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James Hogg's First Encounter With Burns's Poetry, Douglas S. Mack

Studies in Scottish Literature

Describes and evaluates the varying accounts given by the Scottish poet and novelist James Hogg (1770-1835) of his first encounter with the poems of the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), exploring inconsistencies of dating and differences in detail between the best-known version, the "Memoir of the Author's Life" in Hogg's Altrive Tales(1832) and the earlier "Memoir" in his The Mountain Bard (1807), and discussing also two other versions, a long note in the Hogg-Motherwell edition of Burns (1834) and a letter Hogg wrote to an unidentified correspondent that same year. Briefly analyses and quotes Hogg's memorial poem on Robert …