HUGH MILLER. 1 1 3 



original production, I began to dole out to them, by the 

 hour and the diet, long extempore biographies, which proved 

 wonderfully popular and successful. My heroes were usually 

 warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like Gulliver, and dwellers 

 in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe ; and they had not 

 unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted castles, abound' 

 ing in trap-doors and secret passages like that of Udolpho. 

 . . . With all my carelessness, I continued to be a sort oi 

 favourite with the master, and, when at the general English 

 lesson, he used to address to me little quiet speeches, vouch- 

 safed to no other pupil, indicative of a certain literary ground 

 common to us, on which the others had not entered. 

 " That, sir," he has said, after the class had just perused, 

 in the second collection, a Tatler or Spectator — "that, sir, is 

 a good paper : it's an Addiso?t;" or, " That's one of Steele's, 

 sir;" and on finding in my copy-book, on one occasion, a 

 page filled with rhymes, which I had headed "Poem on 

 Care," he brought it to his desk, and, after reading it care- 

 fully over, called me up, and with his closed penknife, which 

 served as a pointer, in the one hand, and the copy-book 

 brought down to the level of my eyes in the other, began 

 his criticism. " That's bad grammar, sir," he said, resting 

 his knife-handle on one of the lines ; " and here's an ill-spent 

 word ; and there's another ; and you have not at all attended 

 to the punctuation; but the general sense of the piece is 

 good — very good indeed, sir." And then he added, with 

 a grim smile, " Care, sir, is, I daresay, as you remark, a very 

 bad thing; but you may safely bestow a little more of it 

 on your spelling and your grammar." 



' There were^ several other branches of my education going 

 on at this time outside the pale of the school, in which, 



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