[105] See Burns’s “Auld Farmer’s New-year Salutation.”

[106] “Mount Benger,” of which Hogg had taken a lease on his marriage, in 1820, and found that he could not make it pay.

[107] The first series had just been published under the following title:  Tales of a Grandfather, being stories taken from Scottish History.  Humbly inscribed to Hugh Littlejohn, Esq., in three volumes.  Printed for Cadell and Co., Edinburgh, Simpkin and Marshall, London, and John Cumming, Dublin, 1828.

[108] During Sir Walter’s illness in 1818-19 Mr. Skene was with him at Abbotsford, and he records a curious incident regarding Dryburgh which may be given here:—­“For nearly two years he had to struggle for his life with that severe illness, which the natural strength of his constitution at length proved sufficient to throw off.  With its disappearance, although restored to health, disappeared also much of his former vigour of body, activity, and power of undergoing fatigue, while in personal appearance he had advanced twenty years in the downward course of life; his hair had become bleached to pure white and scanty locks; the fire of his eye quenched; and his step, more uncertain, had lost the vigorous swinging gait with which he was used to proceed; in fact, old age had by many years anticipated its usual progress and marked how severely he had suffered.  The complaint, that of gall-stones, was one of extreme bodily suffering.  During his severest attack he had been alone at Abbotsford with his daughter Sophia, before her marriage to Mr. Lockhart, and had sent to say that he was desirous I should come to him, which I did, and remained for ten days till the attack had subsided.  During its course the extreme violence of the pain end spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the stomach were such that I scarcely expected the powers of endurance could sustain him through the trial, and so much at times was he exhausted by it as to leave us in alarm as to what the result had actually been.  One night I shall not soon forget:  he had been frequently and severely ill during the day, and having been summoned to his room in the middle of the night, where his daughter was already standing, the picture of deep despair, at his bed-side, the attack seemed intense, and we followed the directions left by the physician to assuage it.  At length it seemed to subside, and he fell back exhausted on the pillow, his eyes were closed, and his countenance wan and livid.  Apparently with corresponding misgivings, his daughter at one side of the bed and I at the other gazed for some time intently and in silence on his countenance, and then glanced with anxious inquiring looks to each other, till, at length, having placed my finger on his pulse, to ascertain whether it had actually ceased to throb, I shall never forget the sudden beam which again brightened his daughter’s countenance, and for a moment dispelled the intense expression of anxiety which had for some time overspread