od uncovered at the
grave after the rest of the company had retired, and consecrated, by his
tears, the green sod of his friend's last resting-place. With the
exception of Burns and Sir Walter Scott, never did Scottish bard receive
more elegies or tributes to his memory. He had had some variance with
Wordsworth; but this venerable poet, forgetting the past, became the
first to lament his departure. The following verses from his pen
appeared in the _Athenaeum_ of the 12th of December:--

"When first descending from the moorlands,
I saw the stream of Yarrow glide,
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

"When last along its banks I wander'd,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathway,
My steps the Border Minstrel led.

"The mighty minstrel breathes no longer,
'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death, upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes.

* * * * *

"No more of old romantic sorrows,
For slaughter'd youth or love-lorn maid,
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,
And Ettrick mourns with her their Shepherd dead!"

Within two bow-shots of the place where lately stood the cottage of his
birth, the remains of James Hogg are interred in the churchyard of
Ettrick. At the grave a plain tombstone to his memory has been erected
by his widow. "When the dark clouds of winter," writes Mr Scott Riddell,
"pass away from the crest of Ettrick-pen, and the summits of the
nearer-lying mountains, which surround the scene of his repose, and the
yellow gowan opens its bosom by the banks of the mountain stream, to
welcome the lights and shadows of the spring returning over the land,
many are the wild daisies which adorn the turf that covers the remains
of THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. And a verse of one of the songs of his early
days, bright and blissful as they were, is thus strikingly verified,
when he says--

'Flow, my Ettrick! it was thee
Into my life that first did drop me;
Thee I 'll sing, and when I dee,
Thou wilt lend a sod to hap me.
Pausing swains will say, and weep,
Here our Shepherd lies asleep.'"

As formerly described, Hogg was, in youth, particularly good-looking and
well-formed. A severe illness somewhat changed the form of his features.
His countenance[43] presented the peculiarity of a straight