Hogg. On that I have given my opinion, with my reasons.

These verses, with xviii., lead us to France, and whereas Scott here
suspects that some verses have been lost (see his note to stanza
xviii.), Colonel Elliot suspects that the stanzas relating to France
have been interpolated. But the French scenes occupy the whole poem
from xvi. to lxv., the end.

What, if Hogg were the forger, were his sources? He MAY have known
Douglas's Palice of Honour, which, of course, existed in print, with
its mention of Maitland's grey beard. But how did he know Maitland's
"three noble sons," in 1801-1802, lying unsunned in the Maitland MSS.?

This is a point which critics of Auld Maitland studiously ignore, yet
it is the essential point. How did the Shepherd know about the three
young Maitlands, whose existence, in legend, is only revealed to us
through a manuscript unpublished in 1802? Colonel Elliot does not
evade the point. "We may be sure," he says, that Leyden, before 1802,
knew Hogg, and Hogg might have obtained from him sufficient information
to enable him to compose the ballad. {47a} But it was from Laidlaw,
not from Leyden, that Scott, after receiving his first copy at
Blackhouse, in spring 1802, obtained Hogg's address. {47b} There is no
hint that before spring 1802 Leyden ever saw Hogg. Had he known him,
and his ballad-lore, he would have brought him and Scott together. In
1801-02, Leyden was very busy in Edinburgh helping Scott to edit Sir
Tristram, copying Arthour, seeking for an East India appointment, and
going into society. Scott's letters prove all this. {47c}

That Hogg, in 1802, was very capable of writing a ballad, I admit; also
that, through Blind Harry's Wallace, he may have known all about