While portraits can give us a good idea of what a person looked like, it is just as interesting to read other people's thoughts on the looks and personality traits of the subject. The poet James Hogg (1770-1835) who was known as the Ettrick Shepherd met John Galt in Greenock in 1804 when Galt would have been 25 years old.
Hogg describes being invited to supper at the Tontine Hotel in Greenock where he found – “no fewer than thirty gentlemen assembled to welcome us, and among the rest was Mr Galt, then a tall thin young man, with something a little dandyish in his appearance. He was dressed in a frock-coat and new top-boots; and it being then the fashion to wear the shirt collars as high as the eyes, Galt wore his the whole of that night with the one side considerable above his ear, and the other flapped over the collar of his frock-coat down to his shoulder.”
Hogg points out what he views as one of Galt’s “peculiarities” – “He walked
with his spectacles on, and conversed with them on; but when he read he took
them off. In short, from his first
appearance, one would scarcely have guessed him to be a man of genius.”
James Hogg had worked as a shepherd in Ettrick in the Scottish Borders in his youth and was self educated. He composed songs and poems and admired the work of Robert Burns. He published a small collection of his work, Scottish Pastorals in 1801 and came to the attention of Walter Scott. In 1807 he published The Mountain Bard and in 1810 moved to Edinburgh and continued his writing career, meeting many of the great writers and poets of the day and contributing to Blackwood's Magazine. (John Galt also contributed to Blackwood's "Maga".) Hogg's best known work, published in 1824 was the novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
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| James Hogg (the Ettrick Shepherd) |
This is a verse by Hogg entitled Caledonia -
