Conclusion

The ‘Only Worthy Successor’: The Career of James Hogg, 1801-1834

1. The ‘Great Dead Poet’ and the ‘Gifted Living’: The Influence of Burns’s Poetic Legacy upon James Hogg

In an article entitled ‘Some Observations on the Poetry of the Agricultural and that of the Pastoral District of Scotland, illustrated by a Comparative View of the Genius of Burns and the Ettrick Shepherd’ (printed in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in February 1819), John Wilson presents a ‘comparative view’ of Robert Burns and James Hogg that proved to be quite influential in the reception history of both poets. Viewing Burns as representative of ‘agricultural’ verse and Hogg of ‘pastoral’ due to their respective biographies, Wilson analy- ses the sources of their genius as expressed primarily in their writing. He contends that such an approach does not diminish their accomplishments, but merely highlights their particular differences as Scottish poets in their own ‘native dominions’: he writes, ‘There can be nothing more delightful than to see these two genuine children of Nature following the voice of her inspiration in such different haunts, each happy in his own native dominions, and powerful in his own legitimate rule’.1 This leads Wilson to remark upon the poets’ common class status, which is categorised as ‘peasant’. Of this unlikely source of distinction, Wilson observes that ‘most philosophical Englishmen acknowledge that there is a depth of moral and religious feeling in the peasantry of Scotland, not to be found among the best part of their population’ (309). Such linking of class and nation in the verse of Burns and Hogg leads Wilson to speculate upon the distinct character of the Scottish ‘peasantry’, a subject first addressed in the posthumous assessment of Burns by James Currie, his first editor.2 Wilson boldly asserts that ‘we do not feel any consciousness of national prejudice, when we say, that a great poet could not be born among the English peasantry’ (309). Among the Scottish peasantry, it is altogether differ- ent; Wilson describes their exceptionality in depth, finding a 238 Conclusion

‘difference of poetical feeling and genius in an agricultural and pas- toral state of life’ (310). This ‘difference’ between English and Scottish peasants is further clarified, for Wilson finds that it is ‘exemplified as that difference [which] appears to be in the poetry of Burns, and his only worthy successor, the Ettrick Shepherd’ (310, emphasis mine). Thus, as in many other comparisons of the two poets, Burns and Hogg are indissolubly linked as ‘peasants’. However, they are very different types of ‘peasant’, enjoined in a decidedly competitive relationship. As Douglas Mack observes, the goal to ‘succeed’ Burns was central to Hogg’s literary career, which was ‘defined and shaped by his intense desire, as shepherd-poet, to become the successor of the great ploughman-poet, Robert Burns’.3 The nature of this kinship is expressed pithily by Hogg’s assumption (and endorsement) of his own persona, the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’; unlike Burns, Hogg never attempted to disavow this persona in his personal or professional lives. Hogg displayed little (if any) ambivalence about his status as the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’, seeing the title as an honorific that signified his aspiration to be recognised as Burns’s ‘only worthy successor’.4 Hogg’s designation as the ‘only worthy successor’ to Burns is supported in some depth in the ‘comparative view’ of Wilson, whose support of Hogg would be sporadic and ambivalent throughout the Ettrick Shepherd’s career. Wilson characterises Burns’s verse as defined by struggle endemic to his life as an agricultural labourer, stating that ‘when we consider the genius of Burns, we see it manifestly moulded and coloured by his agricultural life’ (312). This ‘moulding’ is expressed by the poet’s works, for Wilson claims that ‘we see in all his earliest poems – and they are by far his finest – a noble soul struggling – labouring with a hard and oppressive fate’ (312). In Wilson’s account, Burns’s ‘hard and oppressive fate’ derives from both his class position and his locale in an agricultural district of rural Scotland. Although such factors doomed Burns from the beginning, they also provided the greatest proof of his genius, when viewed in sharp relief: ‘The calamities of a life of hardship, that bows down ordinary spirits to the earth, elevated and sublimed the genius and character of our immortal poet’ (312). Wilson argues that Burns’s achievements were staggering in light of his ‘life of hardship’, leaving his successors some room for advancement but many ‘monuments’ in their path: