THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD A10 ; METAPHYSICS.
Memoirs of a _ Justified . Sinner. . By James . Hogg. The Campion Reprints. (A. M. Philpot, Ltd. 50.) Tins reprint, after a hundred years, of Hogg's novel is very welcome, for in a lesser degree it reawakens the wonder which was roused- at the republication of Moby Dick. Hoy'', could such a book, so full of ideas, of vivid and passionate Writing, have been overlooked for sticha long time ? The form of the hook is the most unsatisfactory known in . „ fiction : the recapitulation of a story by different people. No work _so architectured can be entirely coherent. Even Browning's The Ring and the Book, since it is built, on this plan, resolves itself into a series of 'vie poems. So thiSiihvel is really two tales. The first is a story of Covenanting Scotland, of dark religious fanaticism, of the gay humour of the Jacobites, of the clash of the tiio';' of the resultant street brawling, political intrigue, and mysterious deeds Of murder and fraud. The 'second 'toilet is 'the 'same stOrY. told by the villain. Little by little our loathing for this wretch is dissolved in a horrified pity, as we see the phantasm of his Calvin sodden brain take a satanic form Whieh' Paralyzes his will and even his Consciousness, and propels hind-to-the murder of his brother and his father. Here is no occasion for a discussion of pre- destinarianism, that sinister distortion through .Genevan fogs of, the shadows thrown by Augustine's lamp' of reiielation. The gentle Ettrick Shepherd, who had heard the "trooping people" of the Celts, was a bitter enemy of this blighting doc- trine that took such fast hold in Northern • Europe. This book is his propaganda against it.
It is interesting to note also how diabolism follows as the shadow of this dark, teaching, and is inevitably confused with it by its foes. We find tpat-cOritusioil recurring in Scottish novelists—notably in Stevenson and Crockett. But perhaps it is limiting the extent of diabolism to mention it so—for it is a corollary of deism, and therefOre worldwide.
To return to this book, however ; the reader will be im- pressed by the imaginative intensity through which a detailed reality is maintained until the horror can be seen and felt. - The fierce light of that higher logic of vision knits up fact with fact so that each gains in symbolic suggestion from its antece- dent. In one of his poems- HOgg describes the figure of December - His 'aspect stern . Glared . deadly o'er the mountain cairn ; An ice-spear round his girdle hung. . .
That accurately describes the atmosphere of this books It is an unique work by a Man Of genius. Reading these sonorous and rhythmic sentences, how can one imagine that the author did not learn to read or write until he was twenty- four? He was âEemaik5ble individual, and this book shows
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