[1] before finally becoming a Unitarian and officiating as a minister of that denomination in Greenock, Scotland and chapel of Toxteth Park, in the edge of Liverpool, England.
[1][2] It was during his three years preaching in Liverpool that Giles gained a reputation as a preacher of marked oratorical power.
[2] He was widely known as a lecturer,[3] and his numerous volumes of literary interpretation and criticism were well-received, particularly his Human Life in Shakespeare.
He had a hunchbacked, dwarfish stature which he claimed resulted from a nurse having let him fall as an infant, injuring his spine.
[1] Throughout his life, he struggled with alcoholism; although he initially found strong drink distasteful, he became acclimated to liquor when it was prescribed to him to counter an illness.