"Who could forgive this? For my part, I never can, and never will! I admire Wordsworth, as who does not, whatever they may pretend? But, for that short sentence, I have a lingering ill-will at him which I can not get rid of. It is surely presumption in any man to circumscribe all human excellence within the narrow sphere of his own capacity. The '_Where are they?_' was too bad. I have always some hopes that De Quincy was _leeing_, for I did not myself hear Wordsworth utter the words." Whether Wordsworth did utter these words, or De Quincy only quizzed Hogg with them, it is a great pity that poor Hogg's mind was suffered to the last to retain the rankling supposition of it. The anecdote appeared in the Noctes; it was made the subject of much joke and remark, and must have reached Wordsworth's ears. What a thousand pities, then, that, by a single line to Hogg, or in public, he did not take the sting out of it. Nobody was so soon propitiated as Hogg. To have been acknowledged as a brother poet by Wordsworth would have filled his heart with much happiness. Immediately after his death Wordsworth hastened to make such a recognition; but of how little value is posthumous praise! Hogg died on the 21st of November, and on the 30th Wordsworth sent the following lines to the Athenæum, which I quote entire, because they commemorate other departed lights of the age. THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. Extempore Effusion, upon reading, in the Newcastle Journal, the notice of the death of the poet, James Hogg. "When first descending from the moorland, I saw the stream of Yarrow glide Along a fair and open valley, The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide. "When last along its banks I wandered, Through groves that had begun to shed Their golden leaves upon the pathways, My steps the Border Minstrel led. "The mighty minstrel breathes no longer, 'Mid moldering ruins low he lies: And death upon the braes of Yarrow Has closed the shepherd poet's eyes. "Nor has the rolling year twice measured From sign to sign his steadfast course, Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvelous source. "The rapt-one of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in death; And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth. "Like clouds that robe the mountain summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has Brother followed Brother, From sunshine to the sunless land! "Yet I, whose lids from infant slumbers Were earlier raised, remain to hear A timid voice that asks in whispers, 'Who next will drop and disappear?' "Our haughty life is crowned with darkness, Like London with its own black wreath, On which with thee, O Crabbe, forth-looking, I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.