FIGHTS HIS SCHOOLMASTER. 43 



avenged himself in a copy of satirical verses, which, 

 to say the least, show a great advance, in flexibility and 

 in command of language, on those in which he first 

 recorded the adventure in the Doocot cave. As given 

 in Schools and Schoolmasters, they are much improved, 

 the epithets freshened and burnished, and the best 

 line in the whole, 



' Nature's born fop, a saint by art,' 



added. I find the lines in The Village Observer, a 

 manuscript Magazine in Miller's boyish handwriting, 

 dated Feb. 1820. 



Such was Hugh Miller at the time he left school. 

 A rugged, proud, and stiffnecked lad, impossible to 

 drive and difficult to lead, his character already marked 

 with strong lines, and developing from within or through 

 self-chosen influences. ' I saw/ said Baxter of Crom- 

 well, ' that what he learned must be from himself/ and 

 the observation might already have been made of Hugh 

 Miller. To his friends he was a perplexity and offence ; 

 to his uncles, in particular, who knew him too well and 

 were too sagacious to accept the off-hand theory of his 

 schoolmasters that he was merely a stupid and bad boy, 

 he must have seemed a mass of contradictions. In- 

 tellectual in his wildest play, fond of books and ca- 

 pable of discerning excellence from its counterfeits in 

 thought and style, passionately addicted to the observ- 

 ation of nature and forgetting no fact he once as- 

 certained, how could he be dull in the ordinary sense ? 

 If, again, capacity to influence one's fellows was a test 

 of power, could it be said that he, who was undisputed 

 sovereign of the boys of the place, was the stupidest of 

 them all? A dunce who from childhood had enter- 

 tained his companions with tales of his own invention, 

 who fitted his play -fellows with dramatic parts by way 



