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cies as these in one's noddle;-but, on the subject of the Chaldee manuscript, let me now speak the truth. You your self, Kit, were learned respecting that article; and myself, Blackwood, and a reverend gentleman of this city, alone know the perpetrator. The unfortunate man is now dead, but delicacy to his friends makes me withhold his name from the public. It was the same person who murdered Begbie! Like Mr Bowles and Ali Pacha, he was a mild man, of unassuming manners, a scholar and a gentleman. It is quite a vulgar error to suppose him a ruffian. He was sensibility itself, and would not hurt a fly. But it was a disease with him "to excite public emotion." Though he had an amiable wife, and a vast family, he never was happy, unless he saw the world gaping like a stuck pig. With respect to his murdering Begbie, as it is called, he knew the poor man well, and had frequently given him both small sums of money, and articles of wearing apparel. But all at once it entered his brain, that, by putting him to death in a sharp, and clever, and mysterious manner, and seeming also to rob him of an immense number of bank notes, the city of Edinburgh would be thrown into a ferment of consternation, and there would be no end of the "public emotion," to use his own constant phrase on occasions of this nature. The scheme succeeded to a miracle. He stabbed Begbie to the heart, robbed the dead body in a moment, and escaped. But he never used a single stiver of the money, and was always kind to the widow of the poor man, who was rather a gainer by her husband's death. I have reason to believe that he ultimately regretted the act; but there can be no doubt that his enjoyment was great for many years, hearing the murder canvassed in his own presence, and the many absurd theories broached on the subject, which he could have overthrown by a single

word.

Mr wrote the Chaldee Manuscript precisely on the same principle on which he murdered Begbie; and he used frequently to be tickled at hearing the author termed an assassin. "Very true, very true," he used to say on such occasions, shrugging his shoulders with delight, "he is an assassin, sir; he murdered Begbie:"-and this sober truth would pass, at the time,

for a mere jeu-d'esprit,-for my friend was a humourist, and was in the habit of saying good things. The Chaldee was the last work, of the kind of which I have been speaking, that he lived to finish. He confessed it and the murder, the day before he died, to the gentleman specified, and was sufficiently penitent; yet, with that inconsistency not unusual with dying men, almost his last words were, (indistinctly mumbled to himself,) "It ought not to have been left out of the other editions."

After this plain statement, Hogg must look extremely foolish. We shall next have him claiming the murder likewise, I suppose; but he is totally incapable of either.

Now for another confounded boun

cer!

'

"From the time I gave up The Spy,' I had been planning with my friends to commence the publication of a Magazine on a new plan; but for several years, we only conversed about the utility of such a work, without doing any thing farther. At length, among others. I chanced to mention it to Mr Thomas Pringle; when I found that he and his friends had a plan in contemplation of the same kind. We agreed to join our efforts, and try to set it a-going; but, as I declined the editorship on account of residing mostly on my farm at a distance from town, it became a puzling question who was the best qualified among our friends for that undertaking. We at length fixed on Mr Gray as the fittest person for a principal department, and I went and mentioned the plan to Mr found, had likewise long been cherishing a Blackwood, who, to my astonishment, I plan of the same kind. He said he knew nothing about Pringle, and always had his eye on me as a principal assistant; but he would not begin the undertaking, until he saw he could do it with effect. Finding him, however, disposed to encourage such a work, Pringle, at my suggestion, made out a plan in writing, with a list of his supporters, and sent it in a letter to me. I enclosed it in another, and sent it to Mr Pringle and he came to an arrangement Blackwood; and not long after that period,

about commencing the work, while I was in the country. Thus I had the honour of being the beginner, and almost sole instigator of that celebrated work, BLACKwooD's MAGAZINE."

Hogg here says, he declined the editorship of Blackwood's Magazine. This happened the same year that he declined the offer of the governor-generalship of India, and a seat in the cabinet. These refusals on his part

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51.

Epistles.
Adam Smith has perhaps been more
fortunate on the whole than the Scots-
man; and while you yourself, Chris-
topher, haye, by the merest accident
in the world, become the best of all
imaginable editors, only think what
must be the feelings of Taylor and
Hessey, as they look on that luckless
ass with the lion's head! It is the
same in the fine arts. What a lucky
dog was Raphael in his Transfigura-
tion; and who does not weep for the
accident that befel Mr Geddes in hand-.
ling the Scottish regalia? In philoso-
phy, by some casualty never to be sa-
tisfactorily explained, the fame of
Lord Bacon has eclipsed that of the
latest of his commentators. We in-
deed live in a strange world; but these
things will be all rectified at last in a
higher state of existence. There, Black-
more very possibly may get Milton to
clean his shoes; Virgil may stand be-
hind the chair of Dr Trapp; and Lon-
ginus gaze with admiration on William
Hazlitt.

But I bridle in my struggling muse in vain,
That longs to launch into a nobler stain.
In page 75, you will observe a list.
of Hogg's works.

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Now, if the man had absolutely written fifteen volumes in seven years, death would be infinitely too good for him; but his enormities, though numerous and great, do not amount nearly to fifteen volumes. The Hunting of Badlewe is reprinted in the Dramatic Tales, therefore, strike off one volume for that. The Pilgrims of the Sun, and Mador of the Moor, may sleep in one bed very easily, and the Sacred Melodies and the Border Gar land may be thrown in to them. This most fortunately cuts off three volumes. The Poetic Mirror must, I fear, be allowed to stand very nearly as a sort of volume in its way. But, pray, did Mr Hogg write all the Jacobite relics r

122

cies as these in one's noddle;-but, on the subject of the Chaldee manuscript, let me now speak the truth. You your self, Kit, were learned respecting that article; and myself, Blackwood, and a reverend gentleman of this city, alone know the perpetrator. The unfortunate man is now dead, but delicacy to his friends makes me withhold his name from the public. It was the same person who murdered Begbie! Like Mr Bowles and Ali Pacha, he was a mild man, of unassuming manners, a scholar and a gentleman. It is quite a vulgar error to suppose him a ruffian. He was sensibility itself, and would not hurt a fly. But it was a disease with him "to excite public emotion." Though he had an amiable wife, and a vast family, he never was happy, unless he saw the world gaping like a stuck pig. With respect to his murdering Begbie, as it is called, he knew the poor man well, and had frequently given him both small sums of money, and articles of wearing apparel. But all at once it entered his

and

brain, that, by putting him to death in a sharp, and clever, and mysterious manner, and seeming also to rob him of an immense number of bank notes, the city of Edinburgh would be thrown into a ferment of consternation, and there would be no end of the "public emotion,' to use his own constant phrase on occasions of this nature. The scheme succeeded to a miracle. He stabbed Begbie to the heart, robbed the dead body in a moment, escaped. But he never used a single stiver of the money, and was always kind to the widow of the poor man, who was rather a gainer by her husband's death. I have reason to believe that he ultimately regretted the act; but there can be no doubt that his enjoyment was great for many years, hearing the murder canvassed in his own presence, and the many absurd theories broached on the subject, which he could have overthrown by a single

word.

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for a mere jeu-d'esprit,-for my friend was a humourist, and was in the habit of saying good things. The Chaldee was the last work, of the kind of which I have been speaking, that he lived to finish. He confessed it and the murder, the day before he died, to the gentleman specified, and was sufficiently penitent; yet, with that inconsistency not unusual with dying men, almost his last words were, (indistinctly mumbled to himself,) "It ought not to have been left out of the other editions."

After this plain statement, Hogg must look extremely foolish. We shall next have him claiming the murder likewise, I suppose; but he is totally incapable of either.

Now for another confounded boun

cer!

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"From the time I gave up The Spy,' I had been planning with my friends to commence the publication of a Magazine on a new plan; but for several years, we only conversed about the utility of such a work, without doing any thing farther. mention it to Mr Thomas Pringle; when At length, among others. I chanced to I found that he and his friends had a plan in contemplation of the same kind. We agreed to join our efforts, and try to set it a-going; but, as I declined the editorship on account of residing mostly on my farm at a distance from town, it became a puzling question who was the best qualified among our friends for that undertaking. We at length fixed on Mr Gray as the fittest person for a principal department, and I went and mentioned the plan to Mr Blackwood, who, to my astonishment, I found, had likewise long been cherishing a plan of the same kind. He said he knew nothing about Pringle, and always had his eye on me as a principal assistant; but he would not begin the undertaking, until he saw he could do it with effect. Finding him, however, disposed to encourage such a work, Pringle, at my suggestion, made out a plan in writing, with a list of his supporters, and sent it in a letter to me. I enclosed it in another, and sent it to Mr Pringle and he came to an arrangement Blackwood; and not long after that period,

about commencing the work, while I was in the country. Thus I had the honour of being the beginner, and almost sole instigator of that celebrated work, BLACKwooD'S MAGAZINE."

Hogg here says, he declined the editorship of Blackwood's Magazine. This happened the same year that he declined the offer of the governor-generalship of India, and a seat in the cabinet. These refusals on his part

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wine atter the Epigoniad. Mr Hogg write nii the Jacula

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No, nor the notes either. They are all cribbed out of books, without even the grace of inverted commas. Destroy, therefore, these two volumes. The Winter Evening Tales " were written in early life, when I was serving as a shepherd-lad among the mountains," so charge not against an elderly man the sins of his youth. This yields the relief of two volumes. His guilt, therefore, lies within the compass of seven volumes, or a volume per year

since the 1813.

The swineherd frequently alludes to a larger work, of which the present is only an abstract, or rather a collection of" elegant extracts." He concludes the present autobiography thus:

"In this short memoir, which is composed of extracts from a larger detail, I have confined myself to such anecdotes only, as relate to my progress as a writer, and these I intend continuing from year to year as long as I live. There is much that I have written that cannot as yet appear; for the literary men of Scotland, my contempora

ries, may change their characters, so as to disgrace the estimate at which I have set them, and my social companions may alter their habits. Of my own productions, I have endeavoured to give an opinion, with perfect candour; and, although the partiality of an author may be too apparent in the preceding pages, yet I trust every generous heart will excuse the failing, and make due allowance."

Heaven knows that I had no intenwhen I began this letter; but I have tion of subjecting you to double postage, been led on, drivelling away paragraph after paragraph, in my good natured old style, till there is not above an inch of candle left, vapouring away in the socket of the save-all. The truth is, ness for Hogg; and, to shew how that, after all, I have a sneaking kindcompletely free I am, of all malicious thoughts, I request that you will send out to him this Letter by the Selkirk carrier, and oblige,

AN OLD FRIEND WITH A NEW FACE.

[COURTEOUS READER,-If thou art one of the numerous family of "THE SMALLS," the consternation which thou hast suffered in reading the foregoing epistle, can receive no alleviation from any palliative in our power to apply. But if thou art, as we believe the generality of our readers are, a person endowed with a gentlemanly portion of common sense, and can relish banter and good humour as well as curry and claret, thou wilt at once discover that the object of this "deevilrie," to use an expression of the Shepherd's, is to add to the interest which his life has excited. Indeed if the paper has not come from Altrive Lake itself, it has certainly been written by some one who takes no small interest in the Shepherd's affairs; for, in the private letter which accompanies it, the virtues and talents of Hogg are treated with all the respect they merit ; and a hope is most feelingly expressed, that by this tickling the public sympathy may be awakened, so as to occasion a most beneficial demand for his works, and put a few cool hundreds in his pocket. At all events, if the Shepherd himself is not the flagellant, we may forthwith expect such an answer as will leave him quits with the writer, whoever he may be ; and certainly, as his autobiography sufficiently proves, his fame can be in no hands more friendly than his own. Let us not, however, be misunderstood. To those who will," with lifted hands, and eyes upraised,” regard this as one of those wicked, and we-know-not-whatto-call-them, things, which afflict the spirits of so many of our co-temporaries, we can offer nothing in extenuation of the playful malice of this "attack.” But seriously we do think, that among all those whom it must constrain to laughter, none will "rax his jaws" more freely than the Shepherd himself.

C. N.

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