James Hoggs' Travels
After the failure of his farming ventures in Dumfriesshire and Ettrick, James Hogg moved to Edinburgh in 1810, determined to make his living as a writer. He founded a weekly magazine, The Spy, of which he was the main contributor. Its style proved too earthy and robust for the fastidious Edinburgh readership, and it folded after a year. His next venture was an educational society, The Forum, which ran weekly public debates on such subjects as Whether the hope of Reward or Punishment tends most to the preservation of good order in Society? Throughout these years, he barely scraped a living, but his skills as a writer were being honed all the time.In 1813, the publication of his cycle of ballads, The Queen's Wake, brought him the recognition he yearned for. It was critically acclaimed, not only in Edinburgh but in London and America. His reputation as a leading poet of the age was firmly established, and though still a poor man, The Ettrick Shepherd was now a celebrity.
When many long day had come and fled,
When grief grew calm and hope was dead,
When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung,
When the bedesman had prayed, and the deadbell rung
Late, late in a gloaming, when all was still,
When the fringe was red on the westlin hill,
The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane,
Thereek o' the cot hung ower the plain,
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane;
When the ingle lowed wi' an eiry leme--
Late, latein the gloaming Kilmeny came hame!
-Kilmeny
In 1815, the Duke of Buccleuch granted Hogg, rent-free, the farm of Altrive in Yarrow. He divided his time between capital and country, between writing and socialising. More major volumes of poetry followed The Queens Wake, including The Poetic Mirror , which parodied the leading poets of the time including Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge - and himself.
His marriage in 1820 to Margaret Phillips brought him more firmly back into Yarrow. He took on the lease of the neighbouring farm of Mountbenger, which proved financially disastrous. Although he claimed to have had a run of bad seasons and low prices, and to be encumbered by a high rent, the fact was that his farming was never more than a poor second to his literary career.
By now he was turning more and more to prose - short stories and novels. The Brownie of Bodsbeck, The Three Perils of Man and in 1824, his masterpiece The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
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