockhart's eye,
whilst he m}-stified him about the articles in Blackivood,
regarding the authorship of which Hogg had been too
curious, and, in despair, he adds, " that before I left Edin-
burgh, when visiting there, I was accounted the greatest liar
in it except one!' The " Noctes Ambrosianae" were, indeed,
a poisoned barb to Hogg, whatever the biographer of the
principal authors may say about him enjoying the fun.
Writing to Sir Walter Scott, he says— " I have a written
promise from dated 19 months back, most solemnly
given, that m}^ name should not be mentioned in his
Magazine without my own consent. Yet you see how it is
kept, and how again I am misrepresented to the world. I
am neither a drunkard nor an idiot, nor a monster of
nature. Nor am I so imbecile as never to have written a
word of grammar in my life. I do not mind so much on
my own account, but there are others' feelings now that I
am bound to regard above my own, where the wounds