|
Hugh Miller's Maternal Uncles—Mode of
spending Sabbath Evenings—The Grammar School—Attempts to learn Latin—The
Story Teller.
Hugh Miller had two maternal uncles, James
and Alexander, who, at the death of his father, charged themselves with
the education of the son. The elder, James, as described by his nephew,
was a clear-headed, sagacious man, with a retentive memory, and a great
thirst for information. He was a harness maker by trade, and wrought for
the farmers of an extensive district of country. He prosecuted his
calling without the assistance of hired hands. Work was plenty, and he
had little time for reading, but be generally found some one to read
beside him during the day, and at night his portable work bench was
removed from the shop into the family living-room, where the younger
uncle, Alexander, would read for the general good. In this way much
information was gained, and as the subject of reading was discussed by
the general circle, the information was well digested. Thus, busy
working-men, it is quite possible to combine intellectual pursuits with
your daily avocations when the will is present. James was a great local
antiquary. During the summer months he was a peripatetic harness maker,
and, as he journeyed to or from the farms where his labours lay, he
visited whatever ecclesiastical or baronial building chanced to lie in
his route, and knew more respecting their history than most of his
contemporaries. He had a vast fund of legendary lore, and a pleasant way
of retailing it to his auditors ; and, says his nephew, had he been a
writer of books instead of merely a reader of them his style would have
had the merit of being clear and terse, and more laden with meaning than
words. He was also a man just in all his dealings, and regarded every
species of meanness with a thorough contempt.
Uncle Alexander was a man of a somewhat
different stamp. James was a humourist, and fond of a joke; Alexander
never tried a joke but once, and even that was a serious one. He was
originally bred a cartwright, but, in a fit of patriotism, he joined the
navy when the French Revolution broke out. He dailed with Nelson,
witnessed the Mutiny at the Nore, fought under Duncan at Camperdown, and
under Sir John Borlase Warren, of Loch Swilly; assisted in capturing the
"Generoux" and "Guillaum Tell," two French ships-of-the-line; was one of
the seamen who in the Egyptian-expedition, were drafted out of Lord
Keith's fleet to supply the lack of artillerymen in the army of Sir
Ralph Abercrombe.; had a shard in the dangers and glory of the landing
in Egypt, and fought in the battle in which Sir Ralph Abercromby fell.
Although a grave and naturally taciturn man, he could discourse fluently
upon any subject which interested him deeply. His narratives, however,
related to what he had seen rather than to what he had done. A man of
great merit is invariably a man of great modesty; and in all the stories
which this good man related respecting his wanderings in the world, and
his dangers by land and perils by water, he never appeared as the hero
himself. He had, we are informed, a decided turn for natural history,
and his nephew, in his work "First Impressions of England and its
People," relates an anecdote of him which shows his intense love of
science, and his remarkable coolness under fire. When he leaped from the
boat on to the historic soil of Egypt to join Abercrombe, the bullets
were whizzing about in every direction, and men were being thrown down
on the beach, either struck dead or covered with ghastly wounds.
Alexander, with the love of nature strong within him, could not help
looking at the sand of the beach to see whether the shells in it
differed greatly from those of his own country. One curious shell caught
his eye, and amidst the raging battle he found time to transfer it from
the shore to his waistcoat pocket! His nephew received that precious
trophy, and it held an honoured place in his museum. These men became,
so far as they could, a second father to the boy Miller. On Sabbath
evenings he used regularly to attend his uncles to be questioned on the
Shorter and Mother Catechisms. These evenings were finished up with a
"reading" from some of the older divines; and, says Hugh, "I used to
take my place in the circle, though, I am afraid, not much to my
advantage. I occasionally caught a fact, or had my attention arrested a
moment by a simile or metaphor; but the trains of close argument and the
passages of dreary application were always lost." Lost at the time,
perhaps, just as the seed seems lost when cast into the ground; but both
the arguments and the applications sprung up in the future. Those old
right reverend gentlemen, although ponderous—alarmingly so to the young
mind—dealt in sterling argument and powerful application, and no
sterling word can be lost, whatever we may think.
With books selected by and read under the
direction of his uncles, and in quiet walks along the sea shore and in
the neighbouring woods, with Uncle Sandy or Uncle James, the boy
steadily improved the education he received in the dame's school. Under
the tuition of Sandy, he learned to distinguish the difference in the
myriad shells found within the Cromarty tide-mark, and in the plants
which clothed the surface of the inland. He had learned as yet no
nomenclature of natural history, but he was acumulating facts, and,
unknown to himself, was being initiated into the rudiments of that noble
science which enables man to trace the different portions of the design
of the material universe. Under the direction of James, he was becoming
a student of archaeology and legendary lore, and both men were striving
to mould the mind of the boy into something noble, and, above all, to
instil into it that knowledge which "maketh rich and addeth no sorrow."
At the age of twelve, Hugh Miller bade
farewell to the dame's school, in which he had mastered the alphabet,
and was sent to the Cromarty Grammar School, attended at that time by
about a hundred and twenty boys, as he informs us, "and about thirty
individuals more, much looked down upon by the others, and not worth the
counting, seeing that they were only lassies." Some book learning had
undoubtedly been picked up in this new sphere —for parish schoolmasters
then, as they are now, unless in some flagrant instanced, were
painstaking gentlemen, who took a real pride in the progress of their
pupils. The schoolmaster of Cromarty could really teach a boy if he were
willing to learn, Mr. Miller tells us, and, as he was erne of the
learning boys, we say again, he no doubt made considerable progress in
his education at the Cromarty Grammar School. The teacher was in the
habit of recommending the parents of the clever boys to give them a
classical education, and, as he considered young Hugh Miller decidedly
clever, he urged Uncle James to put his protege to Latin. Accordingly,
to Latin he was put, and found the Rudiments by far the dullest book he
had ever read. It was, from beginning to end, "words, words, words," and
apparently words without any meaning. He could not conceive how the
changes should be rung so vigourously upon penna, a pen, when it did not
appear to be of greater importance in the new than it was in the old
language. Accordingly that simple noun staggered his faith in the
propriety of being at the trouble to master the language. If this one
vocable changed its form so frequently, appearing as penna, as pennœ,
as pennarum as pennam, as pennas, and so forth, what might be expected
of others of apparently greater importance.
Latin was obviously not his forte, and so he
never took to it heartily nor made great progress in learning it. In a
by no means bright class, he was generally found at its nether end, and
as he derived no pleasure from the language of Virgil and Ovijl, he
contrived, by stealth, in the very school where he should have been
mastering their language, to become acquainted with their sentiments
through the medium of an English translation.
In consequence of his being a great reader
of stories and historical narratives, he became a great story-teller.
Like Walter Scott, he amused his school-fellows by telling them stories,
luring them, we fear, from their tasks, and making them look the
opposite of bright pupils when called up to their lessons. From relating
the stories constructed by others, he came ultimately to construct
stories for himself, and many a terrible tale did he. fabricate from his
own brain for the amusement of his classmates by the sea-shore in the
bright summer time.
Thus, although the Latin was neglected, the
lad was insensibly educating himself; developing imagination, acquiring
some power over the English language, strengthening the powers of the
memory, and, in short, doing himself a greater amount of good than the
schoolmaster could have done for him. The master, good easy man, knew
quite well about these story-tellings, but, instead of attempting to put
them down as some autocrats of the school might have done, he, being a
humourist in a small way, bestowed a nickname upon the story-teller. He
dubbed Hugh Miller the Sennachie; but as he gave it the Gaelic instead
of the Saxon pronunciation, the school-boys could not pronounce it, and
so, as a nomme de plume, it died as soon as it was born. The boy,
although not an industrious Latin scholar as we have seen, was a decided
favourite with the master. He exhibited greater powers than any of his
companions, and at the general English lesson, the master used to make
his pupil little speeches, indicative of a certain literary ground
common to them upon which the others had not entered. "That, sir,' he
has said, after the class had just perused in the school collection a 'Tatler'
or a 'Spectator',. 'That, sir, is a good paper—its an 'Addison,'
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 headed, 'A Poem on
Care,' he brought it to his desk, and, after reading it carefully over,
called me up, and, with his closed, pen-knife, 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 the knife-handle on one of the lines; 'and here's an ill
spelt word; and there's another; and you have not at all attended to the
punctuation;—but the general sense of the peice 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 grammar.'" What a delightful task
it must have been to study under a master of that stamp. One might have
almost learned Latin, or anything else requiring the greatest sacrifice
of self, to have gratified such a man. Hugh was grateful to him in his
own way, no doubt, but be could not learn Latin to please him. He
contrived, however, to make a respectable appearance in translation; and
how, does the reader suppose? Why, this model teacher was in the habit
of reading in English in the morning the passage which had to be
translated in the afternoon, and his pupil, possessed of a good memory,
gave the master back his own translation, word for word, when the class
was called. An unfair advantage, undoubtedly, this to take of the good
nature of such a master; but duller boys than Hugh Miller have done so
often, and that, we suppose, must be his excuse. |
