Jean Étienne Champion de Hoche

“ Dutemple, Vie politique et militaire du général Hoche (1879) ; Escaude, Hoche en Irlande (1888) ; Cunéo d’Ornano, Hoche (1892) ; A. Chuquet, Hoche et la lutte pour l’Alsace (a volume of this author’s series on the campaigns of the Revolution, 1893) ; E. Charavaray, Le Général Hoche (1893) ; A. Duruy, Hoche et Marceau (1885) .
HOCHHEIM, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, situated on an elevation not far from the right bank of the Main, 3 m. above its influx into the Rhine and 3 m. E. of Mainz by the railway from Cassel to Frankfort-on-Main. Pop. ”

“ The novels of Theodore Hook, sparkling as they are, have no substance to endure long continuance, nor is there much promise of life in the showy and fluent tales of James, the sea-stories of Marryat, or the gay scenes of Lever. ”

“ Hogg died on the 21st of November 1835, and was buried in the churchyard of his native parish Ettrick. His fame had seemed to fill the whole district, and was brightest at its close; his presence was associated with all the border sports and festivities; and as a man James Hogg was ever frank, joyous and charitable. It is mainly as a great peasant poet that he lives in literature. ”

“ Mr. Hogg, who was a Member of Parliament and a Director of the East India Company, had had a remarkable career. Going out to the East as a mere youth, he had found fame and fortune at the Calcutta Bar. Having become a man of wealth, he had returned to England to enter public life. He felt now that he ought to do something for his sister and her large family, and offered to obtain for John a cadetship in the Bengal Infantry. To this Mrs. Nicholson gladly assented.
In the days of "John Company" the interest of influential persons was sufficient to procure entry into the service. ”

“ During his short period of residence, moreover, he had not shown himself so tractable as to secure the good wishes of superiors, who prefer conformity to incommensurable genius. It is likely that they were not averse to getting rid of him as a man dangerous to the peace of their society; and now they had a good occasion. Nor was it to be expected that the champion and apostle of Atheism—and Shelley was certainly both, in spite of Hogg's attempts to tone down the purpose of his document—should be unmolested in his propaganda by the aspirants to fat livings and ecclesiastical dignities. ”

“ Hogg, during his lifetime, never liked to hear its demolition proposed. Here he had lived as a child, and here he lived when grown up, and rented the farm, before going to Altrive. He used always to inquire of people from Ettrick, if the house really were yet destroyed. I believe it stood till after his death, but it is now quite gone. The bricklayers? There is no such thing here; all is built of the iron-like, hard whinstone of the hills;—the builders, then, with a sentiment which does honor to them, were reluctant to pull down the birthplace and home of the shepherd-poet ”

“ Whereupon, Hogg says, proudly, he thinks that conduct can do him no honor in the long run; and that he would match the worst poem he ever published with some that Mr. Jeffrey has strained himself to bring forward. But Hogg was now a popular man. His Queen's Wake went on into edition after edition. He was introduced to Blackwood, who became his publisher, and Hogg looked upon himself as on a par in fame with the first men of his time. The familiar style in which he relates his first acquaintance with Professor Wilson, will excite a smile. ”

“ There was nothing, except that singular egotism and somewhat extravagant fancy, which could lead you on reading a poem of his to say, that is Hogg and can be no one else. His poems are generally extremely diffuse; they surprise and charm you on opening them, at the vigor, liveliness, and strength of the style, but they are of that kind that the farther you go the more this charm wears off; you grow weary, you hardly know why; you can not help protesting to yourself that they are very clever, nay, wonderful ”

“ If any malignant rival had hinted aught to his prejudice, the maidens of the whole district had assembled to vindicate his cause. His personal appearance at this early period is thus described by Mr William Laidlaw:—"About nineteen years of age, Hogg was rather above the middle height, of faultless symmetry of form; he was of almost unequalled agility and swiftness. His face was then round and full, and of a ruddy complexion, with bright blue eyes that beamed with gaiety, glee, and good- [Pg 7] humour, the effect of the most exuberant animal spirits. ”

“ The reader knows that I refer to James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, a more wonderful (perhaps) instance of merit in a completely untaught man than even the case of the comparatively early and well-educated and civilized Bard of Coila. This situation was accordingly centrical and retired; elevated, and yet surrounded by still higher eminences, and commanding the higher districts or moors of the Yarrow, the Ettrick, the Tweed, and the Annan. Mr Thomas Shiels was well-known to be a fit coadjutor to [194] the worthy Mr Samuel Austin ”

“ These young men meeting with another shepherd afterwards, his curiosity was so much excited that they went and digged up the curious remains a second time, which was a pity, as it is likely that by these exposures to the air, and the impossibility of burying it up again as closely as it was before, the flesh will now fall to dust."
The letter from which the above is an extract, is signed JAMES HOGG, and dated from Altrive Lake, August 1st, 1823. It bears the stamp of authenticity in every line ”

“ I can buy you ALL, and have mountain ranges of manure left! Ha-ha, NOW thou smilest a smile!" [Immense sensation.] Exhibition of specimens from the mine. Old Huss (enthusiastically) : "Wake her up, shake her up, noble young man, she is yours!" Wedding takes place on the spot; bookkeeper restored to his office and emoluments; Paul Hoch led off to jail. The Bonanza king of the Black Forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter envy of everybody around. ”

“ The mother looks into the depths of the cradle with a smile, thus betraying to us the presence of the baby which we cannot see. A Card Party, dated 1658, at Buckingham Palace is a good example of De Hooch’s drawing-room scenes, counterpart as to date and value of a Woman and Child in the National Gallery, and a Smoking Party belonging to Lord Enfield. Other pictures later onward in the master’s career are—the Lady and Child in a Courtyard, of 1665, in the National Gallery, and the Lady receiving a Letter, of 1670, in the Van der Hoop collection at Amsterdam. ”

“ It is not yet thirty years since Theodore Hook died. He left the world on August the 24th, 1841, and by this time he remains in the memory of men only as a wit that was, a punster, a hoaxer, a sorry jester, with an ample fund of fun, but not as a great man in any way. Allowing everything for his education—the times he lived in, and the unhappy error of his early life—we may admit that Hook was not, in character, the worst of the wits. He died in no odour of sanctity, but he was not a blasphemer or reviler, like others of this class. ”

“ And a verse of one of the songs of his early days, bright and blissful as they were, is thus strikingly verified, when he says—
'Flow, my Ettrick! it was thee
Into my life that first did drop me;
[Pg 42] Thee I 'll sing, and when I dee,
Thou wilt lend a sod to hap me.
Pausing swains will say, and weep,
Here our Shepherd lies asleep.'"
As formerly described, Hogg was, in youth, particularly good-looking and well-formed. ”

“ The "Chaldee Manuscript" appeared in the seventh number of Blackwood's Magazine, published in October 1817. To the magazine Hogg continued to be a regular contributor; and, among other interesting compositions, both in prose and verse, he produced in its pages his narrative of the "Shepherd's Calendar." His connexion with this popular periodical is more generally known from the position assigned him in the "Noctes Ambrosianæ" of Professor Wilson. ”

“ Hoey began with a story entitled 'Buried in the Deep' a long connection with 'Chambers's Journal,' then under the editorship of James Payn [q. v.] . Until 1894 she was a constant contributor, writing articles, short stories, and two serial novels, 'A Golden Sorrow' (1892) and 'The Blossoming of an Aloe' (1894) .
Mrs. Hoey wrote in all eleven novels, dealing for the most part with fashionable society. ”

“ Van der Hoek was a sober, unassuming, and honest man, a generous and respected superior to his subordinates, a true friend, ever ready to assist an aspiring young man to greater knowledge and better positions ”

“ Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource but his literary talents, and it is to be deplored that he should have prostituted these to serve an ungentlemanly and dishonourable party in their onslaught upon an unfortunate woman. Whatever may be now thought of the queen of 'the greatest gentleman'—or roue—of Europe, those who hunted her down will never be pardoned, and Hook was one of those. We have cried out against an Austrian general for condemning a Hungarian lady to the lash, and we have seen, with delight, a mob chase him through the streets of London and threaten his very life. ”

“ De Hooch only once painted a canvas of any size, and that unfortunately perished in a fire at Rotterdam in 1864, But his small pieces display perfect finish and great dexterity of hand, combined with that power of discrimination which accomplishes detail whilst avoiding rapidity and smoothness. Though he sometimes paints open-air scenes, these are not his favourite subjects. He is most at home in interiors, and his delight is to contrast in one picture the different atmospheres of rooms illuminated by different lights with the radiance of day as seen through doors and windows. ”

“ Hitherto the literary and professional friends of Hogg have been overwhelmed and stuffed by the roaring, ramping deluge of shopkeeping Bumbledom. About two, after the second reckoning has been called and paid by general contribution. Heaven be praised ! the Chairman retires, and a young advocate takes his place; then the croupiers and other citizenly men glide off; the mirth increases, the thinned company gathers in a serried cluster of intense fun and good- fellowism around the chair. Hogg now for the first time shines out in all his lustre ; tells stories, sings, and makes all life and glee. ”

“ There is nothing so amusing as Hogg's autobiography. His good-natured egotism overflows it. The capital terms on which he is with himself makes him relate flatteries and rebuffs with equal naïveté; and the familiarity with which he treats the greatest names of modern literature, presenting the most grave and dignified personages as his cronies, chums, and convivial companions, is ludicrous beyond every thing. ”

“ Impecunious poets, like James Hogg, borrow fifty pounds with the lofty patronage of sovereigns. It is very amusing to note the tone assumed by the Ettrick Shepherd in his intercourse with a man of Murray's influence and position. When he is in a good humor, that is, when he has negotiated a successful loan, he writes in this generous fashion: "Though I have heard some bitter things against you, I never met with any man whatever who, on so slight an acquaintance, has behaved to me so much like a gentleman." ”

“ He sat up with a whimper and clawed at the rough concrete until his nails tore and his fingertips bled. The surface still felt damp, but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky began licking at his scuffed fingers. He shouldered the dog away, and dug his hands into the sand-pile to stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted a short distance away, circled, and came back to crouch down in the sand directly before Hogey, inching forward experimentally. ”

“ Houghton.
“Only an uneventful love story, with a man of solitary habits, who digs clams because it amuses him and makes a garden, and keeps clear of his neighbors, a charmingly drawn girl, a rich father who is not spoiled, and a proud mother who is humanized by the birth of a grandchild. There is a good deal of landscape and sky and sea in the narrative, which depends for its charm largely on atmosphere and sentiment.”—Outlook.
“His is a diction which, one is tempted to believe, is born of William John Hopkins, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the various authors of the Bible. ”

“ Hogg was not in the least an enthusiast, rather a cynic, but he also was a steady and well-read classical student. In religious matters both were sceptics, or indeed decided anti-Christians; whether Hogg, as the senior and more informed disputant, pioneered Shelley into strict atheism, or whether Shelley, as the more impassioned and unflinching speculator, outran the easy-going jeering Hogg, is a moot point; we incline to the latter opinion. ”

“ Hogg strained his utmost effort to do honour to the dust of his illustrious friend! He published reminiscences of him in a small volume, and in such terms as the following did he pronounce his eulogy:—"He had a clear head as well as a benevolent heart; was a good man, an anxiously kind husband, an indulgent parent, and a sincere, forgiving friend; a just judge, and a punctual correspondent.... Such is the man we have lost, and such a man we shall never see again. He was truly an extraordinary man,—the greatest man in the world." ”