“Although for some time past he has spent a considerable portion of every year in excellent, even in refined society, the external appearance of the man can have undergone but very little change since he was ‘a herd on Yarrow.’ His face and hands are still as brown as if he had lived entirely sub dio. His very hair has a coarse stringiness about it, which proves beyond dispute its utter ignorance of all the arts of the friseur, and hangs in playful whips and cords about his ears, in a style of the most perfect innocence imaginable. His mouth which, when he smiles, nearly cuts the totality of his face in twain, is an object that would make the Chevalier Ruspini die with indignation; for his teeth have been allowed to grow where they listed, and as they listed, presenting more resemblance, in arrangement (and colour too), to a body of crouching sharp-shooters, than to any more regular species of array. The effect of a forehead, towering with a true poetic grandeur above such features as these, and of an eye that illuminates their surface with genuine lightenings of genius ... these are things which I cannot so easily transfer to my paper.”—1819.

“The Rev. Mr. Thomson, his biographer, thus pictures him:—‘In height he was five feet ten inches and a half; his broad chest and square shoulders indicated health and strength; while a well-rounded leg, and small ankle and foot, showed the active shepherd who could outstrip the runaway sheep.’ His hair in his younger days was auburn, slightly inclining to yellow, which afterwards became dark brown, mixed with gray; his eyes, which were dark blue, were bright and intelligent. His features were irregular, while his eye and ample forehead redeemed the countenance from every charge of common-place homeliness.”

“Hogg is a little red-skinned stiff sack of a body, with quite the common air of an Ettrick shepherd, except that he has a highish though sloping brow (among his yellow grizzled hair), and two clear little beads of blue or gray eyes that sparkle, if not with thought, yet with animation. Behaves himself quite easily and well; speaks Scotch, and mostly narrative absurdity (or even obscenity) therewith.... His vanity seems to be immense, but also his good-nature.”—1832.