“Our poor friend Hogg has had an affair of honour....  Two mornings ago, about seven in the morning, my servant announced, while I was shaving in my dressing-room, that Mr. Hogg wished earnestly to speak with me.  He was ushered in, and I cannot describe the half-startled, half-humorous air with which he said, scratching his head most vehemently, ’Odd, Scott, here’s twae fo’k’s come frae Glasgow to provoke mey to fecht a duel.’  ‘A duel,’ answered I, in great astonishment, ‘and what do you intend to do?’ ’Odd, I just locket them up in my room and sent the lassie 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.