SOURCE: Levin, Susan M. “James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.” In The Romantic Art of Confession: DeQuincy, Musset, Sand, Lamb, Hogg, Frémy, Soulié, Janin, pp. 99-119. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1998.

In the following essay, Levin elucidates the ironies and ambiguities of Hogg's confessional writing in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

The confessor of James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner kills his brother, mother, and finally himself. But his body is miraculously preserved, a freak of nature that may have to do with “the preservation o' that little book,—the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner: Written By Himself Fideli certa merces” (228).¹ “The reward for the faithful one is sure” is an epigraph that in its ambiguity points to the hideous irony of this confession. Assured of his own Election, Robert...