494 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



Mr G.'s style, he said, had an amount of ornament dis- 

 proportioned to his thought. It suggested to him a 

 lady's dress so stiffened with jewellery that it could stand 

 without anybody in it. We once spoke of Professor 

 Aytoun's satire on Mr Gilfillan. Miller had not seen it, 

 and was interested by my account of the production. I 

 mentioned that the satirized critic, Apollodorus, is repre- 

 sented as writing to eminent men, and commenting thus 

 upon the manner of their reply : 



( What have they answered ? Marry, only this, 

 Who, in the name of Zernebock, are you ? ' 



He laughed heartily. There were, I added, far harder 

 things in the poem. Apollodorus, for example, was in- 

 troduced soliloquizing : 



' Why do men call me a presumptuous cur, 

 A vapouring blockhead, and a turgid fool, 

 A common nuisance and a charlatan ? ' 



This sharply displeased him. ' That is too severe,' he 

 said. He became silent, showed no disposition to 

 continue the conversation, and seemed to brood in- 

 dignantly on the cruelty of the words. I am not sure 

 that it would have been safe at that moment for Mr 

 Aytoun to have come into the presence of Hugh 

 Miller. ' There was/ says Professor Masson, in his 

 masterly sketch of his friend, ' a tremendous element of 

 ferocity in Hugh Miller. It amounted to a disposition 

 to kill. He was a grave, gentle, kindly, fatherly, church- 

 going man, who would not have hurt a fly, would have 

 lifted a child tenderly out of harm's way in the street, 

 and would have risked his life to save even a dumb 

 creature's ; but woe betide the enemy that came athwart 

 him when his blood was up ! In this there was more of 

 the Scandinavian than of the Celt. It appeared even in 

 his newspaper-articles. At various times he got into 



