160 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



character. He was addicted to poetry, and thought 

 metaphysics dry and displeasing. ' In a few months, 

 however, he (Swanson) had become an admirer of the 

 elegancies of composition, and I (Miller) of metaphysical 

 acuteness. He perused the Paradise Lost of Milton 

 with astonishment, I the Essays of Hume with admira- 

 tion/ 



Strongly contrasted with the vigorous, practical 

 Swanson, is Miller's other friend, of whom we have 

 already heard so much, William Ross. If in any one of 

 his early associates there was a ray of genius, it was in 

 this hapless youth. What he wanted was at bottom 

 nothing else but health. He blamed himself, and his 

 friends blamed him, for indolence ; but it was not in- 

 dolence, it was the lassitude of failing life, the weariness 

 of approaching death, that palsied his energies. Keen 

 and clear in his intellectual perceptions, he had a 

 half-consciousness of this, but he did not know it well 

 enough to silence his self-upbraidings. He told Miller 

 that he, Ross, lacked the stamina which would one day 

 raise his friend above the crowd, and regarded his own 

 efforts with melancholy contempt. But for the sympa- 

 thetic tenderness of Hugh's nature, there could have 

 been no friendship between him and Ross; the men 

 were very different. 'I need not remind you,' writes 

 Hugh, from Cromarty in May, 1825, ' that though ever 

 desirous of each other's company, we were not always 

 very happy together. There was so much whim on the 

 one side, and so little philosophy on the other the one 

 was so low-spirited, the other so madly-spirited that not 

 husband and wife (and that is saying a good deal) could 

 agree worse together.' 



Miller felt the genuine worth of Ross, appreciated 

 his fine qualities, and with a beautiful assiduity of 



