ie for twae
o' the police, and just gie'd the men ower to their chairge, and I
thocht I wad come and ask you what I should do....' He had already
settled for himself the question whether he was to fight or not,
and all that he had to do was to go to the Police Office and tell
the charge he had to bring against the two Glasgow gentlemen....
The Glaswegians were greatly too many for him [in Court].... They
returned in all triumph and glory, and Hogg took the wings of the
morning and fled to his cottage at Altrive, not deeming himself
altogether safe in the streets of Edinburgh! Now, although I do not
hold valour to be an essential article in the composition of a man
like Hogg, yet I heartily wish he could have prevailed on himself
to swagger a little.... But considering his failure in the field
and the Sheriff Office, I am afraid we must apply to Hogg the
apology which is made for Waller by his biographer: 'Let us not
condemn him with untempered severity because he was not such a
prodigy as the world has seldom seen--because his character
included not the poet, the orator, and the hero.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[32] James Byers, 1733-1817.

[33] Anne Scott of Harden, afterwards wife of Lord Jerviswoode, and
Elizabeth of Colonel Charles Wyndham.

[34] James Hope, W.S., Scott's school-fellow, died in Edinburgh 14th
November 1842.

[35] _Greville_, vol. i. pp. 110-113.

[36] Sir W. Rae, who was Lord Advocate from 1819 to 1830.

[37] See letter to Duke of Buccleuch on James Hogg at p. 40.

[38] No. 10 Walker Street.

[39] Scott's unwearied interest in James Hogg, despite the waywardness
of this imaginative genius, is one of the most beautiful traits in his
character. Readers of Mr. Lockhart's _Life_, do not require to be
reminded of the active part he took in promoting the welfare of the
"Ettrick Shepherd" on many occasions, from the outset of their
acquaintance in 1801 until the end of his life.

Hogg was a strange compound of boisterous roughness and refinement in
expression, and these odd contrasts surprised strangers such as Moore
and Ticknor. The former was shocked, and the latter said his
conversation was a perpetual contradiction to the exquisite delicacy of
_Kilmeny_.

The critics of the day, headed by Professor Wilson, declared he was
Burns's rival as a song-writer, and his superior in anything relating to
external nature! indee