HIS GENIUS. 499 



heart and mind. He never failed a friend. His comrade 

 of the hewing-shed sits down at his table when he has 

 become one of the most distinguished men of his time ; 

 another friend is discovered to be at hand-grips with 

 fortune, and he applies himself, with cunning delicacy, 

 to solve the problem of inducing him to accept assist- 

 ance. This was the -manner and habit of the man. 



Of his power of brain, of his genius and originality, 

 his books, viewed in connection with the circum- 

 stances of his career, are the living witnesses. To their 

 testimony must be added the fact of the great influence 

 he exerted upon his contemporaries, the personal 

 weight, the intellectual mass and magnitude, he was 

 felt to possess. Professor Masson, commenting on the 

 curious notion of a Fleet Street oracle, that he was 

 devoid of genius, has declared his conviction that, ' if 

 the word was applicable to the description of any mind, 

 it was to the description of Hugh Miller's/ If we 

 estimate the amount of obstruction which lay between 

 the mason lad of Gairloch and Niddry, and the Hugh 

 Miller of Edinburgh, whom Murchison, Lyell, Agassiz 

 hailed as a brother, we shall admit that the opinion is 

 not, primd facie, unreasonable. I take liberty to add 

 that, if genius means an indefinable something, con- 

 ferred by nature, inimitable, incommunicable, never 

 given twice in exactly the same form and colour, a 

 power of enchantment which all men feel, but no man 

 can quite describe, then the critic who denies genius 

 to Hugh Miller does not understand his craft. He 

 owed, without question, much to culture. Twenty 

 years of study and practice, assiduous reading, careful 

 self-correction, were required to perfect his prose style 

 and to give him the complete command of it which 

 he ultimately obtained. But all this only brought 



