Memoir of John Murray
James Hogg to John Murray, 11 August 1818
.... I am told Gifford
has a hard prejudice against me, but I cannot believe it. I do not see how any
man can have a prejudice against me. He may, indeed, consider me an intruder in
the walks of literature, but I am only a saunterer, and malign nobody who
chooses to let me pass. . . . I was going to say before, but forgot, and said
quite another thing, that if Mr. Gifford would point out
any light work for me to review for him, I’ll bet a MS. poem with him
that I’ll write it better than he expects.
Yours ever most sincerely,
William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published
The Baviad (1794),
The Maeviad
(1795), and
The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the
Quarterly Review (1809-24).
James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835)
Scottish autodidact, poet, and novelist; author of
The Queen's
Wake (1813) and
Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner (1824).
