“The enclosed Bank of England Note, value twenty pounds, is sent for Hogg, the poet, by his very true friend,

“I received your’s, containing the valuable present, with no little astonishment; indeed ‘I could hardly believe my ain een,’ as we say, when I opened it. I now see what hitherto I have sparingly believed, that it is not those who

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make the most glowing expressions of esteem and admiration, &c, that are most to be depended on. I was three days with Sir W. Scott, at Abbotsford, last month, and among the first things he inquired was, if I had written to you, and of your answer. I told him your’s was a friendly letter, but cherished no hopes whatever. He said he was sorry for that, for whatever you took by the end you generally made a point of carrying, and he heard there was, or soon to be, a pecuniary vacancy, and no more passed. I am yet at a loss whether it is the same society which we corresponded about, or another one, to whom I am indebted for this most timely and welcome relief, but, at all events, I am sure you were the moving spring of the grateful act. I shall speak of it to no man save Sir W. Scott, and for your credit I cannot but mention it to him. My circumstances are, at present, such that, in spite of the spirit of independence natural to a Scotsman, I gladly accept of the proffered boon, although I would fain hope only as a loan. And after the deep interest you have taken in me, it is proper you should know that it is not my own family concerns that have straitened me most, but those of others; the whole weight of three families, with their expenses, having fallen on me, and just at a time when both farming and literature were standing with their backs at the wa’, and my means quite inadequate to the charge. For four of these individuals I expect remuneration in whole or in part, at some future period, but at present it is wanting. My father-in-law is removed from this stage of existence since I wrote you,—an excellent old man, reduced from great affluence to a total dependence on me. My frail mother-in-law, with her attendants, are now incorporated with our own family, so that, in that respect too, my expenses will be greatly shortened, and upon the whole I

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hope to get over my present difficulties. I have a good many MSS. lying by me, for which I can get no conditions for the present whatever, and the whole of my works (save the last poem) are, I believe, out of print. If there are any you could advise me to republish, with a little furbishing up, I should be very glad of your advice. I have been thinking of two neat vols, of ‘The Shepherd’s Callander,’ never yet published by itself, but have tried nobody. If you were to announce it, it might give it some éclat. But I am wearying you, my dear sir, with selfish considerations, for I am really so proud at finding that I have a real and sterling literary friend which to my fondest estimations has hitherto proved rather equivocal, that I hardly know what I am saying. Be so kind as return my grateful thanks to the benevolent society that sent me this timely aid, and not mine only, but those of the aged and infirm, as well as the young and the destitute, and believe me ever,

“As an editor of a paper stil’d the ‘Sun,’ I would have you confined to a word called truth, and not tell the public that the present harvest is prosperous, which you have followed up thick and thin. No doubt but you are paid for your rascally information to the public; and were I to be with you I would tell you the difference. Come here and see, you villain, to insert such a lie.

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“I have finished my ‘Last Saxon,’ and probably my last poem. It is sent to you for your candid perusal. If it should awaken any interest in the mind of the most accurate and most unprejudiced critic of the age, I shall be indeed gratified. What is said in the preface, I think, will be sufficient to show my design. The introductory canto alludes to the various foreign subjects for poetry, whilst our history is comparatively neglected; and this canto contains also the principal characters, as in shadowy view, presented at the funeral of Harold.

“Some allowance must be made for the difficulty of sustaining his dignity in the situation described, but I hope I have not entirely failed. The circumstances and character of Editha are new, I believe, to English poetry, though it is singular that such a fact as her finding the body of Harold, and this interesting portion of our history, should never have found a poet. I wish it had found one more able than

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myself; but whether your critical opinion, after a candid perusal, be favourable or not,

“I have just read the gratifying support your eloquent pen has given to my ‘Last Saxon,’ and I cannot delay cordially thanking you. I am the more gratified as you have pointed out so clearly, what appeared to me obvious, that the introduction of the ‘Witches’ was not needless, but in strict consonance with the cast and character given to William, and with the storms and earthquake, &c, as well as for poetical light and shade, which beings of this description give to poetical narrative. One of the critical school of Etourdi asked me, Cui inserviunt?

“Your observations on the divided interest in the last book, are most accurate and judicious. If I have a second edition, which I think your account sufficient to promise, this will be obviated,—by detaching Marcus from that scene entirely, and if I had had the advantage of consulting any one so judicious, or indeed had myself considered it, I could not only have prevented this conflict of sympathies, in this place, but have given additional effect to the narrative, by letting Marcus stay, where history places him,

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in a convent at Lewes, making the brothers and sisters pass that way to see the plain of battle, making there the discovery of their brother,—reserving the discovery of Editha for the place where it stands—Marcus chiefly distracts the interest. When I read your objections, the obvious beauty, without going from historical truth, I might have introduced, struck me so forcibly that I almost exclaimed

“Oh! te Bowleane, cerebri!”

How could I miss it?

“With respect to the line you marked as not musical, it certainly was made as it stands designedly; a more obvious melody would be

“Toiling, from corse to corse, they trod in blood.”

But would this express the action, the toil, the difficulty? I dissent in this instance only from your remarks, but with hesitation, and indeed when you consider the numerous examples of this kind of verse, you will see, I think, the propriety of it, and if not of its individual, of its relative harmony.

“The part which I myself considered the most effective in the poem, was the introduction of William in the abbey,

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and his discovery. I had never heard a syllable of the French poem on the subject.

“I am now in the corner

“Mihi me reddentis agel—” (broken off by the seal).

and all my village girls and boys in their best cloaks, are greeting our return.* Could I, can I, shall I, persuade you and Croly, and my friend Watts, to come down for a week? Nares is coming the beginning of July. Do pray turn it in your thoughts, and believe me,

“Except, when I wrote a poem anonymously, I have never had a warm word from any critic in my life, but my little boat, somehow or other, has got on, in defiance of cockney-taste or cockney-animosity, and the guarded silence of the Duo fulmina, the ‘Quarterly, and Edinburgh.’ This I attribute to the steadiness with which I hope I have steered between the Scylla and Charybdis of modern taste, false simplicity, and affected tawdriness of ornament, with eye never removed from the models of the Greek έπιγραμματα, which I first proposed to myself as the only examples. I am prepared for something vindictive in the ‘Quarterly,’ of which D’Israeli of the ‘golden-silvery-diamond-eye’ firing ‘silver-circled-silver-shining’ style is the

* Mr. and Mrs. Bowles educated and clothed nearly all the poorer class of children in the parish of Bremhill. It was a most gratifying sight to see them fêted on the lawn in front of the beautiful mansion on a fine summer day. At a very short distance the Marchioness of Lansdowne was earnestly fulfilling a similar charity for the children around Bowood; and Tom Moore, at Sloperton, between the two, thus had visions of a more bountiful and better world than he had painted in his biting satires.—W. J.

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Coryphœus: I hope, however, the editor will be above this revenge.”

“I suspect you of Jesuitism, enough to forge at least a date; and that, like Bonaparte and his decrees, you manufactured a 7th of January to suit your own purposes. Take this upon your own conscience; but upon mine, the gentlest oath that can be sworn in a cold climate, I believe you to be among the worst depositaries of correspondence to be found anywhere, from this to Berwick, or forward and upward to Inverness. You absolutely kept some of my epistles—that is, epistles to me—a month, and have afflicted some of my she-friends with all the horrors of being forgotten by me. May I trust you again? I was actually beginning to have my fears for yourself; and as a typhus fever, or a St. Vitus’s dance, might seize upon a man of genius, and six feet altitude, as well as upon the diminutives of this world, I did not know but I might have been called on to write your epitaph. However, let me intreat you to sin no more on this subject, and, in consideration of your reform, I shall trouble you with sundry commissions in future. Thank you for your arrangements with the flageolet-maker—bring it with you; but don’t stir till the wind has been steadily fair for some time. You may come in twelve hours. You may be kicked about, starved

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and sickened to within an hour or two of giving up the ghost by setting off, as I did, whether the wind would or not. You traitor!—this I use merely in tenderness—you say nothing about the poem which I must have done, but must see while it is doing in proofs. Holland is now in its glory; it has got new importation of tobacco, and a new fall of snow. They both have the effect of blinding me, and I at this instant write to you almost with one eye relieving the other. But the landscape, with all its flatness, is bright; the sun, to my astonishment and adoration, perpetually brilliant—a grand orb of fire and gold. The frost is severe; but exercise, clear air, and a kind of scorn of the Hollanders, who are all wrapped up to the snouts, like porcupines, in thick furs, make me never care about the cold while I can move. After all, spring is the finest time for movement here, as everywhere else; but spring here is like the people—slow, sulky, and takes a long time to consider about what might be better done at once, and what must be done, in some way or other, at last. And yet to think of having, in such a climate, drawing-rooms built without a chimney! This is my unhappy case at this moment. I am promised a chimney, made on the best authorities, with a grate with bars, and contrivance for letting the blaze be seen; but while the frost lasts, the architect cannot work, and in the meantime I am forced to eat, drink, dress myself—nay, even sleep in my bed-chamber. I am glad of the recruits coming, and request you to give my best respects to the Accouchée, or, as it is phrased in the classical tongue of this country, ‘De Kramm Frow.’ Apropos of Mr. F., let my letters lie open, and let him read them if he can; but I wish his powers were a little more extensive. Your enclosure (i.e., mine) has just cost me six shillings, English.”