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Termination of Apprenticeship—Visits
Edinburgh —Returns to Cromarty out of Health—Goes to Inverness in Quest
of Work—Amusing Interview with a Scotch Minister—Publishes his First
Volume —Death of Uncle James.
We cannot look for incidents of a very
striking or picturesque character in the daily life of a stone mason,
and it would be tedious to dwell upon the routine existence even of Hugh
Miller. He pursued his calling faithfully, earning the reputation of a
skilful and honest tradesman in different masonic squads in the north.
Meeting with singular characters at times, amongst his fellow-workmen,
and occasionally finding himself located in wild desolate parts of the
country, thinly inhabited by human beings, but abounding in
reminiscences of early times where these wild and howling wastes were
supposed to be tenanted by the characters which figure in the
picturesque mythology of the far Scottish North. Every legend was
carefully noted down, and in the summer evenings, after his labour was
over, we find him putting them into shape, with a view to their
publication. The legend hunting was diversified by the study of botany
and geology, and, by the expiration of his apprenticeship as a mason, he
was known by many learned men as an accurate scientific student. On the
termination of his apprenticeship he proceeded to Edinburgh partly to
find work, partly to get rid of an old property in Leith, which had
ceased to be profitable, .and partly to enjoy the advantages of the
metropolitan city in the pursuit of his studies.
While in Edinburgh, he made a raid among the
celebrated divines of that time; one of whom, Dr. Colquhoun, of Leith,
made the fires the subject of a special discourse, in which he argued
that they had been sent by Providence as punishment, in token of the
Divine displeasure at a musical festival—an oratorio, we learn, which
had taken place three weeks anterior to the conflagration. Hugh Miller
listened with respect to the preaching of such a generally sound and
able man as the Doctor, but did not like his doctrine of special
providences. He derived greater pleasure and more profit from the
preaching of the acomplished author of the "life of Knox," the Rev. Dr.
M'Crie, and he tells us the following Anecdote illustrative of the
Doctor's tact in securing the attention of an audience :—
"There was a great deal of coughing in the
place (the chapel in which Dr. M'Crie preached), the effect of a recent
change of weather; and the Doctor, whose Voice was not a strong one, and
who seemed somewhat annoyed by the ruthless interuptions, stopping
suddenly short in the middle of his argument, made a dead pause. When
people are taken by surprise, they cease to cough—a circumstance which
he had evidently calculated upon. Every eye was now turned towards him,
and for a full minute so dead was the silence that one might have heard
a pin drop. 'see, my friends,' said the Doctor, resuming his speech with
a suppressed smile, 'I see you can all be quiet enough when I am quiet.'
"
The first winter in Edinburgh passed away as
all winters do pass. Our philosopher mason read a good deal from odd
volumes picked up at cheap bookstalls, from books borrowed from his
friend, William Boss, and from a brother-workman, a somewhat wild and
reckless man, but withal the most intelligent, with the exception of
Hugh Miller, in the squad His book-shelf boasted of from twenty to
thirty: volumes at that time, all purchased from the Edinburgh stalls,
and all solid books requiring the exercise of the thinking faculty on
the part of the reader. There was no cheap literature then, and the
future editor of the Witness seemed to think that the world was, upon
the whole, better without it. The Niddry woods were beautiful, too, in
the moonlight evenings, and these were frequently visited by him in "
musing mood;" but the spring came round and brought with it abundance of
work and excellent wages.
The dust supplied by two years hewing at
this period began to affect Hugh Miller's lungs, and he deemed it
prudent to return for some space to Cromarty, in order to recruit his
health. We need not dwell upon the voyage, its incidents, nor its
companions. It was long, but Cromarty was at last reached, and his two
uncles, cousin George, and a number of relatives had assembled on the
beech to welcome the wanderer home. His health was bad, but he had no
acute pain, so that he could read and at times take short rambles in the
country, and take lessons in his favourite science. About this time,
too, his faith in Christianity, which had previously been cold and
speculative, became vital and practical, and he recognised the scheme of
Redemption as something to be trusted as the chiefest of life's supports
rather than as a system to be discussed and argued about in a polemical
spirit. His constitution ultimately triumphed over his malady, and he
acquired . complete health and strength, studying the peculiarities of a
colony .of gipsies which had settled in the cave in which he spent many
days during his boyhood. In his period of convalesence he had amused
himself with hewing a dial-stone for his uncles, from an original
design, and gradually, as his health returned, little jobs in the
stone-cutting line, monumental tablets, and others, came in. He hewed
better than any other mason in the north, and, after practising for some
time in the country, in the parishes of Cromarty and Nigg, on the advice
of a friend he started for Inverness, depending upon his skill as a
stone cutter for employment. Thinking that his capacity as a poet might
be an additional ground of recommendation to a discerning public, he
took sundry manuscript poems along with him to the Highland capital,
having been previously furnished with a letter of introduction to a
minister who was supposed to have influence enough with one of the local
journals to get Hugh Miller's verses inserted in its "Poet's Corner."
The interview with the reverend gentleman is so good that we must give
it in the author's own language.
"I was informed that the minister's hour for
receiving visitors of the humbler class was between eleven and twelve at
noon; and, with the letter of introduction and my copy of verses in my
pocket, I called at the manse, and was shown into a little anteroom,
furnished with two seats of deal that ran along the opposite walls. I
found the place occupied by some six or seven individuals,—more than
half their number old withered women, in very shabby habiliments, who,
as I soon learned from a conversation which they kept up in a grave
undertone, about <weekly allowances and the partiality of the
session,were paupers. The others were young men, who had apparently
serious requests to prefer anent marriage and baptism; for I saw that
one of them was ever and anon drawing from his breast-pocket a tattered
copy of the Shorter Catechism, and running over the questions; and I
overheard another asking his neighbour "who drew up the contract lines
for him?" and "whae he had got the whisky?" The minister entered; and as
he passed into the inner room, we all rose. He stood for a moment in the
door-way, and beckoning on one of the young men—he of the
Catechism,—they went in together, and the door closed. They remained
closeted together for about twenty minutes or half an hour, and then the
young man went out; and another young man—he who had procured the
contract lines and the whisky—took his place. The interview in this
second case, however, was much shorter than the first; and a very few
minutes served to despatch the business of the third young man; and then
the minister, coming to the door-way, looked first at the old women and
then at me, as if mentally determining our respective claims to
priority; and mine at length prevailing—I know not on what occult
principle—I was beckoned in. I presented my letter of introduction,
which was graciously read; and, though the nature of the business did
strike me as out of keeping with the place, and it did cost me some
little trouble to suppress at one time a burst of laughter, that would,
of course, have been prodigiously improper in the circumstances, I
detailed to him in a few words my little plan, and handed him my copy of
verses. He read them aloud with slow deliberation.
"The minister paused as he concluded, and
looked puzzled. 'Pretty well, I dare say,' he said; 'but I do not now
read poetry. You however, use a word that is not English,—"Thy winding marge along."
Marge!—What is marge?' 'You will find it in Johnson,' I said. 'Ah, but
we must not use all the words we find in Johnson.' 'But the poets make
frequent use of it.' 'What Poets?' 'Spencer.' 'Too old,—too old; no
authority now,' said the minister. 'But the Wartons also use it.' 'I
don't know the Wartons.' 'It occurs also,' I iterated, 'in one of the
most finished sonnets of Henry Kirk White.' 'What sonnet?' 'That to the
river Trent.'
"Once more, O Trent! along thy peebly marge,
A pensive invalid, reduced and pale,
From the close sick-room newly set at large,
Woos to his woe-worn cheek the pleasant gale."
It is, in short, one of the common English
words of the poetic vocabulary.' Could a man in quest of patronage, and
actually at the time soliciting a favour, possibly contrive to say
anything more imprudent? And this, too, to a gentleman so much
accustomed to be deferred to when he took up his ground on
the Standards, as sometimes to forget, through the sheer force of habit,
that he was not a standard himself! He coloured to the eyes; and his
condescending humility, which seemed, I thought, rather too great for
the occasion, and was of a kind which my friend Mr. Stewart never used
to exhibit, appeared somewhat ruffled. 'I have no acquaintance,' he
said, 'with the editor of the Courier: we take opposite sides on very
important questions; and I cannot recommend your verses to him: but call
on Mr.-; he is one of the proprietors, and, with my compliments state
your case to him: he will perhaps be able to assist you. Meanwhile, I
wish you all success.' The minister hurried me out, and one of the
withered old women was called in. 'This' I said to myself, as I stepped
into the street, 'is the sort of patronage which letters of introduction
procure for one. I don't think I'll seek any more of it.' "
Mr. Miller's efforts to obtain work as a
stone-cutter were rather more successful than was his attempt to get an
introduction to literature; but, while in Inverness, he committed a
volume of poetry to print. The volume was no great success; but it
introduced the author to the genial-hearted editor of the Inverness
Courier, Mr. Carruthers, who was a much better judge of poetry than the
reverend censor to whom Mr. Miller first showed his "Ode to the Ness."
If the poems fell somewhat flat upon the public, a series of letters
upon the "Herring Fishery," published in the columns of the Courier,
were eminently popular, attracting the attention of Sir Walter Scott,
and all sorts of people, whose approval was fame. While in Inverness,
Uncle James, so dearly and deservedly loved, died, and when Hugh Miller
returned home stricken with grief for the loss of his revered relative,
a letter was waiting him, recording the early death of his friend
William Ross. Hugh prepared a memorial stone for his uncle, and
inscribed an epitaph upon it, in which the departed was described as "An
honest, warm-hearted man, who had the happiness of living without
reproach, and of dying without fear."
No lie this, we believe, as too many
epitaphs are! The critics were now busy with his verses, and the
critiques were all more or less unfavourable. An itinerant elocutionist,
however, criticised them before an audience, amongst which was the
author, but he got hissed and hooted for so doing—the poems were, after
all, popular with the Cromarty public; the prophet did receive honour in
his own country. |
