BOOKS. 21 



drawn upon in the Schools and Schoolmasters, ' I remem- 

 ber that, from my fourth to my sixth year, I derived 

 much pleasure from oral narrative, and that my imagin- 

 ation, even at this early period, had acquired strength 

 enough to present me with vividly-coloured pictures of all 

 the scenes described to me, and of all the incidents related/ 

 His eye had not yet opened on the world of books. 



Hugh had been sent to a dame's school before his 

 father's death, and in the course of his sixth year, after 

 much labour and small apparent profit, he made the dis- 

 covery that ' the art of reading is the art of finding stories 

 in books/ Did ever child in Eastern -romance light on 

 so wonderful a talisman ! The gates flew open and the 

 gardens of knowledge stretched before him, the trees 

 drooping with golden fruit, the earth radiant with 

 flowers. Hugh Miller had made what he calls the 

 grand acquirement of his life : he could hold converse 

 with books. 



Now at last, like all children of talent, he revelled in 

 the traditionary literature of the nursery, Jack the Giant 

 Killer, Blue Beard, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. 

 Two other books gave him equal or greater delight, the 

 Pilgrim's Progress and Pope's Homer. ' I saw/ says 

 Miller, ' even at this immature period, that no writer 

 could cast a javelin with half the force of Homer/ Pope's 

 transmutations of the Iliad and Odyssey have often been 

 favourite reading with children. One of the choice 

 sports of Arnold's early boyhood was to act the battles of 

 the Homeric heroes, and recite their several speeches, 

 according to Pope. 



Hugh was now promoted from the dame's school to 

 the parish school, and introduced into the society of one 

 hundred and twenty boys. These, with a class of girls, 

 bringing the whole number up to one hundred and fifty, 



