from succeeding Burns? I too was born on the 25th of January, and I have much more time to read and compose than any ploughman could have, and can sing more old songs than ever ploughman could in the world. But then I wept again, because I could not write. However, I resolved to be a poet, and follow in the steps of Burns!" A brave resolve, to be a poet, in a man that could not write. Nevertheless, he composed songs, and one of these, called M'Donald, had the luck to get sung at a great masonic meeting at Edinburgh, and was taken up by a General M'Donald, who fancied it was written upon him, and had it sung every week at his mess. Hogg, now thirty-one years of age, resolved to astonish the world with his genius, and the account of the way he took is not a little amusing. "In 1801, believing that I was then become a grand poet, I most sapiently determined on publishing a pamphlet, and appealing to the world at once. Having attended the Edinburgh market one Monday, with a number of sheep for sale, and being unable to dispose of them all, I put the remainder into a park until the market on Wednesday. Not knowing how to pass the interim, it came into my head that I would write a poem or two from my memory, and get them printed. The thought had no sooner struck me than it was put in practice; and I was obliged to select, not the best poems, but those that I remembered best. I wrote several of these during my short stay, and gave them all to a person to print at my expense; and having sold off my sheep on Wednesday morning, I returned to the forest. I saw no more of my poems until I received word that there were one thousand copies of them thrown off. I knew no more of publishing than the man in the moon; and the only motive that influenced me was, the gratification of my vanity by seeing myself in print. All of them were sad stuff, although I judged them to be exceedingly good. Notwithstanding my pride of authorship, in a few days I had discernment enough left to wish my publication heartily at the devil, and I had hopes that long ago it had been consigned to eternal oblivion, when, behold! a London critic had, in malice of heart, preserved a copy, and quoted liberally out of it last year, to my intense chagrin and mortification;" _i.e._, while Hogg was, but four years before his death, lionizing in London.