It would be impossible in any record of ‘Blackwood’ to leave out the Shepherd, who, whatever he might be in himself, was one of the most characteristic figures in the group which brought it into being—as he also takes a very definite place, in his often rude and rustic individuality, in that which surrounds Scott. This is immortality enough, one would think, for such a man, and extreme and extraordinary promotion; but the Shepherd would not have thought so, who held his head as high as any, and thought himself badly treated, and was apt to babble about envy and injury, when the first place was not open to him. In his mature age Wilson (and indeed Lockhart too, and the other hands which worked at first on the ‘Noctes’) gave him a fictitious importance in that brilliant record, putting the most beautiful speeches into his mouth, though sometimes, it must be added, holding him up on the keen spear of ridicule for the amusement of the world. But he gained much more than he lost, and the Shepherd is perhaps the personage who best survives through the mists which have closed over that laughing company, half fictitious, half genuine, a truly characteristic and individual figure, with his head often among the stars, though his feet are the devious heavy feet of a son of the soil.