As Lockhart truly says, Hogg "was the most extraordinary man that ever
wore the maud of a shepherd." He had none of Burns' education. In
1802 he was young, and ignorant of cities, and always was innocent of
research in the crabbed MSS. of the sixteenth century. Yet he gets at
legendary persons known to us only through these MSS. He makes a
ballad named Auld Maitland about them. Through him a farm-lass at
Blackhouse acquires some stanzas which Laidlaw copies. In a fortnight
Hogg sends Laidlaw the whole ballad, with the pedigree--his uncle, his
mother, their father, and old Andrew Muir, servant to the famous Rev.
Mr. Boston of Ettrick. The copy takes in Scott and Leyden. Later,
Ritson makes no objection. Mrs. Hogg recites it to Scott, and,
according to Hogg, gives a casual "auld Babby Maitland" as the original
source.

Is the whole fraud conceivable? Hogg, we must believe, puts in two
stanzas (xv., xviii.), of the lowliest order of printed stall-copy or
"gangrel scrape-gut" style, and the same with intent to deceive. He
introduces "Billop-Grace" as a deceptive popular corruption of Ville de
Grace. This is far beyond any craft that I have found in the most
artful modern "fakers." One stanza (xlix.) -


But Ethert Lunn, a baited bear,
Had many battles seen -


seems to me very recent, whoever made it. Scott, in lxii., gives a
variant of "some reciters," for "That Edward once lay under me," they
read "That Englishman lay under me." This, if a false story, was an