and pathetic ballads in the language. The Harris enterprise was not
carried out; and the poet, "to avoid a great many disagreeable questions
and explanations," went for several months to England. Fortune still
frowned, and the ambitious but unsuccessful son of genius had to return
to his former subordinate occupation as a shepherd. He entered the
employment of Mr Harkness of Mitchel-Slack, in Nithsdale.

Dissatisfied with the imitations of ancient ballads in the third volume
of "The Border Minstrelsy," Hogg proceeded to embody some curious
traditions in this kind of composition. He transmitted specimens to
Scott, who warmly commended them, and suggested their publication. The
result appeared in the "Mountain Bard," a collection of poems and
ballads, which he published in 1803, prefixed with an account of his
life. From the profits of this volume, with the sum of eighty-six pounds
paid him by Constable for the copyright of his two treatises on sheep,
he became master of three hundred pounds. With this somewhat startling
acquisition, visions of prosperity arose in his ardent and enthusiastic
mind. He hastily took in lease the pastoral farm of Corfardin, in the
parish of Tynron, Dumfriesshire, to which he afterwards added the lease
of another large farm in the same neighbourhood. Misfortune still
pursued him; he rented one of the farms at a sum exceeding its value,
and his capital was much too limited for stocking the other, while a
disastrous murrain decimated his flock. Within the space of three years
he was again a penniless adventurer. Removing from the farm-homestead of
Corfardin, he accepted the generous invitation of his hospitable
neighbour, Mr James Macturk of Stenhouse, to reside in his house till
some suitable employment might occur. At Stenhouse he remained three
months; and he subsequently acknowledged the generosity of his friend,
by honourably celebrating him in the "Queen's Wake." Writing to Mr
Macturk, in 1814, he remarks, in reference to his farming at Corfardin,