THE 'SCENES AND LEGENDS: 55 



literature, for it reproduces with vivid faithfulness the 

 aspect of human life in one particular corner of the 

 planet. The actual fields and waters, crags and woods, 

 green dells and bleak moors, grey castles and thatched 

 cottages, wimpling burns, and broomy braes, and brown 

 sea-shores, beside which Miller has played since child- 

 hood, form the scenery of the drama ; and amid these life 

 goes masquerading in its coat of many colours life, with 

 its fitful changes and abrupt contrasts, its heart-wrung 

 tears and grotesque grins, its broken-winged sublimities 

 and grandeurs tempered by absurdity ; its queer jumble 

 of tragedy and comedy, and merry scorn of all the unities. 

 The writing is, perhaps, too careful for full display of 

 strength. Miller lingered for many years over his stories, 

 copying andrecopying here polishing down a roughness, 

 there throwing in a touch of colour ; now rounding a 

 sentence with more subtle curve, now drawing out a 

 similitude with more elaborate precision, grudging no 

 labour and no time. In this kind of work his arm could 

 not show its sweep and power. In much of his subsequent 

 writing there is a rapid force, a rhythmic energy, which 

 we do not find in the Addisonian periods of his first 

 prose book. But in quiet, delicately-wrought perfec- 

 tion in beauty fine as the tints of a shell, as the vein- 

 ing of a gem, as the light and shade of a cameo Miller 

 never surpassed, if he ever equalled, some parts of this 

 volume. The hint of Mr Carruthers as to its defect in 

 dramatic power, is not without pertinency and justice. 

 Hugh had trained himself to narrative, and was com- 

 paratively unskilled in dialogue ; but the essential 

 element in dramatic power, the ability to realize human 

 character and feeling in different situations, is certainly 

 displayed in the Scenes and Legends. The characters 

 live. We see them ; occasionally we hear them, and 



