92 PRÆTERITA-I

an admitted, though little regarded, member of the best literary circles, and acquainted, in the course of catering for his little embossed octavo, with everybody in the outer circles, and lower, down to little me. He had been patronised by Scott; was on terms of polite correspondence with Wordsworth and Rogers; of familiar intercourse with the Ettrick Shepherd;¹ and had himself written a book of poems on the subject of Africa, in which antelopes were called springboks, and other African manners and customs carefully observed.

104. Partly to oblige the good-natured and lively shopboy, who told wonderful things of his little student cousin; -partly in the look-out for thin compositions of tractable stucco, wherewith to fill interstices in the masonry of Friendship’s Offering, Mr. Pringle visited us at Herne Hill, heard the traditions of my literary life, expressed some interest in its farther progress,-and sometimes took a copy of verses away in his pocket. He was the first person who intimated to my father and mother, with some decision, that there were as yet no wholly trustworthy indications of my one day occupying a higher place in English literature than either Milton or Byron; and accordingly I think none of us attached much importance to his opinions. But he had the sense to recognize, through the parental vanity, my father’s high natural powers, and exquisitely romantic sensibility; nor less my mother’s tried sincerity in the evangelical faith, which he had set himself apart to preach: and he thus became an honoured, though never quite cordially welcomed, guest on occasions of state Sunday dinner; and more or less an adviser thenceforward of the mode of my education. He himself found interest enough in my real love of nature and ready faculty of rhyme, to induce him to read and criticize for me some of my verses with attention; and at last, as a sacred Eleusinian initiation

¹ [A letter from Pringle to “the Shepherd” will be found at p. 224 of Mrs. Garden’s Memorials of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (1884); and for Hogg himself, see Vol. I. p. xxvii., Vol. II. p. xix.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]