SOURCE: Groves, David. “Poetic Mirrors.” In James Hogg: The Growth of a Writer, pp. 54-85. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988.

In the following excerpt, Groves evaluates Hogg as a Romantic poet.

Heroic values and a concern for national unity made The Queen's Wake an ideal poem for a country at war. Yet although its ‘plan proved extremely happy’, Hogg could see that the Wake was still ‘very imperfect and unequal’.¹ During 1814 and 1815, years which brought glimpses of prosperity, James Hogg wrote a series of long poems which culminated in the brilliant and witty parodies of his Poetic Mirror. He also revised The Queen's Wake to make it more saleable, modernising ‘Kilmeny’ and taking Scott's advice in giving a happy ending to ‘The Witch of Fife’.

In 1814 Hogg was living in a rented ‘den under the North Bridge’, ‘in an odd-looking place called St. Ann Street’.² The steep, dark area...