RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013441583 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
Electric Engraving C. 
 
 
 ^y 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Author of ' Rab and His Friends,' etc. 
 
 WITH A SELECTION FROM 
 HIS CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER PEDDIE 
 
 M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S.E. 
 
 His life was gentle. . . . 
 
 Nature he loved, and next to Nature Art.' 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 743 and 745 BROAD WA Y 
 
 1893 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Frontispiece {from Painting by B. S. Peddie, 
 
 from Photographs and Memory). page 
 
 Minto House Surgical Hospital 10 
 
 Mr. Stme — Class-room Sketch in 1833 . . 16 
 
 Dr. Brown. Photograph in 1866 23 
 
 Dr. Brown. Photograph by Fergus, Largs, 1871 . . 34 
 
 'Wasp' . . 39 
 
 ' Dandie and his Friends,' by Moffat, Edinburgh, 1880 . 40 
 ' Jete Bee ' 
 ' Simon Magus ' 
 
 'Young Saturn' 
 
 ' The Pitlochry Duck 7 
 
 ' The Houseless Dogs ' 
 
 64 
 
 64 
 
 64 
 
 67 
 
 108 
 
 Professor Stme (from Engraving by J. Faed, 1868) . 190 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 A large reprint from the Edinburgh Medical Journal 
 of my presidential address to the Harveian Society 
 in April 1890, entitled 'Dr. John Brown: His Life 
 and Work, with Narrative Sketches of Syme in the 
 Old Minto House Hospital and Dispensary Days,' 
 having been expended among town and country 
 members of that Society, a few other medical men, 
 and old friends of the late Professor Syme and Dr. 
 John Brown, I have been induced by its favourable 
 reception and at the suggestion of many friends to 
 reproduce it more as a biographical sketch of Dr. 
 Brown. To this end much new matter has been 
 introduced, while the bulk of what appeared in the 
 original paper relating to Mr. Syme has been trans- 
 ferred to an Appendix. 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION 
 
 Shortly after Dr. Brown's removal from our midst, 
 several touching In Memoriam notices appeared in 
 the newspapers of the day ; and subsequently articles 
 in some of the monthlies — namely, an obituary 
 notice in the Edinburgh Medical Journal of June 
 1882 ; a highly artistic sketch by Mr. Andrew Lang 
 in the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine in 
 December 1882 ; 1 an erudite article by Professor 
 Masson in Macmillan's Magazine of February 1883 ; 2 
 a short but lively paper in 1887 by Miss G. T. Eoss; a 
 bright and loving ' Outline ' in 1889 by Miss E. T. 
 M'Laren; 3 and in the recent January and February 
 numbers of the United Presbyterian Magazine a 
 clever and discriminating article by Eobert Eichard- 
 son, B.A. But notwithstanding these various some- 
 what fragmentary productions, I am aware that there 
 is a call by many who ardently admired and loved 
 'Dr. John,' and a strong desire felt by others who 
 have known him only from his writings or name, 
 
 1 F. Warne & Co., London and New York. 
 
 * Reprinted lately in Edinburgh Sketches and Memories. A. & C. 
 Black, London and Edinburgh. 
 
 8 Dr. John Brown and his Sister Isabella. Edinburgh : David 
 Douglas, 1890. 
 
INTRODUCTION IX 
 
 to have an extended memoir, from which they 
 might learn more about him. I am well aware 
 that the difficulties in undertaking satisfactorily 
 such a task are great ; but inspired by long familiar 
 acquaintance with Dr. Brown, and an intimate know- 
 ledge and sympathetic appreciation of his character 
 and work, I have endeavoured in the following- 
 pages to do my best. In this effort I have chosen, 
 by quotations from his published papers and private 
 correspondence now before me, and from varied 
 reminiscences, to make him to a large extent his 
 own biographer, thus presenting to the reader a 
 truer ideal of the man than could be conveyed 
 by any amount of editorial description, criticism, 
 or literary embellishment. 
 
 The occasion when the address or ' oration ' was 
 delivered was the one hundred and eighth Festival 
 of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh, when I held 
 the honoured position of its President. Then, instead 
 of attempting to dress up in a new garb the well 
 chronicled facts connected with the illustrious William 
 Harvey, 1 his great discovery of the circulation of the 
 
 1 See AppeDdix, No. II. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 blood, or the times in which, he lived, or attempting 
 anything on the lines of scientific research, I chose, in 
 accordance with the spirit of Harvey's will, to dis- 
 course on those of professional reminiscence and 
 biography. With that intent I selected the me- 
 mories of James Syme, the distinguished surgeon and 
 teacher, and John Brown, the popular writer and 
 beloved physician ; and in the accomplishment of 
 that design I naturally had much to say of their 
 relations to each other and to myself during the im- 
 portant period of our lives — from 1829 to 1852 — when 
 Minto House existed, first as a surgical hospital and 
 dispensary, and afterwards as a private maison de 
 sanU, and a public dispensary. 
 
 Many of the Harveians present on the occasion of 
 the Festival were only boys at school in 1870, when 
 Syme died; a larger number were unborn in 1843, 
 the end of his first decade as Professor of Clinical 
 Surgery in the University of Edinburgh; and only 
 one besides myself, namely, Sir Douglas Maclagan, 
 was then present who knew anything of Mr. Syme 
 or John Brown in the early days of Minto House 
 Surgical Hospital. I considered, therefore, that it 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 was well to bring before the existing generation of 
 young doctors the memories of those two remarkable 
 men, and also the existence of that unique institution 
 which marked so important an epoch in both of their 
 lives. And although my own life and work was so 
 much interwoven with those of my revered master 
 and nearly lifelong friend in the management of the 
 institution which kept us so many years in close 
 connection, yet I have endeavoured in the following 
 narrative to avoid as far as possible reference to that 
 which concerns myself. 
 
 In regard to the correspondence introduced in the 
 following pages, I tender my best thanks to Sir Douglas 
 Maclagan, Sir Theodore^ Martin, the trustees of the 
 late Andrew Coventry Dick, Sheriff of Bute, Mrs. 
 Brewster Macpherson, Miss Harvey, daughter of the 
 late Sir George Harvey, P.R.S.A., and Miss Logan, 
 daughter of the late Alexander Logan, Sheriff of 
 Forfarshire, for the letters furnished by them, and 
 to John Brown, Esq., for sanctioning their use. I 
 beg also to thank Professor Veitch, the Bev. Dr. 
 Walter C. Smith, and Mr. Robert Richardson for 
 permission to use their in memoriam verses ; and 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 my warmest thanks are due to Mr. J. E. Findlay of 
 Aberlour for the interesting communication, sent to 
 me when the work was in the hands of the pub- 
 lishers, which I have placed in the Appendix. 1 In 
 regard to some of the illustrations, I thank James 
 Syme, Esq., for the use of the engraving of his Father 
 and the woodcut of Minto House ; and Messrs. Moffat 
 of Edinburgh, and Fergus of Largs, for photographs 
 which have been reproduced. 
 
 ALEXANDER PEDDIE. 
 
 15 Etjtland Street, 
 Edinburgh, March 1893. 
 
 1 Appendix, No. I. 
 
Dr. JOHN BROWN 
 
 John Brown was born on the 22nd September 1810, 
 at Biggar, Lanarkshire, of highly distinguished intel- 
 lectual and spiritual lineage. His father, the Rev. 
 John Brown, was then minister of the Secession 
 Church there, afterwards of the church in Rose Street, 
 Edinburgh, and latterly of Broughton Place. He 
 received the title of D.D. in 1830 from Jefferson 
 College, Pennsylvania ; was the Professor of Practical 
 and Exegetical Theology in the United Presbyterian 
 Church; was the author of various works of high 
 repute for Biblical learning, critical acumen, and 
 evangelical teaching ; and a preacher of great power 
 and popularity. John's grandfather, again, was the 
 Rev. John Brown of Whitburn, a devout and popular 
 minister and author in the same denomination, — in 
 which also were his three grand-uncles, the Rev. 
 Ebenezer Brown of Inverkeithing, the Rev. Dr. 
 
DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Thomas Brown of Dalkeith, and the Rev. Dr. William 
 Brown, long Secretary of the Scottish Missionary 
 Society, all men of piety, mental capacity, and diver- 
 sified distinctiveness. John's great-grandfather was 
 the celebrated Rev. John Brown of Haddington, the 
 author of The Self-interpreting Bible, of whom the 
 story is told of his having — while a herd-laddie on 
 the slopes of the Lomonds — taught himself Greek, 
 and walked over-night twenty-four miles to a shop 
 in St. Andrews in order to buy a Greek Testament. 
 The bookseller, surprised at the request from such 
 a youth, informed some professors who came in, and 
 one of the latter got a Testament from a shelf, and 
 looking out a passage, said, ' Boy, read this, and you 
 shall have it for nothing' It was accordingly won, 
 to the astonishment and admiration of those present ; 
 and our Dr. John has told us, in language strikingly 
 beautiful and terse, 1 that ' that Testament has come 
 into my possession and is highly prized as a 
 memento of the heroic old man of Haddington, for 
 whom my father had a peculiar reverence,— as, 
 
 . 1 Horce Subsecivai, vol. ii. (or series), ed. 1882. ' Letter to John 
 Cairns, D.D.,' pp. 66, 67. All quotations will be made from this 
 edition. — Vol. or Series meaning the same thing. 
 
PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE 
 
 indeed, we all have. He was our , king, the founder 
 of our dynasty; we dated from him; and he was 
 "hedged" accordingly by a certain sacredness or 
 divinity;' and that 'this little, worn old book was 
 regarded by my father, and is by myself, as the sword 
 of the Spirit, which our ancestor so nobly won, and 
 wore, and warred with.' 
 
 John was six years old when his gentle and 
 saintly mother died; but while thus early deprived 
 of her tender care, his father's love seemed drawn out 
 to him in greater tenderness and solicitude as his 
 companion, instructor, and guide. They slept to- 
 gether in his father's study — a small room; and as 
 John has pathetically written, 'I remember often 
 awaking far on in the night or morning, and seeing 
 that keen, beautiful, intense face bending over those 
 Rosenmiillers, Ernestis, Storrs, and Kuinoels — the fire 
 out, and the grey dawn peering through the window ; 
 and when he heard me move he would speak to me 
 in the foolish words of endearment my mother was 
 wont to use, and come to bed, and take me, warm as 
 I was, into his cold bosom. Vitringa in Jesaiam I 
 especially remember, — a noble folio. Even then, with 
 
DB, JOHN BROWN 
 
 that eagerness to communicate what he had himself 
 found, he would try to make me, small man as I was, 
 " apprehend " [a favourite expression of his father's] 
 what he and Vitringa between them had made out, 
 of the fifty-third chapter of his favourite prophet, 
 the princely Isaiah.' l 
 
 Born of such blood, and cradled and brought up in 
 an intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, there is no 
 wonder that in John's future life an expansion of 
 mental powers, and a growth of the Spirit, should 
 undergo progressive development. His desire for 
 knowledge was early shown. Writing in his fiftieth 
 year he said, ' When a boy, and visiting at a country 
 mansion, that fortnight is still to me like the memory 
 of some happy dream ; the old library, the big chair 
 in which I huddled myself up for hours with the 
 New Arabian Nights, and all the old-fashioned and 
 unforgotten books I found there.' 2 
 
 My acquaintance with John Brown began when we 
 were of like age in 1822, on the occasion of his 
 father's translation to the congregation of Kose Street, 
 Edinburgh, and when my father assisted at the 
 
 1 Hwm Subsecivce, vol. ii. pp. 14, 15. 2 Ibid. p. 53. 
 
EARLY TRAIT'S OP CHARACTER 
 
 'Induction' ceremony. We sat together on the 
 pulpit stairs — by special permission as the ministers' 
 sons — the church being crowded to excess ; and I felt 
 drawn to him more than to any youth I had met be- 
 fore, impressed by his looks of sweetness, intelligence, 
 and earnestness, and the keen interest he showed 
 in the proceedings; and from the fact, likewise, 
 that as there was a book under his arm, I thought 
 he must be an awfully studious and clever fellow. 
 On further intimacy I soon discovered indications of 
 those characteristic traits of mind and disposition 
 which distinguished him in after life : gentleness and 
 geniality, quickness of observation, a lover of books, 
 an excellent scholar, and having a lively appreciation 
 of the beautiful in nature and art, and of everything 
 in the smallest degree odd or humorous. In the 
 ' Letter ' already quoted, he has told us that his first 
 tasting the flavour of a joke, the first shock and relish 
 of humour, of mental tickling by ' a word being made 
 to carry a double meaning — and all the lighter of it ' 
 — was on hearing that a big, perspiring countryman 
 one day rushed into the Black Bull coach-office, 
 Edinburgh, shouting, ' Are yir insides a' oot ? ' * 
 1 Horm SubsecivcB, ii. p. 93. 
 
DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 John was unquestionably more ' auld-farrant ' than 
 the generality of boys. In his case evidently ' the 
 boy was father of the man;' but though at this 
 period of life there were the indications of a fine 
 mental organisation; he was by no means soft or 
 spiritless. In that inimitable description of a dog- 
 fight in the introduction of 'Rab and his Friends,' 
 and especially that which tells of his liberating with 
 a cobbler's knife the head of Eab from a humiliating 
 muzzle, and so enabling that hero ' to do ' in a twink- 
 ling for the 'game chicken,' — if that part of the 
 story of Rab is true, be evinced the genuine pluck of 
 the most spirited youth; or, if it is fiction, it is 
 evidence that in his spirit he had the desire to act 
 thus. However, I do not think John ever engaged in 
 the ordinary games and sports of boys, which in those 
 times were football, shinty, hounds and hares, or the 
 sham fights suggested by the classical readings of the 
 Roman wars, or by the recent excitements connected 
 with the Peninsular Campaign. Besides, I never 
 heard of his playing a round of golf, which was a 
 favourite game on Bruntsfield Links in those days 
 before its surroundings became populous ; or firing a 
 
school-days and associates 
 
 shot, or even angling, although brought up in a 
 district so favourable for the pursuit of the 'gentle 
 art,' as were the beautiful upper reaches of the Clyde 
 and Tweed, with their many lovely tributary streams 
 and burns. Indeed, I remember him in later years 
 saying, that on one occasion he 'tried to fish, and 
 caught everything, — but fish!' He was, however, 
 like his father, a bold and excellent horseman. 
 
 John was tutored entirely by his father before 
 coming to Edinburgh in 1822; he was then placed 
 for two years under teachers of the name of Arnott 
 and Steele ; afterwards was transferred to the Rector's 
 class of the High School under Dr. Carson, in which, 
 during the usual two years' course, he proved himself 
 an excellent scholar, especially in Greek, the taste for 
 which was shown to the latest day of his life; and 
 completed his classical and literary education in 
 attending classes in the University. In all of these 
 classes he was associated with several boys, who 
 remained among his intimate friends through life, 
 namely, Sir Theodore Martin, the late Lord President 
 Inglis, Lord Moncreiff, Sir Douglas Maclagan, the late 
 Dr. Benjamin Bell, etc. 
 
DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 In May 1827, at the age of seventeen, by the en- 
 couragement of the Kev. John Belfrage, M.D., of Slate- 
 ford, he entered on the study of medicine, and at once 
 began an apprenticeship with Mr. Syme. Lapse of 
 time probably may have to some extent obliterated 
 the name of Belfrage from the denomination with 
 which he was connected, or even the sphere in which 
 he laboured — t&mpora mwtantur, nos et mutamw in 
 illis ; — but a few, as I do, may still remember him, or 
 may have heard of him not only as an able and devoted 
 Seceder minister, but also as a wise, energetic and suc- 
 cessful amateur physician among his own people in the 
 then rural village and district of Slateford ; and one 
 who was not unfrequently called into consultation with 
 Dr. Abercrombie and other physicians in Edinburgh 
 in critical cases. Dr. Abercrombie has been styled by 
 John Brown our 'Scottish Sydenham;' and in his 
 panegyric on Dr. Belfrage he says: 'Belfrage was a 
 great man in posse, if ever I saw one, — " a village 
 Hampden." Greatness was of his essence ; nothing 
 paltry, nothing secondary, nothing untrue. Large in 
 body, large and handsome in face, lofty in manners 
 to his equals or superiors, homely, familiar, cordial 
 
APPRENTICED TO SYME 9 
 
 with the young and the poor, — I never met with a 
 more truly royal nature, more native and endued to 
 rule, guide, and benefit mankind. He was for ever 
 scheming for the good of others, and chiefly in the 
 way of helping them to help themselves.' 1 
 
 John was apprenticed to Syme, then prophetically 
 looked on by Dr. Belfrage as the rising star of surgery 
 in Scotland. Syme was in his twenty-eighth year, 
 while John was his third apprentice ; and forty-five 
 years afterwards this grateful tribute was paid to his 
 master's memory, whom he may be said to have 
 almost worshipped : ' Perhaps I was too near Mr. 
 Syme to see and measure him accurately, but he 
 remains in my mind as one of the best and ablest and 
 most beneficent of men. He was my master ; my 
 apprentice-fee bought him his first carriage — a gig, 
 and I got the first ride in it, and he was my friend. 
 He was, I believe, the greatest surgeon Scotland ever 
 produced ; and I cannot conceive a greater, hardly of 
 as great, a clinical teacher.' 2 
 
 John was indentured after Syme had given up his 
 
 1 Horm Subsecivce, p. 77. Series ii. 
 
 2 Ibid. 'Mr. Syme,' Series i., p. 392. 
 
10 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 anatomical class, and was now teaching surgery in 
 the Extra-Mural School, and struggling to obtain a 
 footing in surgical practice. Soon thereafter, May 
 1829, Minto House Surgical Hospital and Dispensary 
 
 BACK VIEW OF MINTO HOUSE — FACING THE NORTH. 
 
 1. Old Trades' Maiden Hospital. 
 
 2. Argyle Square — now Chambers Street. 
 
 was founded by Syme. This was done by his taking 
 a long lease of a fine old mansion in Argyle Square, 
 originally built by the Minto family, but which some 
 years since was swept away along with the square and 
 other historically old buildings in the formation of 
 
the minto house surgical hospital 11 
 
 that now noble thoroughfare, Chambers Street, in 
 which, near the site of the hospital, the Medical 
 School has been built, to which the commemorative 
 name of Minto House has been applied. 
 
 The circumstance which led to this bold venture of 
 Syme's in opening a public hospital with twenty-four 
 beds was the opposition which he encountered from 
 certain surgeons and their friends to prevent him 
 obtaining an appointment on the surgical staff of the 
 Boyal Infirmary. Advised and encouraged chiefly by 
 the two worthies, JBelfrage and Abercrombie, and 
 believing thoroughly in his own strength in course of 
 time to storm the surgical citadel by rivalry in good 
 works, or at any rate to obtain at an early period high 
 position in surgical fame, he estimated that the pro- 
 bable cost of maintaining such an institution would, 
 to a large extent, be met by the board in the hospital 
 of a resident surgeon or pupil, the fees of a limited 
 number of pupils for clinical instruction, and help 
 from the public in donations and subscriptions ; while 
 a large private income might be expected from ap- 
 prentice fees and a systematic course of surgery. 
 In these calculations he was not disappointed ; for 
 
12 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 instead of wrecking his professional progress and pro- 
 spects, the spirited action of founding and carrying on 
 this unique institution, his notable surgical achieve- 
 ments, and his lucid clinical and systematic teaching 
 and publications, speedily gained for him the favour 
 of the public and the profession. The twenty-four 
 beds of the hospital were constantly occupied with 
 most interesting and important cases of surgical 
 disease ; the dispensary waiting-room and outdoor 
 attendance were in much request ; the clinical roll of 
 pupils, to the limited number of forty, was always 
 complete ; the systematic surgical class-room, accom- 
 modating upwards of 250, was crowded ; the number 
 of those apprenticed to him at a high fee was quite 
 unprecedented in the surgical annals of our city ; and, 
 finally, in less than five years Syme was Professor of 
 Clinical Surgery in the University, and obtained in 
 virtue of that office the Clinical Surgery Wards in 
 the Royal Infirmary. 
 
 It was on the 15th November 1830, by the advice 
 also of Drs. Belfrage and Abercrombie — the one a 
 family friend, and the other our family doctor — that 
 I became an apprentice of Mr. Syme, eighteen months 
 
AUTHORS APPRENTICESHIP TO SYME 13 
 
 after the establishment of the hospital. John Brown 
 was then third, while I was thirteenth on the roll of 
 apprentices. The institution was then in its full 
 swing of active, attractive, and highly beneficial work ; 
 and its fame and popularity were great, not merely 
 in the city, but throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land, notwithstanding the rivalry of the Royal 
 Infirmary and surgical lecturers so powerful as were 
 Liston, Lizars, and several others. 
 
 John Brown had from the beginning of the in- 
 stitution done much good work in its different de- 
 partments as dispenser, dresser, clerk, and assistant, 
 as well as formerly in connection with Syme's surgical 
 class and practice, and was a great favourite of his 
 master — indeed, more of a companion than a pupil. 
 He was also notably popular with the fellow-appren- 
 tices, nurses, and patients, whose regard and admira- 
 tion arose from his general intelligence, insight of 
 character, relish for anything humorous, his quaint 
 remarks, ready anecdotes, gentle manners, and the 
 possession of that singularly sweet and sympathetic 
 countenance which he retained to the end of his 
 days. 
 
14 - DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 In the daily muster of apprentices x in the Minto 
 House consulting-room before or after the hospital 
 visit or lecture, I may notice that Mr. Syme, though 
 at times moody, was in general lively, familiar, and 
 in sympathy with us. Here we gave in our reports 
 since the previous day, noticing any accident or 
 interesting cases admitted or applying for admission ; 
 any amusing or exciting occurrence in the hospital, 
 or outside in the dispensary practice, which was 
 large ; and frequently, as may be believed, there was 
 no small amount of gossip or criticism indulged in 
 concerning what was said or done at the infirmary 
 by Liston, Lizars, and their partisans; for rival 
 feelings were strong at that time, and keenly par- 
 ticipated in by the enthusiastic apprentices, pupils, 
 and friends of both parties. The apprentices of 
 this period of the hospital were a good set of youths, 
 industrious and enthusiastic in their profession; 
 merry and companionable. Those with whom John 
 
 1 Regarding the apprenticeship system in the Minto House days 
 as given in the Harveian Address — reprinted in the Edinburgh 
 Medical Journal of May 1890, pp. 1054, etc. — see Appendix 
 No. III. 
 
APPEENTICES. DESCRIPTION OF SYME 15 
 
 Brown and myself were most intimate were Robert 
 Callender and James Wishart, especially the former, 
 who was a connecting link with Theodore Martin, 1 
 who occasionally came about the hospital in those 
 days. Callender was a youth of very considerable 
 mental endowment, well up in his profession, witty, 
 an accomplished botanist, a poet, a good musician — 
 indeed, in every respect one fitted to be successful in 
 his profession and to enjoy life; but he died in a 
 few years of rapid consumption, his bright spirit 
 passing away amid visions of heavenly glory, with 
 expressions of divinest rapture on his lips. In a few 
 years thereafter Dr. Wishart, also a man of sterling 
 worth, who had established himself in a large general 
 practice at Darlington, died of blood-poisoning con- 
 tracted in the exercise of his profession. Very few 
 remain to recall Mr. Syme in those early days in 
 the Minto House class-room when delivering a 
 systematic or clinical lecture : his slim figure in the 
 unbecoming dress of the period ; his slightly hesitat- 
 ing utterance, and somewhat muffled voice. But there 
 was something attractive and impressive in his 
 
 1 Now Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B, 
 
Sic doceb&tt 
 
 
 '% 
 
 -;/^'- 
 
 
 ./' >1 
 
 tf 
 
 v ' _- 
 
 : M 
 
 \ I 
 
 CLASS-ROOM SKETCH OF h 
 
 MR. SYME, 1883. 
 
SYME WITH HIS APPRENTICES 17 
 
 aspect ; and his delivery was so serious and emphatic, 
 his style so clear, concise, and vigorous ; and his 
 exposition so distinguished by accurate description 
 and diagnosis, practical common-sense observation, 
 and consistence with physiological and pathological 
 fact, that he was universally listened to with close 
 attention and interest. 
 
 The description long afterwards by Dr. Brown of 
 Syme meeting his house-surgeons, clerks, and dressers 
 in the small consulting-room of the Koyal Infirmary 
 is a felicitous reproduction of what took place years 
 before at Minto House with his assembled apprentices. 
 ' How delightful Syme was, standing with his back to 
 the fire, making wise jokes — jacula prudentis — now 
 abating a procacious youth, now heartening (en- 
 couraging) a shy, homely one, himself haud ignarus ; 
 giving his old stories of Dr. Gregory and Dr. Barclay. 
 How the latter — who had been a " stickit minister," 
 was a capital teacher of anatomy and good sense — used 
 to say to his students, " Gentlemen ! Vesaalius and 
 his fellows were the reapers in the great field of 
 anatomy, John Hunter and his brethren were the 
 
18 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 gleaners — and we, — gentlemen ! — are the stubble 
 geese I"' 1 
 
 John Brown was acting as clerk in Minto House 
 at the time I joined; and it was immediately after- 
 wards that the incidents occurred which are so 
 graphically and touchingly narrated by himself in 
 the world-renowned story of Bab and his Friends. 
 Here I may say in answer to the oft-put question, 
 as to the fact or fiction of this most pathetic and 
 artistic story, that Dr. Brown himself has settled it 
 in the introduction to his kindly and philosophic 
 paper, ' Locke and Sydenham,' by saying ' that it is 
 in all essentials strictly matter of fact.' It was not 
 written, or at least not published, until 1858, twenty- 
 eight years after the incidents occurred; and from 
 examination of the books of the hospital, and 
 evidence elicited recently in correspondence, I have 
 found the date of the occurrence to be December 
 instead of 'October' 1830; and the names of the 
 beautiful, sweet, and suffering 'Ailie,' and of her 
 
 1 Horce Subsecioce, 'Mr. Syme,'vol. i. p. 401. For more regarding 
 Mr. Syme's appearance and personal and professional character in 
 subsequent years, see Appendix No. III. 
 
CONCERNING ' RAB AND HIS FRIENDS ' 19 
 
 practical, laconic, but true and tender-hearted hus- 
 band, 'James Noble,' and of the country town 
 'Howgate' — of which he was said to be the carrier 
 — to have been assumed for very obvious reasons. 
 But of this touching story more anon. 1 
 
 Soon after the incidents occurred on which the story 
 of Rab and his Friends was founded, John began 
 to do less in the hospital. He had served ably and 
 faithfully in it, and his term of indenture was nearly 
 at an end, while there were several other appren- 
 tices eager and able to carry on the work. Besides, 
 it was quite evident that he was not fascinated by the 
 excitement of operative practice; and as these were 
 not the days of chloroform or any anaesthetic, his 
 
 intensely sympathetic and sensitive nature seemed to 
 
 * 
 
 recoil from the painful scenes of surgery. Moreover, 
 
 it was obvious that the current of his thoughts and 
 
 tastes was running more in the grooves of literature, 
 
 while if he pursued the profession of medicine it 
 
 would be as a physician rather than a surgeon. 
 
 However, he continued for some time to visit the 
 
 hospital, generally with a volume of Southey, 
 
 1 See pp. 86-89. 
 
20 DE. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Coleridge, Scott, Wordsworth, or other distinguished 
 author under his arm, until the summer of 1832, when 
 he was induced to accept an assistant's place with 
 Dr. Martin of Chatham. For a year John was there 
 engaged in a large amount of general practice ; and 
 a story is told of him which showed his true goodness 
 of heart and self-sacrificing devotion to duty. Cholera, 
 during its first invasion in this country, having broken 
 out with great virulence in that town and district, the 
 panic became so great that in the case of a very poor 
 woman no one would approach her to render the aid 
 she needed. The young assistant, however, did this, 
 and it happened that, overcome by continued efforts 
 to save her, he was found at last fast asleep at the 
 bedside, while she had entered on her eternal rest. 
 
 Another interesting anecdote is told by Dean Hole 
 of Kochester J of the young surgeon during the same 
 epidemic. Early one morning John was called to a 
 village three miles down the river to a place where 
 the disease had broken out with great fury. On 
 nearing the place of landing he saw a crowd of men 
 and women awaiting his arrival. 'They were all 
 
 1 ' The Memories of Dean Hole,' pp. 99-100. (Arnold, 1892.) 
 
AT CHATHAM 21 
 
 shouting for Mm, the shrill cries of the women and 
 the deep voices of the men coming to him over the 
 water. As the boat drew near the shore an elderly 
 but powerful man forced his way through the crowd, 
 plunged into the sea, and seized John Brown and 
 carried him ashore. Then grasping him with the 
 left hand, and thrusting aside with the right all that 
 opposed his progress, he hurried him with an irresist- 
 ible force to a cottage near. It was " Big Joe " in his 
 determination that the doctor's first patient should 
 be his grandson, " Little Joe," convulsed with cholera. 
 The boy got better, but " Big Joe " died that night. 
 The disease was on him when he carried the doctor 
 from the boat ; and when his wonderful love for the 
 child, supreme over all else, had fulfilled its purpose, 
 he collapsed and died.' 
 
 John returned to Edinburgh in 1833, where he 
 took his degree of M.D., and soon thereafter began 
 general practice. Having been one of his first 
 patients, I have good reason gratefully to remember 
 his kind care and skill in attending me many days 
 and nights under a severe attack of typhus fever. 
 Two years after that period circumstances occurred 
 
22 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 which renewed our connection with Mr. Syme in the 
 reorganisation of Minto House as a private hospital 
 and public dispensary — which was carried on for the 
 next fifteen years. 1 
 
 Though ten years have passed since Dr. Brown was 
 removed from our midst, his personal appearance and 
 remarkable individuality must be well remembered by 
 many who read these pages. His large and beautifully 
 formed head and forehead, his silver locks, penetrating 
 yet soft and sympathetic spectacled eyes; his firm 
 but sweetly sensitive mouth, and his singularly genial 
 and attractive manners, were too well marked to 
 escape notice or to be soon forgotten. As age 
 advanced beyond the Minto House days, his literary 
 productions began to attract and charm the public 
 mind, and his intercourse with his fellow-men became 
 more fascinating, only interrupted at times, when 
 natural brightness was overshadowed by clouds of 
 despondency and self-depreciation, the exciting cause 
 of which was generally some family affliction, or the 
 suffering or death of a patient or intimate friend, 
 
 1 For particulars regarding this Institution, see Appendix No. IV, 
 
CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 23 
 
 touching his keenly sensitive and spiritual nature. 
 On these occasions his condition assumed the form of 
 
 FROM A PHOTOGRAPH IN 18Cl3. 
 
 religious melancholy, by no means uncommon in 
 persons of fine intellect, and having the deepest 
 impressions of divine things. It was thus in the case 
 
24 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 of Wordsworth, so beautifully analysed and expressed 
 by the poet : 
 
 ' Or, if the mind turn inwards, 'tis perplexed, 
 Lost in a gloom of uninspired research ; 
 Meanwhile, the heart within the heart, the seat 
 Where peace and happy consciousness should dwell, 
 On its own axis restlessly revolves, 
 Yet nowhere finds the cheering light of truth.' 1 
 
 Several photographs were taken of him at different 
 periods of his life, the best of which were those 
 by Moffat of Edinburgh and Fergus of Largs, one 
 by the former, in December 1880, being in company 
 with myself and my old terrier 'Dandie.' 2 Of 
 portraits, the most successful was that painted 
 in 1880 for J. Irvine Smith, Esq., by George 
 Keid, R.S.A., now Sir George Reid, President of 
 the Royal Scottish Academy. This has lately been 
 generously presented by Mr. Smith to our National 
 Portrait Gallery. There is also a fine bust in marble, 
 by Cauer, a German artist, now in the possession of 
 Dr. Brown's son. 
 
 Shortly after commencing practice in Edinburgh, 
 
 1 The Excursion, Book iv. 2 See page 40. 
 
MARRIAGE 25 
 
 Dr. Brown left his father's house and resided in 35 
 London Street. In 1844 he removed to 51 Albany 
 Street ; and on the 13th of June 1850 he came to 23 
 Rutland Street, in which he remained until carried 
 to his last resting-place. 
 
 It was on June 4th, 1840, that Dr. Brown was 
 married to Catherine Scott M'Kay, daughter of an 
 Edinburgh gentleman. The attachment was one of 
 long standing, and of pure admiration and affection. 
 She was singularly beautiful, while possessing other 
 attractions ; and during the twenty-four years of their 
 married life, his devotion to her was unvarying. Of 
 their three children a son only survives. Mrs. 
 Brown's last illness was unspeakably trying to her 
 husband's loving and sensitive nature, and un- 
 questionably was the exciting cause of much of the 
 bodily and mental troubles which afflicted him during 
 later years. The depth of his attachment was well 
 known to all his intimate friends; and during her 
 long illness and after her decease — which took place 
 on the 6th of January 1864— his feelings of intense 
 love and grief were touchingly poured forth in 
 letters to a few friends ; but these precious relics are 
 
26 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 too sacred to be made public. Dr. Brown did not 
 
 marry again, but bis domestic comfort was well cared 
 
 for during tbe remainder of life by baving bis sister 
 
 Isabella as bis companion and housekeeper, one wbo 
 
 sympathised with all his feelings, tastes, and interests, 
 
 whose character and habits have been so delightfully 
 
 portrayed by Miss M'Laren in her Outlines. 1 
 
 Soon after Mrs. Brown's death Mrs. Logan, wife of 
 
 Alexander Logan, Advocate, 2 sent to Dr. Brown the 
 
 following letter, which, unknown to him, had been 
 
 written by Mrs. Brown to Mrs. Logan on hearing of 
 
 the death of a much-loved child : — 
 
 Burntisland, 14th Sept. 1842. 
 My dear Mrs. Logan, — From a letter I bad this 
 morning from Dr. John, I have learned the sad, sad news 
 that your dear James is gone. I feel as. if I could not 
 help writing a few words to you, just to tell how very 
 much, how with my whole heart I sympathise with you, 
 my dear friend. None but a mother can know a mother's 
 sorrow ; and yet what can I say to you ? If I saw you, I 
 could only sit down and weep beside you. None but God 
 who has stricken you can comfort you ; I pray that His 
 
 1 Dr. John Brown and his Sister Isabella, Outlines, by B. T. M'L. 
 Edinburgh, David Douglas, 1890. 
 
 2 Afterwards Sheriff of Forfarshire, and throughout life a fast 
 friend of Dr. Brown, 
 
LETTER FROM MRS. BROWN 27 
 
 consolations may abound towards you, and that you may 
 be made to feel, and to know more than ever, that wonder- 
 ful love of G-od which passeth all knowledge. What a 
 mercy it is that, when we go to Him in our time of distress, 
 we have no need of words j we have only to throw our- 
 selves at His feet ! He knows all that we cannot express. 
 
 Dear, dear little James, the meek and gentle one ! but 
 think, dear Mrs. Logan, how happy he now is, and what an 
 escape he has made from all the pain and distress which 
 have so long afflicted him, and which never can come 
 near him more ! 
 
 I have often thought, when full of fears lest my own 
 Helen should be taken from me, that if we only could love 
 our children without a reference to self, we would not 
 grieve when they died in infancy, because at no future 
 time of their lives can we be so sure of their eternal 
 happiness ; but oh ! when the hour of bereavement 
 actually comes, these thoughts have but little weight. 
 
 I know how you must feel — how desolate, how bereaved, 
 as if you had nothing now that could fill up your time and 
 thoughts ! Try to think of all the mercies you have yet 
 left you. If I have said anything to hurt you, anything 
 that you wish I had not said, will you forgive me 1 — it 
 was far from my thoughts to do so. Will you present my 
 kind regards to Mr. Logan — you are both constantly on 
 my mind. That God may bless you, my dear Mrs. Logan, 
 and make all things work for your everlasting good, is the 
 prayer of your true friend, Catherine S. Brown, 
 
28 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 So deeply touched was Dr. Brown on seeing this 
 letter after the lapse of so many years — showing as it 
 did his loved one's warmness of heart and soundness 
 of faith — that he acknowledged it thus : 
 
 My dkar Friend, — I shall never cease to be grateful 
 to God, to you, and to my darling, for this letter. 
 
 J. Brown. 
 
 March 11th, 1864. 
 
 And so strongly did he seem to have been impressed 
 by the letter, that he printed it for private circulation 
 along with the following one of consolation which he 
 had received immediately after Mrs. Brown's death, 
 from Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, a man whom he 
 greatly loved and esteemed : — 
 
 3 Charlotte Square, 
 1th January 1864. 
 
 Yes, my dear Friend, — I am sure you are nothing but 
 grateful to God for her release. He had His owu will 
 and loving purpose in detaining her here so long, in that 
 state of mind which He had permitted and appointed, 
 and she and you will doubtless one day know and rejoice 
 in the accomplished effect of that purpose ; but we can 
 without hesitation acknowledge the mercy of her deliver- 
 ance. What a blessed and glorious thing human existence 
 would be if we fully realised that the infinitely wise and 
 
LETTER PROM MR. ERSKIST; 29 
 
 infinitely powerful God loves each one of us with an 
 intensity infinitely beyond what the most fervid human 
 spirit ever felt towards another, and with a concentration 
 as if He had none else to think of ! It is to His hands you 
 have to trust her, and it is in His hands that she now is, 
 always has been, and always will be. And this love has 
 brought us into being, just that we might be taught to 
 enter into full sympathy with Him, receiving His — giving 
 our own — thus entering into the joy of our Lord. This 
 is the hope — the sure and certain hope — set before us — 
 sure and certain — for ' the mountains shall depart and the 
 hills be removed ; but my kindness shall not depart, 
 neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith 
 the Lord that hath mercy on thee.' 
 
 I always hope to be a better man by anything of the 
 kind I hear — more free from the bondage of corruption, 
 selfishness, and seen things, and more thoroughly possessed 
 with the conviction that at every step in the journey of 
 life I have the opportunity given me of being a fellow- 
 worker with God in working out this great salvation. — 
 Ever affectionately yours, T. Erskixe. 
 
 In 1847 Dr. Brown became a Fellow of the Royal 
 College of Physicians, and for some time acted as its 
 Honorary Librarian. Otherwise he took no active 
 part in its business, and even absented himself from 
 its meetings soon after the heated struggles in the 
 
30 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 College between the Corporation and the University 
 party in 1857, 1858, and 1859, he being a staunch par- 
 tisan of the latter, believing that the conferring of de- 
 grees was the proper function of a University, and that 
 Licensing by the Corporations, sanctioned by Govern- 
 ment, was a mistake. In 1859 Dr. Brown was elected 
 a Fellow of the Koyal Society of Edinburgh ; and as 
 a proof of the high estimation in which he was held 
 as a man of letters and physician, he was, in 1861 and 
 1862, chosen by Mr. Gladstone, the then Rector of the 
 University of Edinburgh, as his Assessor, during the 
 double term of his office ; and as a still higher honour, 
 on the 22d April 1874, that University conferred on 
 him the title of LL.D. In the same year a more 
 national honour was bestowed on him, under Mr. 
 Disraeli's Premiership, by a royal pension grant of 
 £100 per annum for ' distinguished literary eminence.' 
 Having attained a position so distinguished and 
 honoured, the most of men would have cultivated the 
 advantages gained, and come more to the front as a 
 public character. But Dr. Brown was too diffident 
 and self-depreciating, and therefore shrank from that 
 kind of notoriety. He disliked all public appearances; 
 
HONOURS. POLITICAL OPINIONS 31 
 
 and although his pen was swift in the expression of 
 true genius, and while he was always so ready and 
 interesting in conversation, he did not possess the 
 gift of extemporaneous speaking, or at least shunned 
 every occasion on which there was the possibility 
 of being called on to make a speech in public. 
 Nothing perturbed him more than the apprehension, 
 even, of being expected to return thanks for the toast 
 of his health at a public dinner. I remember one 
 occasion on which he was forced to perform that duty, 
 and all that he was able to give utterance to, was, 
 ' Gentlemen (a pause) I thank you kindly (pause) for 
 your kindness;' and then sat down amid laughter 
 and applause. 
 
 In social intercourse he was not at all forward to 
 express his opinions on medical and general politics, 
 although his mind was decided in regard to them. 
 Like his father, he was a staunch Liberal and Voluntary, 
 clear and strong regarding religious equality, and 
 opposed to all Church and State connection. When 
 the question was first agitated as to Voluntaryism, he 
 wrote : ' We have as little right to judge of what the 
 Voluntary principle can and will do by what it has 
 
32 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 done, as we have, from knowing the power and pro- 
 perties of water in liquidity, to judge and predicate 
 its powers when converted into steam. As is the 
 weight and force of a drop of water to that drop when 
 converted into steam and compressed and set a-work- 
 ing, so is what society is doing to what it may and 
 can do.' But on these debatable subjects he avoided 
 public discussion, although in private correspondence 
 he did not hesitate to state his mind freely. Thus, 
 in 1864, referring to a lecture by the late Sir David 
 Brewster, he wrote to a friend : — 
 
 My dear Friend, — . . . We all admired the vigour and 
 the beauty of his address, though I entirely dissent from 
 his doctrine of the State rewarding Philosophers. I think 
 all the State is bound, and indeed is capable to do, is to 
 assert its right of dominion over land, and to restrain and 
 regulate the physical force of the people. Eeligion, 
 education, philosophy, pictures, etc., etc., etc., are all things 
 out of and above its scope of action. They belong to 
 society proper, — a paradisiac community set agoing before 
 man needed to be governed by anything but the love of 
 his Maker. Society is physiological, Government is 
 pathological ; armies and navies, policemen and prisons, 
 belong to Government; knowledge, the culture of God 
 and His works, the upholding of all that is pristine, and 
 
HIS PERSONALITY 33 
 
 lovely, and eternal, in man's nature, belong to society : 
 There now ! there 's a bit of heresy for you ! — Ever yours, 
 
 J. B. 
 
 These views of the functions of the State and of 
 society were held by him to the last ; but he did not 
 parade them publicly. 
 
 The most marked characteristics of Dr. Brown's 
 life and work were personality and spirituality. These 
 are strikingly conspicuous in his various published 
 writings, his private life and correspondence, and 
 also in social intercourse and relations. 
 
 His personality impressed all who knew him with 
 a peculiar charm. His expressive countenance — as 
 already noticed ; the keen gaze through or over his 
 tortoise-shell spectacles ; the persuasive tones of his 
 voice ; his ready perception of peculiarities in persons 
 and things; his currents of thought, human sym- 
 pathies, social affinities, easy style of humour, and quick 
 insight and subtle analysis of character, were all 
 highly individualistic. In the thoroughfares of our 
 city he seemed to know or to be known by almost 
 every one. When in good spirits he had a smile or 
 nod for one, a passing quaint remark or joke for 
 
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY FERGUS, LARGS, 1S71, 
 
LOVE OF DOGS 35 
 
 another, an amusing criticism on an article of dress 
 or ornament displayed by a third, or to others ready 
 and happily expressed words of recognition, con- 
 gratulation, encouragement, or sympathy, as occasion 
 and circumstances suggested. And in the case of 
 canine passers by — for he had many such familiar 
 friends — he had a pat on the head, or some com- 
 mendation or criticism to bestow ; and if they were 
 strangers, he manifested an interest in their owner- 
 ship, breeding, intelligence, or comicality — especially 
 if terriers— of whom he has spoken as ' those affection- 
 ate, great-hearted little ruffians ! ' For dogs in general 
 he had a well-known love, and though bitten severely 
 by a dog when a- child, he has told us that he had 
 ' remained " bitten " ever since in the matter of dogs.' J 
 In fact, he became quite an authority regarding the 
 breeding of dogs, their 'points' of excellence and 
 value; and as a good judge his opinion was often 
 asked before a purchase was made; and not in- 
 frequently also was he requested by intimate friends 
 to secure for them a dog of the kind they were 
 anxious to possess. Thus on one occasion, John, in 
 
 1 Horce Subsccivm, Series ii. p. 181. 
 
36 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 a happy and playful mood, wrote the following 
 note with sketch, of which I give a facsimile, to 
 show the character of his handwriting, and how, 
 with a few rapid touches of his pen, he could con- 
 vey an accurate idea of dog-life : — 
 S~\ /J 19(7;. Jany. 1847. 
 
FACSIMILE LETTER 37 
 
 /u0t*Lf • • • 
 
 
38 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 U~ htes&ue-' ~Zt£* - 
 
 J^j fas h^4 J su^ 
 
 r Jtfr. 
 
'WASP' 
 
 39 
 
 ^>"/to*^-^ 
 
 -^2^^2> 
 
 <2> 
 
DANDIE AND HIS FRIENDS. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MOFFAT, 18S0. 
 
CANINE FRIENDS 41 
 
 He understood dogs well, and they seemed to 
 understand him. He had a high appreciation of their 
 intelligence. Of Professor Veitch's dog ' Birnie ' 
 he wrote on one occasion thus : ' Don't let Bob (a 
 bull-terrier) fall out with him: Birnie is too intel- 
 lectual and gentlemanly righteous not to do every- 
 thing consistent with his character to avoid a 
 combat.' Of our sagacious ' Dandie ' he used to say, 
 ' he must have been a Covenanter in a former state,' 
 and that he knew only one dog superior to him. 
 
 Dr. Maclagan, acting as 'promoter' at the Uni- 
 versity Graduation when Dr. Brown had the degree 
 of LL.D. conferred on him, having spoken of Dr. 
 Brown's much revered father, and eulogised in 
 eloquent terms John's literary merits, professional 
 attainments, and other qualities, not forgetting 'his 
 love and appreciative regard for man's trusted, 
 faithful, brave, and adoring companion, the dog,' 
 received next evening the following note : — 
 
 23 Rutland Stkeet, 23d April 1874. 
 
 My dear OLD Friend, — I am in need of a course of 
 humbling powders. I never thought so much of myself, — 
 and you have much to answer for. Thanks for all you 
 
42 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 said and felt, and not least for the word about my father. 
 As to the others — omne tulisti pundvm — it was perfect, 
 from the blue bonnet over the border 1 to that bit from 
 Burns. You have a curious felicity in these things, and 
 you put infinitely more spirit into the promotion than 
 hitherto. If Faust 2 had got a D.D. as Dog of Dogs, the 
 thing would have been pluperfect. — Yrs. and his Mistress's 
 ever, J. B. 
 
 The loss of a dog is thus mourned over by Dr. 
 
 Brown : — 
 
 23 Rutland Stbeet, May 18iA, 1857. 
 
 My dear C., 8 — I have been told to-day that you have lost 
 Wamba. I know too well what this is to think it any- 
 thing less than a great sorrow. I would not like to tell 
 anybody how much I have felt in like circumstances : the 
 love of the dumb, unfailing, happy friend is so true, so to 
 be depended on ; is so free of what taints much of human 
 love, that the loss of it ought never to be made light of. 
 Had he been unwell for some time 1 He was not old 
 enough to die of age. We have one such, and I do not 
 know what I would do were he to die. . . . — Ever yours, 
 
 J. B. 
 
 1 In reference to the Duke of Buceleuch, on whom the honour of 
 LL.D. was conferred at the same time. 
 
 2 Faust was a handsome retriever belonging to Miss Maclagan. 
 This letter, and several of the letters in the following pages (a 
 
 selection from a, large correspondence), were to Andrew Coventry 
 
CANINE FRIENDS —PUCK 43 
 
 Dr. Brown might have said much more of his own 
 dog ' Puck,' 1 than he has done in his admirable paper 
 on ' Our Dogs.' In a letter telling of Puck's arrest 
 by a policeman for not having on a municipal 
 muzzle, he reasons thus: 'Puck in ten minutes 
 would have been in the next world, and why not ? 
 Placide quiescas!' This recalls a remark he made 
 to a friend, ' I have just met a deeply conscientious 
 dog. He was carrying his own muzzle ! ' Indeed, 
 Dr. Brown saw in many dogs the existence not only 
 of a remarkable degree of the higher faculties, but 
 of something akin to moral feelings ; and in regard 
 to Puck he spoke of him as ' a fellow of infinite 
 
 Dick, advocate, for many years resident Sheriff of Bute. It was to him 
 that Dr. Brown in 1861 dedicated the second volume of the Horca 
 Subsecivce, along with Mr. Gladstone, Thackeray, and Ruskin ; and 
 of him, in the last volume of the Horce Subsecivce, he wrote in a 
 prefatory notice to verses by 'E.V.K. to his Friend in town,' the 
 following warm tribute in memoriam : ' He was a man of the finest 
 gifts, culture, and affections, who, had his life not been maimed by 
 long years of shattered health, bringing languor and suffering not 
 to be recalled even now without pain and wonder, would have risen 
 to the highest honours in his profession, and enriched literature 
 with his wise and lively thoughts.' With him Dr. Brown carried 
 on much correspondence from 1842 until 1870, in which year the 
 Sheriff died. 
 1 Horm Subsecivce, vol.ii. pp. 210, 211. 
 
44 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 human affections.' There are certainly dogs and 
 dogs, as there are men endued with higher or lower 
 degrees of intelligence and sensitive natures; but 
 there is that in many a dog which makes him a 
 fit companion for man, while, as Bacon has it, and 
 Burns quoted it, ' Man is the god of the dog.' ' It 
 would be well for man' — as the author of 'Rab' 
 says — ' if his worship were as immediate and instinc- 
 tive — as absolute as the dog's.' 
 
 The description of ' Toby,' another of his dogs, is 
 deliciously graphic, and I cannot resist quoting from 
 it largely. 1 ' Toby was the most utterly shabby, 
 vulgar, mean-looking cur I ever beheld : in one word, 
 a tyke.' John's brother William — deceased some 
 years — saved Toby, it appears, from being drowned 
 by some boys in Lochend ; and with the connivance 
 of the cook the two brothers concealed him in the 
 house for some weeks from ' our excellent and 
 Rhadamanthine grandmother, whose love of tidi- 
 ness and hatred of dogs and dirt would have 
 expelled him. However, one night Toby walked 
 into my father's bedroom, when he was bathing his 
 1 Horce Subsecivm : ' Our Dogs,' vol. ii. pp. 182, 183. 
 
CANINE FRIENDS — TOBY 45 
 
 feet, and introduced himself with a wag of his tail, in- 
 timating a general willingness to be happy. On this 
 my father gave such an unwonted shout of laughter 
 that we, grandmother, sisters, and all of us, went in. 
 And thus Toby's tongue and fun proved too much 
 for grandmother's eloquence. I somehow think that 
 Toby must have been up to all this, for I think he 
 had a peculiar love for my father ever after, and 
 regarded grandmother from that time with a careful 
 and cool eye.' All this was said of Toby when young. 
 ' When full-grown he was a strong, coarse dog, coarse 
 in shape, in countenance, in hair, and in manner. 
 I used to think that according to the Pythagorean 
 doctrine, he must have been, or going to be, a 
 Gilmerton carter. He was of the bull-terrier variety, 
 coarsened through much mongrelism, and a dubious 
 and varied ancestry. His teeth were good, and 
 he had a large skull, and the rich bark of a dog 
 three times his size, and a tail which I never saw 
 equalled — indeed, it was a tail per se ; it was of im- 
 mense girth and not short, equal throughout like a 
 policeman's baton, the machinery for working it of 
 great power, and acted in a way, as far as I 
 
46 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 have been able to discover, quite original. We called 
 it bis ruler. Toby, however, with all this inbred 
 vulgar appearance, was a dog of great moral excellence 
 . — affectionate, faithful, honest up to his light, with an 
 odd humour as peculiar and strong as his tail. My 
 father, in his reserved way, was very fond of him, and 
 there must have been very funny scenes with them, 
 for we heard bursts of laughter issuing from his study 
 when they two were by themselves ; there was some- 
 thing in him that took that grand, beautiful, melan- 
 choly face. One can fancy him in the midst of his 
 books, and sacred work and thoughts, pausing and 
 looking at the secular Toby, who was looking out for 
 a smile to begin his rough fun, and about to end by 
 coursing and gwrin' round the room, upsetting my 
 father's books laid out on the floor for consultation, 
 and himself nearly at times, as he stood watching 
 him, and off his guard and shaking with laughter.' 
 
 It has been well and truly said of John Brown that 
 ' he has written of dogs with as great fidelity and 
 intuition as Landseer has painted them.' The 
 portrait of Eab himself — a full-length one — is most 
 characteristic of the limner. ' Kab.was a dog of which 
 
RAB 47 
 
 there is none such now — one of a lost tribe ; brindled 
 and grey like Kubislaw granite ; hair short, hard, and 
 close like a lion's ; bo'dy thick-set like a little bull — a 
 sort of compressed Hercules; having a large, blunt 
 head, and a bud of a tail ; a muzzle black as night ; 
 his mouth blacker than any night; a tooth or two 
 gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head, 
 scarred with the records of old wounds, one eye out, 
 one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's 
 father's ; the remaining eye had the power of two, and 
 above it, and in constant communication with it, was 
 a tattered rag of an ear, which was for ever unfurling 
 itself like an old flag ; and then that bud of a tail, 
 about one inch long — if it could in any sense be 
 called long, being as broad as long, — the mobility, the 
 instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and 
 surprising; and its expressive twinklings, the inter- 
 communications between the eye, the ear, and it were 
 of the oddest and swiftest. Eab had all the dignity 
 and simplicity of great size; and having fought his 
 way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was 
 as mighty in his own line as Julius Cassar or the Duke 
 of Wellington, and had the gravity of all great fighters, 
 
48 DE. JOHN BROWN 
 
 or, as a Highland gamekeeper said of his dog, ' Oh, 
 sir, his life 's full of sairiousness ; he just never can 
 get eneuch o' fechtin' ! " ' l 
 
 John Brown's acquaintance with literature of all 
 kinds — which he called ' fine confused feeding ' — was 
 very extensive ; and this in society and at the social 
 board, with his acuteness of observation on every- 
 thing around him, his intelligence on most subjects 
 under discussion, his remarkable fund of anecdote, 
 his careful avoidance of that which might create 
 unpleasant feeling, and the happy method of 
 drawing persons out to tell what they knew, made 
 his company delightful. On such occasions he was 
 generally the centre of interest: but he shone 
 brightest in the family circle, or with a few 
 kindred spirits or familiar friends. From these 
 qualities, with a unique combination of kindliness 
 and homeliness, tenderness and humour, John was 
 not only beloved and admired by his immediate 
 friends, but became the correspondent or associate 
 of many of the most distinguished men of the 
 
 1 Harm Subsecivce, Series ii. pp. 374, 375, 
 
CORRESPONDENTS AND ASSOCIATES 49 
 
 day, such as Carlyle, Buskin, Dean Stanley, Dean 
 Hole, Sir Henry Taylor, Mr. Gladstone, Erskine of 
 Linlathen, Sir James Clark, Thackeray, Dr. Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (' Mark 
 Twain'), and Sir Theodore Martin; and nearer home of 
 Sir George Harvey, Sir Noel Paton, Sir Robert Christi- 
 son, Professors Aytoun, Blackie, Shairp, and Masson ; 
 the Rev. Drs. Hanna, Cairns, John Ker, Robertson of 
 Irvine, Walter Smith, Mr. Thomas Constable, and 
 many others — a roll now sadly diminished. Although 
 John Brown's acquaintance was very large, his in- 
 timacy was by no means indiscriminate, for with all 
 his simplicity of character he possessed a wonderfully 
 searching power of observation; and as in cases of 
 disease his diagnosis was rapid, so perception of cha- 
 racter was as if intuitive. Thus likings and dislik- 
 ings were formed generally at first sight, and these 
 proved strong and enduring. Towards several of 
 the above-mentioned men his attachment was very 
 strong; perhaps most conspicuously so towards 
 George Harvey and William Makepeace Thackeray. 
 The warm friendship with Sir George Harvey 
 began at a very early period, as the letters to be 
 
50 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 quoted hereafter will show ; and lasted unbroken till 
 his death in January 1876, which was to John the 
 cause of profound sorrow. 
 
 With the author of Vanity Fair friendship dated, 
 I believe, from the occasion of Thackeray's lectures in 
 Edinburgh on The English Humorists? after which 
 time Dr. Brown held resolutely to the opinion that 
 Thackeray's true character was much misunderstood 
 by the general public. Indeed, he could not endure 
 the comparisons frequently drawn between him and 
 the rival novelist of the day. The following letter 
 from Dr. Brown to his warmly attached friend, the 
 late Andrew Coventry Dick, appears to have been 
 written at this time : — 
 
 23 Rutland Street, 
 {December 1851 or January 1852.) 
 My dear Coventry, — I wish you had been here for 
 the last fortnight to have seen, heard, and known 
 Thackeray, — a fellow after your own heart, — a strong- 
 headed, sound-hearted, judicious fellow, who knew the 
 things that differ, and prefers Pope to Longfellow or Mrs. 
 Barrett Browning, and Milton to Mr. Festus, and Sir 
 Roger De Coverley to Pickwick, and David Hume's History 
 to Sheriff Alison's ; and the ' verses by E. V, K. to his 
 
 1 In 1851. 
 
THACKERAY 51 
 
 friend in town' 1 to anything he has seen for a long 
 time; and 'the impassioned grape' to the whole works 
 prosaic and poetical of Sir Bulwer Lytton. I have seen a 
 great deal of him and talked with him on all sorts of 
 things, and next to yourself I know no man so much to 
 my mind. He is much better and greater than his works. 
 His lectures have been very well attended, and I hope he 
 will carry off £300. I wish he could have taken as much 
 from Glasgow, but this has not been found possible. He 
 was so curious about you after sending these verses, which 
 he liked exceedingly. He is 6 feet 3 in height, with a 
 broad kindly face and an immense skull. Do you remem- 
 ber Dr. Henderson of Galashiels 1 He is ludicrously like 
 him, — the same big head and broad face, and his voice is 
 very like, and the same nicety in expression and in the 
 cadences of the voice. He makes no figure in company, 
 except as very good-humoured, and by saying now and 
 then a quietly strong thing. I so much wish you had met 
 him. He is as much bigger than Dickens as a three- 
 decker of 120 guns is bigger than a small steamer with 
 one long-range swivel-gun. He has set everybody here 
 a-reading Stella's Journal, Gulliver, The Taller, Joseph 
 Andrews, and Humphrey Clinker. He has a great turn for 
 politics, right notions, and keen desires, and from his kind 
 of head would make a good public man. He has much 
 in him which cannot find issue in mere authorship. — 
 Yours ever affectionately, J. B. 
 
 1 Published in the Horas Subsecivce, Series iii. pp. 406-12. 
 
52 DE. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Then when Thackeray lectured on The Four 
 
 Georges in 1856, there is the following letter to the 
 
 same friend, not dated, but probably in December of 
 
 that year : — 
 
 23 Rutland Street. 
 
 My dear Coventry, — Covissime omnium covorum et 
 
 Carissime. I wish you lived across the street, for then 
 
 would not I drop in upon you as of old, and discuss the 
 
 whole round of thoughts, and things, and men . . . 
 
 Thackeray has been here and a great deal with us, and I 
 
 like him more than ever, — he is so natural and unforced in 
 
 his ways and talk. The lecture on George the III. was 
 
 very noble . . . He made 2000 men and women weep 
 
 by reading old Johnson's lines on poor Levett the surgeon 
 
 ... I had a small dinner on Monday to Thackeray, 
 
 Edw. Maitland, Ld. Ardmillan, Blackie, Logan, Harvey, 
 
 and D. 0. Hill. We were very happy. Ardmillan is 
 
 very likeable, Maitland 1 is loveable and abler. He is one 
 
 of our foremost men now. — Yours ever, J. B. 
 
 In the beautiful in memoriam paper which Dr. 
 Brown published, entitled 'Thackeray's Death,' he 
 said: 'This is to us so great a personal as well as 
 public calamity, that we feel little able to order our 
 words aright, or to see through our blinding tears. 
 Mr. Thackeray was so much greater, so much 
 
 1 Late Lord Bareaple. 
 
thackeray's death 53 
 
 nobler than his works, great and noble as they 
 are, that it is difficult to speak of bim without 
 apparent excess. What a loss to the world the 
 disappearance of that large, acute, and fine under- 
 standing ; that searching, inevitable inner and outer 
 eye; that keen and yet kindly satiric touch; that 
 wonderful humour and play of soul ! and then such a 
 mastery of his mother tongue ! such a style ! such 
 nicety of word and turn ! such a flavour of speech ! 
 such genuine originality of genius and expression ! 
 such an insight into the hidden springs of human 
 action ! such a dissection of the nerves to their 
 ultimate fibrillse ! such a sense and such a sympathy 
 for the worth and for the misery of man ! such a 
 power of bringing human nature to its essence, — 
 detecting at once its basic goodness and vileness, its 
 compositeness !'.... 'It should never be forgotten 
 that his specific gift was creative satire, — not cari- 
 cature, nor even sarcasm, nor sentiment, nor romance, 
 nor even character as such,— ^but the delicate satiric 
 treatment of human nature in its most superficial 
 aspects, as well as in its inner depths, by a great- 
 hearted and tender and genuine sympathy, unsparing, 
 
54 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 truthful, inevitable, but with love and the love of 
 goodness and true loving-kindness, over-arching and 
 indeed animating it all.' .... 'This, with his 
 truthfulness, his scorn of exaggeration in thought or 
 word, and his wide, deep, loving sympathy for the 
 entire round of human wants and miseries, goes far 
 to make his works in the best, because in a practical 
 sense, wholesome, moral, honest, and of "good 
 report." ' 1 
 
 Again Dr. Brown wrote : ' We know no death in the 
 world of letters since Macaulay's, which will make so 
 many mourners,— for he was a faithful friend. No 
 one, we believe, will ever know the amount of true 
 kindness and help, given often at a time when kind- 
 ness cost much, to nameless, unheard-of suffering, a 
 man of spotless honour, of the strongest possible 
 home affections and the most scrupulous truthfulness.' 
 
 In view of contributing an in memoriam notice in 
 the Scotsman, and for the longer notice in the Horce 
 Subsecivce from which the above passages are quoted, 
 it appears that eight days after Thackeray's death 2 
 
 1 Harm Subsecivce, Series iii. pp. 179-80, 1, 2. 
 s 24th December 1863. 
 
UOTTKUS HEOAUDINO Til ACMCEUAY 55 
 
 lh\ Hrown wrofo (ho following letter to his old friond 
 Thoodoro Martin, :H Onslow Square, London:— 
 
 '-'.'I Rutland Htukkt, 
 \xt Jaifitari/ IStM. 
 
 My ukak Maktin,— Thanks for your letter. Vou will 
 see part of it in tlio Sctitsimui : it was not my doing calling 
 you " a literary man ' — which to my cars is not so good as 
 ' a man of letters.' It must have boon a vory saorod timo. 
 God grant wo all got good by this, and indeed by every- 
 thing ! for that, after all, is the thing. Are we better or 
 worse now than wo were a whilo ago ? Are we ripening 
 or withering, or rottening 1 ! I could answer for you and 
 yours. . . . Can you tell nie any one likely to be able and 
 willing to tell me of Thackeray's college and artist life? . . . 
 
 Good-bye, my dear friends. Be thankful that you and 
 yours are all in all to each other ; and that each has the 
 other in some measure of health, and with reason 
 untouched. Many a happy New Year's day to you both! 
 
 Yours ever alfectionately, .). luioWN. 
 
 And also the following lottor: — 
 
 _.'! Rutland Stkkkt, 
 IW/i Fihnitiry 1SG4. 
 My ukai; Tiikohoiuc Maktin, — I ought long ore now 
 to have thanked you. for your most useful help, and to 
 have asked your forgiveness for my importunity and for 
 the using of your time. You will see on Saturday, 1 hope, 
 how well Lancaster has put in your bit. The composite 
 
56 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 notice is not what he and I would desire it to be ; but it 
 is honest and affectionate, and I sent the latter part of it 
 to Miss Thackeray and the mother, and they were pleased. 
 . . . When you get the North British, I wish you 
 especially to read the paper on ' Old Books/ and tell me 
 what you think of it, and especially of the criticism on 
 Dante's ' Great refusal.' It is by my cousin, — and the 
 ' Thorn in the Flesh,' 1 — John Taylor Brown, who was 
 at Arnott's 2 with us. There is a very touching little bit 
 about Rousseau. Let me hear from you soon, and 
 remember me to your sine qua non. I know more of her 
 worth to you, now that I have lost mine. — Yours ever, 
 
 J. Brown. 
 
 Although for many years John Brown's society 
 was much courted, and dining-out a very frequent 
 occurrence, he did not in return entertain much at his 
 own table. His style of living was plain, unassuming, 
 and economical ; and when at the table of others he was 
 moderate and careful. His enjoyment in company 
 was not physical but mental, either in quiet im- 
 proving talk, or the flow of wit and soul. Indeed, the 
 fascination, the attractive power, which his presence 
 exercised over those who found him in good health 
 
 1 Published in the Horas Subsecivce, edition 1858, pp. 101-27, 
 8 Writing-school in Edinburgh. 
 
HOME AND SOCIAL LIFE 57 
 
 and spirits cannot well be described. The influence 
 was something akin to the pleasure felt from the 
 fragrance of freshest flowers, or the harmony of 
 sweetest music. Even solid, sober-minded people 
 felt this spell in his company. His sweetness of 
 nature, which is so apparent throughout his writings, 
 and has impressed the hearts of many readers, was 
 doubly felt by familiar friends from his looks, words, 
 and actions. To know him was to love him. Many 
 must remember the charm of his presence, and 
 the pleasure of seeing him at his house in Rutland 
 Street. There, the earlier part of the afternoon was 
 devoted to professional consultations. These were 
 in his library, the walls of which were clothed with 
 books and valuable engravings — which gave it an 
 interesting aspect, although by himself it was 
 spoken of to strangers as 'the den, where I wait 
 for my prey.' But later in the day, and also in 
 the evening, he was generally to be found in the 
 drawing-room, seated in a low arm-chair ; and strewed 
 on the floor, or on a table by his side, lay the latest 
 books and journals. This room was remarkable for 
 the simplicity and comfort of its furnishings ; here 
 
58 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 also almost every inch of the wall was covered with 
 paintings in oil or water colour, etchings, and pen 
 and ink sketches, placed without regard to size, 
 subject, or symmetrical hanging. These were mostly 
 gifts from his old friends and patients, Sir George 
 Harvey, Sir Noel Paton, David Seott, Duncan, 
 Drummond, and many others: also from younger 
 artists in whom he saw the stamp of dawning genius. 
 Here, too, he received the visits of many ladies, old 
 and young, who were attracted to ' Dr. John,' as if by 
 a magnet, and who eagerly conveyed to him the 
 latest and most interesting news of passing events in 
 the city and elsewhere, and of what concerned them- 
 selves or their friends. In general he was a patient 
 listener to such visitors, while they left highly 
 pleased, having culled from him opinions on the 
 newest books or works of art; and gratified by the 
 kindly interest manifested in their own affairs. For 
 young men, also, with literary aspirations, he had 
 always a kindly welcome; and they received from 
 him much good advice and encouragement. His 
 relations with them were exceptionally happy, and 
 are thus recalled and recorded by one who had 
 
FRIENDLY COUNSEL 59 
 
 experienced his friendly notice in early life : 
 ' His advice and counsel were sought by scores of 
 young Edinburgh artists and literary men, and 
 seldom sought in vain, he having a felicitous gift of 
 tendering advice, with the least possible appearance 
 of preaching. It thus happened that a large pro- 
 portion of his friends comprised men much younger 
 than himself, to whose hopes and aspirations his 
 quick penetration and large heart gave him a ready 
 key. In his house in Kutland Street there was a 
 little chamber, in which on periodical occasions he 
 was at home to his friends, old and young. Here 
 there was often much talk worth listening to, gossip 
 and criticism of contemporary art, and belles lettres, 
 mingled with a good store of racy anecdote and 
 wholesome jest ; the air growing gradually denser the 
 while with the fragrant blue clouds of tobacco. In 
 later years Dr. Brown could hardly be called a 
 brilliant conversationalist, though in his earlier life 
 he enjoyed that reputation. As an old man, his 
 talk flowed on in a wise, kindly, part shrewd, part 
 humorous fashion, in a low-pitched voice, marked 
 by a slight note of the Poric. In addressing a 
 
60 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 younger man, the word of counsel or cheer was often 
 emphasised by the hand laid on the shoulder, like an 
 elder brother's. He never sought to monopolise the 
 talk, which some elders' claim as their privilege, but 
 was a patient and sympathetic listener. In his judg- 
 ments upon pictures and books he was often critical 
 enough; but when he praised, he praised generously 
 and unstintedly. He was not above prejudice too ; had 
 pet likes and dislikes in literature, but few crotchets, 
 few perverse twists in his mental vision, and not a 
 sour or a bitter spot in his whole nature. Those 
 Nodes are still pleasantly remembered in Edinburgh 
 literary art circles by those privileged to enjoy Dr. 
 Brown's friendship.' 1 
 
 His pleasure in the society of women and appre- 
 ciation of womanly goodness was great; and their 
 attraction to and admiration of him was some- 
 times almost idolatrous. Thus undoubtedly many 
 a fee was obtained from persons captivated by the 
 idylls of 'Rab and his Friends' and 'Pet Marjorie' 
 desirous to see, shake hands, and enjoy the presence 
 
 1 Article— 'Dr. John Brown,' by Robert Richardson, B.A., 
 United Presbyterian Magazine, January 1892, p. 7. 
 
IN THE SOCIETY OF WOMEN 61 
 
 of the author, even for a brief interval, although not 
 on account of any important illness affecting them. 
 This kind of inspection and interviewing — when he 
 happened to be somewhat low in spirits — was the 
 reverse of agreeable to him. Very talkative women 
 he could not endure. After speaking in a letter now 
 before me, of a man who, in conversation, used with 
 great frequency the conjunction but, he said : — 
 
 23 Rutland Street, 
 llth July 1861. 
 
 My dear Friend, — That man with the 'but' is 
 welcome to me, in spite of himself, for your sake, for then 
 if he overflows too much, I can check him. But I couldn't 
 do that to a woman ; so pray do not ask me to be civil 
 to a loquacious woman ; I like women to speak, and to 
 speak a great deal — nothing, except sleep, becomes them 
 better; but a talking woman is an awful judgment, and 
 mystery, and oppression. . . . — Yours ever, J. B. 
 
 Dr. Brown's heart, however, was drawn strongly out 
 to those who, like himself, possessed a sympathetic 
 and pathetic nature — quickly moved with pity for 
 those in sorrow, while sympathetic with the joys 
 of others, and especially with those who had in 
 them a sense of wit and humour. We all know' that 
 
62 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 tears and laughter spring from the same source, or are 
 readily excited in the same mental constitution ; and 
 it is equally observable that such individuals are 
 strongly attracted to each other. This keen human 
 sympathy, indeed, was the most powerful magnet in 
 his friendships, and a bond of interest in professional 
 relations. A lady, one of his patients, frequently 
 inclined like himself to depression of spirits, told me 
 that one day when they were walking together in the 
 country and describing their respective feelings, he 
 said, ' Tell me why am I like a Jew ? ' She could not 
 answer, so he explained, ' Because I am Sad-you-see.' 
 Thus he could even jest on the subject of his own 
 affliction, and at a time when a dark band of cloud 
 hung across his soul. 
 
 His interest in children is well known to have been 
 great. He understood them well ; and their innocent 
 laughter and droll ways were delightful to him. He 
 had always something funny to say or do to them, 
 in order to excite laughter or wonder; to try their 
 temper, or to draw forth natural peculiarities. Many 
 now grown up to be men and women can recall his 
 bewitching ways. I remember on one occasion he 
 
INTEREST IN CHILDREN 63 
 
 gave a juvenile party, and opened the door himself 
 attired as a high-class footman, and announced each 
 party by the oddest fictitious names. This sort of 
 joking was sometimes practised even in the company 
 of older people with whom he was intimate. Thus, on 
 the occasion of an evening party, at a time while a 
 notable trial was in progress, and the talk of the 
 assembled company was concerning it, the drawing- 
 room door was thrown open and the waiter solemnly 
 
 announced ' Major and his two wives,' when, 
 
 after a few seconds of astonishment, Dr. Brown 
 walked in with a lady on each arm. This practical 
 joke proved the key-note of the party, which was a 
 hilarious one during the remainder of the evening. 
 
 He was always kindly to friends, and courteous to 
 strangers visiting him; and it was his invariable 
 practice to see every one to the door on leaving, 
 sending them away with a happy remark, sometimes 
 a practical joke, and in every case with a pleasing, 
 often an ecstatic, remembrance of the visit. 
 
 Then in correspondence with intimate juvenile 
 friends, or when calling on some one who happened 
 to be from home, he would, in the former case send, 
 
64 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 and in the latter case, leave a humorous note some- 
 times signed JEYE BEE, in fancy capital letters 
 
 often with an artistic pen-and-ink sketch, not un- 
 worthy of a Leech, Doyle, or Furniss. These repre- 
 sented, it might be, a man with a small forehead, 
 
 Voi/vta S<tfervi 
 
 long nose, a stick leg, and hands in the side pockets of 
 a pea-jacket ; or a shaggy-coated terrier in a remark- 
 
THE PITLOCHRY DUCK 65 
 
 able attitude ; or some other equally grotesque figure. 
 Sometimes his letters to young friends were of a 
 more carefully prepared character and in a style 
 which nobody but himself could have achieved. The 
 following is an example, so clever, so humorous, so 
 playful, and pawkily satirical, that I cannot resist 
 giving it here : — 
 
 NTJMERI LEGE SOLUTI : 
 
 BEING LAWLESS NUMBERS ON SEEING A DUCK ON 
 THE PITLOCHRY ROAD, September 12, 18V4. 
 
 ' White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely queer.' 
 
 Dedicated to E. and N. 
 
 A duck stood on the road, it stood upon one leg, 
 Its bill it was sunk in its feathers, its eye it was black and gleg, 1 
 I stared at it — it stared at me, that eye round and unwinking, 
 I could not but wonder a little, what it and its mistress were 
 
 thinking. 
 She took small heed of my eye, but she stretched out her No. 2 
 
 leg, 
 As if to show me she had one, and then most humbly to beg, 
 
 That I would believe her — 
 And leave her. 
 
 Then under her wing she tucked No. 2, this queer and well- 
 balanced aquatic, 
 This tucking, from Huxley you know, it was due to the force 
 
 ' automatic,' 
 
 1 Scottish for lively. 
 
 £ 
 
66 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 It was perfectly firm, that one leg, bright saffron it was and 
 
 web-footed, 
 And its web it took hold of the road, as if in it it were rooted. 
 To taking her portrait in pencil, she made not the slightest 
 
 resistance, 
 So I drew her, while, purple and grey, Ben-y-Vrackie rose up in 
 
 the distance. 
 The duck, she was white as the snow, her eye was as black as the berry 
 Called black — and the round little thing had a blink you might 
 
 safely call merry. 
 So farewell ! my squab little friend, 
 My sketch and our visit take end. 
 Ben-y-Vrackie is blue and is beautiful, 
 Thy ways they are lowly and dutiful. 
 Thou 'It be eaten one day — and well tasted, 
 If properly stuffed, cooked, and basted. 
 
 My sketch being made, I departed, 
 She winked, dropt t'other foot, and, light-hearted, 
 Waddled off with her eye on a worm, which she gobbled up nimbly, 
 
 my certie ! 
 Gobbled up in the course of a twinkling, 
 And ne'er gave poor vermis an inkling. 
 A solemn, deep bird is your duck, 
 And well she deserved to be stuck 
 On the walls of Egyptian Memphis, 1 
 As the type hieroglyphic of M.D.'s, 
 Who quack us, and cure us by quackery, 
 And all sorts of joukery-pawkery, 2 
 And if you should chance to fall ill, 
 Your duck of a doctor — he sends in his bill ! 
 Don't you think, my dear reader, in this advanced age, 
 Our Lady Doctors — dear Ducks ! should be well stuffed with sage, 
 1 A duck is the hieroglyphic for a physician. 2 Nice trickery. 
 
THE PITLOCHRY DUCK 67 
 
 And be our Sages Femmes, as 'tis over in Paris, 
 
 And dethrone Sairy Gamp and her friend ' Mrs. Harris ' 1 
 
 Past runs the sunlit Tummel, strong from his wilds above, 
 
 Blue as ' the body of heaven ' — shot like the neck of a dove, 
 
 He is fresh from the moor of Rannoch, he has drained Loch Ericht 
 
 dread, 
 And imaged on Carie's waters Ben-y-Houlach's stately head ; 
 He has mourned round the graves of the Struans hid in the night 
 
 of the wood, 
 And has laughed by the pleasant slope, where our old Dunalister 
 
 stood. 
 Schiehallion has heard him chafing, down by his sunless steep, 
 And has watched the child of the mountains, deep in his Loch 
 
 asleep. 
 He 's awake ! and off by Bonskeid, he has leapt his Falls with glee, 
 He has married the Garry below, and they linger in Faskally, 
 Then down by dear Moulin of Barn, and on to our Duck and me ! 
 
 With JEYE BEE'S ancient love. 
 23 Rutland Street, 23d October 1874. 1 
 
 1 Copies of these lines were printed by Dr. Brown and sent at the 
 time to several of his intimate friends. 
 
DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 These grotesque verses of ' The Duck ' show in Dr. 
 Brown not merely a rich vein of na'fve humour, but 
 no small amount of poetic fancy and rhyming power. 
 It has always been a matter of surprise to me, judg- 
 ing from the general character of his papers, in which 
 there is the expression of so much that is pure and 
 beautiful — the material elements of genuine poetry ; 
 and considering, too, that he wrote such articles as 
 ' Henry Vaughan ' and ' Arthur Hallam,' and is known 
 to have dipped deeply into the works of the ancient 
 classical poets, as also those of Wordsworth, Cowper, 
 Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Scott, Byron, Tennyson, 1 and 
 others, that he did not himself court the influence of 
 the muse ; for I am not aware that any higher flight 
 than that of 'The Duck' was attempted by him. 
 Indeed, his warm friend Sir Noel Paton told me that 
 many years ago, when talking with him regarding 
 the art of metrical composition, John said, ' I have 
 never been able to comprehend how any one could 
 
 1 I find in some letters of 1849 and 1850 that Dr. Brown had 
 written in high admiration of Tennyson's early poems, such as 
 The Miller's Daughter, (Enone, Love and Death, Dora, In Memoriam, 
 etc., and rates some critics of that period who treated the poet with 
 faint praise. 
 
ELASTIC CHARACTER OF MIND 69 
 
 give expression to coherent thought under the 
 trammels of metre and rhyme,' and added, with his 
 little laugh, 'the only poetry I ever produced was 
 four lines : — 
 
 ' My eyes are blind with childish tears ; 
 My teeth with age are green ; 
 I 'm utterly rumfooz-el-ed, 
 And not what I have been ! ' 
 
 These reminiscences of Dr. Brown may possibly be 
 regarded by some as trivial ; but such details serve as 
 side-lights, bringing before the mind a true ideal of the 
 man. They show an amount of youthful freshness 
 and an elastic character of mind which enabled him 
 to converse on subjects learned and profound, to 
 write philosophically and seriously, and to mix in 
 society with men of high rank or great intellect; 
 while he could accommodate himself to those of 
 inferior age, position, or mental endowment, and by 
 pen or otherwise promote innocent hilarity and 
 enjoyment. 
 
 A relative has justly said of Dr. Brown's intercourse 
 equally with high and low : — ' Most men in their inter- 
 course with their fellows use certain current phrases, 
 
70 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 useful counters of speech, which mean something or 
 nothing, as the case may be, which we keep in our 
 pocket, and hand out one or two as occasion seems to 
 require. He had none of these. His commonest 
 remark to the porter who took his portmanteau at 
 the station, or to the cabman who drove him home, to 
 every one with whom he came in contact, was fresh 
 and original, made there and then, fitted to the occa- 
 sion, and felt like a breath of fresh air. All natural and 
 unaffected human beings were at once at home with 
 him, and even the most artificial prigs gradually 
 thawed in his presence.' 1 Besides, there was in Dr. 
 Brown great simplicity and humility of character, 
 and a homeliness of speech and manner most re- 
 freshing, which even in the presence of distinguished 
 personages was unaltered. His humour was of a truly 
 Scotch type, shrewd, and what may be spoken of as 
 pawky, having in it an amiable and innocent degree 
 of sarcasm. His humorous or jocular remarks were 
 never premeditated, laboured, or dragged into notice, 
 but quick emanations of the mind from passing 
 
 1 In Memoria/m notice, Edinburgh Medical Journal, June 1882, 
 p. 1133. 
 
FIRST IMPORTANT LITERARY EFFORT 71 
 
 circumstances, always spontaneous, fresh, and natural. 
 The ready way in which he drew on a rich store of 
 anecdote, and the humorous point which he gave to 
 it in conversation, was as attractive as any genuinely 
 spontaneous witticism. 
 
 Dr. Brown's literary work, from his earliest to his 
 latest writings, bears the stamp of genuine person- 
 ality. His first important effort was put forth in 1846, 
 when Hugh Miller, the distinguished geologist and 
 gifted author of The Old Red Sandstone, the Testi- 
 mony of the Rocks, and other works, and the then 
 editor of the Witness newspaper, sent to him a £20 
 note, with the request that he would contribute to 
 that paper notices of the paintings then being 
 exhibited by the Royal Scottish Academy, — hearing, 
 doubtless, that he was enthusiastic regarding works 
 of art. This request was received with astonishment, 
 both because he had no acquaintance with Miller at 
 that time, and had not before written for the press. 
 His first thought, therefore, was, as he states in the 
 article afterwards published — ' Notes on Art ' x — to 
 
 1 Horae, Subsecivce, vol. ii. p. 216. 
 
72 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 decline the request, 'had not ray sine qua non, 
 with wife-like government, retentive and peremptory, 
 kept the money and heartened me.' In saying that 
 he had not written for the press, Dr. Brown does not 
 appear to have considered as important several 
 contributions to the Scotsman on works of art, 
 passing events, and various matters touching the 
 amenity of the city. 1 Unquestionably, therefore, 
 it was the editor of the latter paper who nursed 
 his dawning genius, thus drawing the attention 
 of the rival editor to his rare literary and 
 critical ability, and creating a desire to secure his 
 services for the columns of the Witness. I need 
 not say how admirably the imposed task for the 
 Witness was performed. The paintings in that 
 exhibition were certainly of rare quality, and no 
 such critical notices of our annual Academy displays 
 have since appeared : they were indeed remarkable 
 as word-pictures. 2 
 John only needed this beginning of authorship to 
 
 'At a later period he wrote thoae letters on proposed altera- 
 tions on the Castle and the Castle Rock, under the nom de plume 
 of ' Randolph ' — which attracted much publio notice. 
 
 2 Reprinted, Horce 8ubsecivce, series ii., pp. 233-93. 
 
RUSKIN'S ' MODERN PAINTERS ' 73 
 
 discover his power to write attractively for the public 
 mind and heart ; and, encouraged by the universal 
 praise which these notices called forth, he contributed 
 to the North British Review, in the following year, 
 an able article on Ruskin's Modem Painters. 1 And 
 now the accumulated knowledge of past years, 
 cultivated taste in ancient classics, in philosophy, 
 general literature, science and art ; keen observation 
 of men and manners — of things great and small; 
 of sympathy with all that is good, noble, and natural 
 in humanity, and appreciation of all that is beautiful 
 in nature and art, were no longer restrainable. Like 
 a stream, his thoughts — sometimes deep, smooth, and 
 solemn, sometimes rapid, lively, and sparkling — 
 continued to flow from his pen for upwards of thirty 
 years in papers on a variety of subjects, only inter- 
 rupted by intervals of delicate health. These were 
 published from time to time as contributions to 
 the Scotsman and various periodicals. His papers 
 were on two occasions collected in separate vol- 
 umes under the title of Horce Subsecivce, of which 
 there have been several editions published here 
 
 1 North British Review, vol. vi., Februar 1847, pp. 401-30. 
 
74 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 and in America; and nearly all his writings were 
 brought together and published in three volumes 
 under the same title in 1882, almost coincidently 
 with his decease. Dr. Brown used to speak of the 
 title Hotcb Subsecivce as being somewhat priggish; 
 and told the story of a lady having once asked at 
 a country library for Dr. Brown's Horrors of Society ! 
 He himself called them ' Bye-Hours,' from the papers 
 having been written at times when not occupied in 
 professional work. 
 
 In the Horce Subsecivce published in 1858 there 
 is the following curiously worded dedication : — 
 
 TO MY TWO FRIENDS 
 at Busby, Renfrewshire, 
 
 IN REMEMBRANCE OF A JOURNEY FROM CaRSTAIRS JUNCTION 
 
 to Toledo and back, 
 the story of ' rab and his friends ' is inscribed. 
 
 to the memory of 
 
 JAMES ABERCROMBY, first BARON DUNFERMLINE, 
 
 and to MY FATHER'S, 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 WHAT OF MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL TRUTH 
 
 is in these BYE-HOURS. 
 
DEDICATIONS OF THE ' KORJE SUBSECIV^E ' 75 
 
 The dedication in the second volume or series 
 published in (1861), is 
 
 To 
 
 THE EIGHT HON. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, 
 
 M.P., D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 RECTOR or the University op Edinburgh, 
 
 PROM HIS 
 
 ASSESSOR. 
 
 ANDREW COVENTRY DICK, 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, 
 
 AND 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 PROM THEIR OLD 
 
 FRIEND. 
 
 Some have regretted that Dr. Brown's name has 
 not been connected with any large work, instead of 
 merely fugitive or fragmentary pieces, which are in 
 danger of being ere long shelved and^ forgotten. His 
 health, however, was never so stable, nor character 
 of mind so plodding, as to fit him for prolonged 
 study or sustained effort ; but it may be averred that, 
 like the miscellaneous pieces of many of our best 
 writers both in prose and verse, these short leisure 
 hour effusions have it in them to impress the mind 
 and cling longer in the memory than productions of 
 
76 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 a more ambitious character. In a note taken some- 
 where from the Eclectic Review, it is said 'a man 
 can scarcely hope for immortality by possessing 
 the name of John Brown, but he may wait down 
 to posterity with tolerable individuality by the 
 epithet of Subsecivce Brown ! ' 
 
 ■All that he did write was done, as he himself 
 expressed it, ' on the quick : ' hence the freeness, 
 freshness, and forcibleness of his writings. And in 
 the variety of subjects on which he wrote, subjects 
 philosophical, classical, and artistic ; gay and grave ; 
 humorous and pathetic; respecting scenery and 
 country life; notable characters, humble folks, and 
 canine friends, — all are handled in a way peculiarly 
 his own, with consummate skill, delicacy of taste, 
 keenness of observation, and realistic power. 
 
 Others have wondered that Dr. Brown, being a 
 physician of so much experience and power of 
 observation, should have written nothing special on 
 any strictly professional subject, not even a case in a 
 medical journal. But while his genius carried him 
 by preference on those lines which have instructed 
 and delighted thousands of the general public, he did 
 
ON THE PROFESSION OF MEDICINE 77 
 
 not overlook the importance and the interests of his 
 own profession ; for in the papers ' Locke and Syden- 
 ham,' 'Education through the Senses,' 'Art and Science 
 — a contrasted parallel,' ' Competition in Medicine/ 
 ' With Brains, Sir ! ' the ' Excursus Ethicus,' ' Lay- 
 Sermons on Health,' ' Our Gideon Grays,' ' Dr. Henry 
 Marshall and Military Hygiene,' and numerous 
 memorial sketches of medical men, — even in 'Kab 
 and his Friends,' Dr. Brown, by the reflected light of 
 an all-round knowledge of medicine, inculcated 
 thoroughly orthodox views in medical faith and 
 practice, as regards the self-regulating, self-adjusting 
 power of Nature in disease ; the primary importance 
 of medicine viewed as the art of healing, not less than 
 as the science of diseases and drugs ; and the great 
 importance of a liberal education to qualify a medical 
 man for the honourable and successful exercise 
 of his profession. Besides, he has not overlooked 
 in these papers the ethics, duties, and responsibilities 
 of the profession, namely, the courtesy which is due 
 by practitioners to each other, — not always attended 
 to in the present times; the kindliness due to patients, 
 and the consideration due by the public to the 
 
78 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 profession, and especially to our hard- worked country 
 doctors — the Gideon Grays, who, with doubtful praise, 
 have been styled the ' rough and ready ' practitioners, 
 but are now, at least, with few exceptions, as well 
 equipped as the general run of city doctors. 
 
 The prime qualifications of a physician or surgeon 
 Dr. Brown sums up in these pregnant words: — 'Capax, 
 Perspicax, Sagax, Efficax: — Capax, there must be 
 room to receive, and arrange, and keep knowledge : 
 Perspicax, senses and perceptions— keen, accurate, 
 and immediate, to bring in materials from all sensible 
 things; Sagax, a central power of knowing what is 
 what, and what it is worth, of choosing and rejecting, 
 of judging; and finally, Efficax, the will and the way, 
 the power to turn all the other three — capacity, 
 perspicacity, sagacity — to account in the performance 
 of the thing on hand, thus rendering back to the 
 outer world, in a new and useful form, what is 
 received from it. These are the intellectual qualities 
 which make up the physician, without any one of 
 which he would be rnancus, and would not deserve 
 the name of a complete artsman, any more than 
 proteine would be itself, if any one of its four 
 
ADVICE TO DOCTORS, PATIENTS, AND THE PUBLIC 79 
 
 elements were amissing.' x As a postscript to these 
 philosophical and practical views, I would quote a 
 worldly-wise bit of advice which Dr. Brown gives : — 
 ' Let me tell my young doctor friends, that a cheerful 
 face and step, and neckcloth, and buttonhole, and an 
 occasional hearty and kindly joke, a power of exciting, 
 a setting-agoing a good laugh, are stock in our trade 
 not to be despised. The merry heart does good like 
 a medicine.' 2 
 
 While speaking of the qualifications and duties of 
 doctors for the right practice of their profession, Dr. 
 Brown has in various passages of his papers uttered 
 some wholesome truths in regard to employers and 
 the public generally. For example, he remarks on 
 the aspects of society in those days — and it is still 
 more applicable to the state of matters at the present 
 time: 'Every one is for ever looking after, and 
 talking of everybody else's health, and advising and 
 prescribing either his or her doctor or drug ; and that 
 wholesome modesty and shamefacedness, which, I 
 regret to say, is now old-fashioned, is vanishing like 
 
 1 Hor. Subs. ' With Brains, Sir ! ' Series ii. pp. 402-3. 
 
 2 Ibid., Series i., 'Locke and Sydenham,' Introductory, p. 31. 
 
80 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 other things, and is being put off as if modesty were 
 a mode, or dress, rather than a condition or essence. 
 Besides the bad moral habit this engenders, it breaks 
 up what is now too rare, the old feeling of the family 
 doctor — there are now as few old family doctors as 
 servants — the familiar, kindly face, which has pre- 
 sided through generations at births and deaths ; the 
 friend who bears about, and keeps sacred, deadly 
 secrets which must be laid silent in the grave, and who 
 knows the stuff his stock is made of — their " constitu- 
 tions." All this sort of thing is greatly gone, especially 
 in large cities ; and much of this love of change, of talk, 
 of having everything explained, or at least named, — 
 especially if it be in Latin ; of running from one 
 "charming" specialist to another; of doing a little 
 privately and dishonestly to one's-self or the children 
 with the globules; of going to see some notorious 
 great man without telling or taking with them their 
 old family friend, merely as they say " to satisfy their 
 mind," and of course ending in leaving and affronting 
 and injuring the wise and good man.' . . . ' Publicity, 
 itching ears, want of reverence for the unknown, 
 want of trust in goodness, want of what we call faith, 
 
ON MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS AND LICENCES 81 
 
 want of gratitude and fair dealing, on the part of the 
 public; and on the part of the profession, cupidity, 
 curiosity, restlessness, ambition, false trust in self and 
 in science, the lust and haste to be rich, and to be 
 thought knowing and omniscient, want of breeding 
 and good sense, of common honesty and honour, these 
 are the occasions and results of this state of things.' 1 
 Dr. Brown was in his views, curiously enough, con- 
 servative as regarded the functions of the Medical 
 Faculty in our Universities, while in argument ultra 
 radical concerning medical practice. In the crisis of 
 1858 he was opposed alike to the licensing arrange- 
 ments of the Medical and Surgical Corporations, and 
 to those of the Universities. In the last edition of 
 his collected works, 12th April 1882, the following 
 paragraph occurs : ' I am more convinced than ever 
 of the futility and worse of the licensing system ; and 
 think, with Adam Smith, that a mediciner should be 
 as free to exercise his gifts as an architect or mole- 
 catcher. The public has its own shrewd way of 
 knowing who should build its house or catch its 
 moles; and it may be safely left to take the same 
 
 1 Hor. Sub. i. ' Locke and Sydenham,' Introd. pp. 19-21. 
 F 
 
82 DE. JOHN BROWN 
 
 line in choosing its doctor.' 1 This opinion, that 
 there should be no credentials at all for practice, 
 will not in these days be indorsed by many; but 
 such were Dr. Brown's views, and held to the last. 
 Then in regard to new methods in the investigation 
 of disease, while in the early days of the employment 
 of the stethoscope, the microscope, the sphygmo- 
 graph, etc., Dr. Brown gave to them a somewhat 
 hesitating adhesion, urging in the strongest terms 
 the all-important necessity for the cultivation 
 and concentration of the unassisted senses in 
 diagnosis, yet in later times he came to recognise 
 that by such aids a great enlargement of our know- 
 ledge was obtained; and so qualified previous ut- 
 terances by saying, such means ' are good, but don't 
 let us neglect the drawing out into full power by 
 the keen and intelligent use of our senses, those 
 eyes, ears, and hands, which we can always carry 
 about with us.' Dr. Brown was, it must be said, 
 slow to give up the old and simple articles of the 
 Pharmacopoeia, and adopt new remedies. Regarding 
 all these matters, indeed, he seemed to see eye to 
 
 i Sor. Sub. i. ' Locke and Sydenham,' Introd. p. 11, note. 
 
IN THE SICKROOM 83 
 
 eye with Mr. Syme, with whom he was so close a 
 companion. To them as to myself there seemed, 
 at that time, a rash striving in the profession to strike 
 out something new, which, without due consideration, 
 was speculative, or led to hap-hazard, meddlesome 
 practice. But I believe that if both Syme and he 
 had lived longer they would have hailed with delight 
 the wonderful progress in medicine and surgery 
 resulting from new methods of investigation; the 
 development of the germ theory; the combined 
 triumphs of antiseptics with anaesthetics; and the 
 advances in Materia Medica and therapeutics. 
 
 When at the bedside of the invalid, and the case 
 not serious, Dr. Brown's cheery smile, kindly or 
 quaint remark, an appropriate anecdote or the notice 
 of anything odd or novel in the apartment, relieved 
 for a time at least morbid apprehension or nervous- 
 ness in the patient, and so proved highly beneficial, 
 even without a prescription, and with the result that 
 repetition of the visit was longed for. But when the 
 case was serious he was grave, tender, warmly 
 sympathetic, and gave the patient the full benefit 
 of his large experience, and remarkably acute and 
 
84 DE. JOHN BROWN 
 
 concentrated mind. His prescriptions, like Mr. Syme's, 
 were simple in the extreme, having always a clear 
 physiological and pathological bearing according to 
 his own lights, derived from the early cultivation of 
 the senses and a wonderfully extensive course of 
 professional reading. He proved himself to be in all 
 respects a most judicious and safe physician ; and at 
 one time had made for himself, if not a large, yet a 
 select practice, which would doubtless have been 
 larger, and retained to the end, had it not been for 
 the recurrence of ill health. Besides, his practice 
 might have been much more extensive, and more 
 lucrative, had he exercised more worldly wisdom and 
 commercial accuracy in the working of it. Doctors 
 are not always so gratefully remembered, or so 
 generously recompensed, as they ought to be, for 
 services rendered in the preservation of health 
 and strength, — often of life itself; and so I be- 
 lieve our able, and good, and sympathetic friend's 
 labours were frequently most inadequately ac- 
 knowledged. I question whether he was ever 
 able when asked to name his fee, but left it entirely 
 to the goodwill and ability of the patient — a course, 
 
OFFICERSHIP, LIFE ASSOCIATION OF SCOTLAND 85 
 
 moreover, which was much more common in those 
 days than at present. Speaking generally, the 
 practice then was perhaps more befitting the dig- 
 nity of the profession, having less in it of a com- 
 mercial spirit. 
 
 Dr. Brown's various attainments highly qualified 
 him for the work required in connection with Life 
 Assurance; and consequently, on the death of Dr. 
 Patrick Newbigging, he was appointed in January 1864 
 to the Medical Officership of the Life Association of 
 Scotland, of which he had been for several years a 
 director. This offiee he held during the remainder 
 of his life ; and as I did occasional duty for him from 
 the above period to 1876, — at which time I was ap- 
 pointed Joint Medical Officer, — I had ample oppor- 
 tunity of observing the wisdom of his opinions, and 
 the confidence which the board of directors reposed 
 in them. 
 
 As there are better opportunities in the medical 
 profession than in any other for the study of 
 human character, and the observation of the 
 many-sided aspects of social and private life, its 
 
86 DR.. JOHN BISOWN 
 
 virtues and vices, frailties and peculiivritios, Or. 
 Brown, with his remarkably keen faculty of dis- 
 cernment, turned these opportunities to tho best 
 account, not only in tho practice of his profes- 
 sion, but still more in his various literary pro- 
 ductions, and was thus, perhaps, enabled to 
 throw with greater effect side-lights on human 
 character and action. This is most apparent in 
 that early and most popular of all his pro- 
 ductions, 'Bab and his Friends,' in which his 
 literary and other qualities are so charmingly 
 displayed. 
 
 1 have already spoken of tho origin and world- 
 wide fame of this incomparable idyll. Its singularly 
 simple construction, vivid narrative, and exquisite 
 pathos, blended with easy humour, havo touched 
 many a heart and drawn many a tear. Had lh\ 
 Brown written nothing else than this fascinating 
 story, his name would have been immortalised. It 
 is unquestionably the masterpiece of his numerous 
 papers, meritorious as all of (hem arc It was tirst 
 published in pamphlet form in 1858, twenty -eight 
 years after the oircumstances ooourred whioh 
 
'KAB AMI HIS H'JENDS' 87 
 
 suggested the story, and shortly afterwards in the first 
 scries of the /form Hvhnmivm. Since then it has 
 gone through a number of editions in tins country 
 in separate pamphlet forms with and without 
 illustrations, and been reprinted in different editions 
 of I,1jo llon/f in our Colonies, and in America, where 
 it has boon largely circulated, and it has also 
 boon translated into several languages. 
 
 What could be more touchingly natural, pathetic, 
 and memorable, than such descriptions as the follow- 
 ing: 'Ailie's unforgettable face, palo, serious, lonely, 
 delicate, sweet; h or "mutch" white as snow, with its 
 black ribbons; her silvery, smooth hair, setting off 
 her dark grey eyes — eyes such as one sees only 
 twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also 
 of the overcoming of it; her eyebrows black and 
 delicato, and her mouth firm, patient, and contented, 
 which i'uw mouths ever are !' Then on her arrival at 
 Minfo IIouso Hospital how her husband .James lifted 
 her from tho cart as if 'Solomon in all his glory 
 had boon handing down tho Queen of Sheba at his 
 palaco-gate; but who could not have done it more 
 daintily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman than 
 
88 DK. JOHN BROWN 
 
 did the Howgate carrier ! ' 1 And all that follows : — 
 the operation, so bravely endured— no anaesthetic 
 in those days; the effect the courage shown by her 
 had on the feelings of the youthful students; her 
 courtesy to them; the operator; the after tender 
 watching by her ' ain man,' who ' wad hae nane o' yer 
 strynge nurses ; ' and lastly, Ailie, when delirious and 
 dying, living her early days over again, singing bits of 
 old ballads mingled with the Psalms of David, and 
 ' rolling up a nightgown, murmuring foolish little 
 words over it/ while holding* it to her wounded 
 breast with a look of surprising tenderness and joy, 
 which action her afflicted husband interpreted by 
 saying, 'Wae's me, Doctor, I declare she's thinkin' 
 it 's that bairn — the only bairn we ever had — our wee 
 Mysie ; and she 's in the Kingdom forty years and 
 mair,' — all this and much more — for it is full of 
 touching passages — is told with remarkable simplicity, 
 pathos, and power. The death of Rab, too, like 
 those of his mistress and master, is pathetic in the 
 extreme. This I may also summarise in a few 
 words. The ground was again white with snow, and 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series ii. p. 373. 
 
THE DEATH OF RAB. ' MARJORIE FLEMING ' 89 
 
 Ailie's grave was in a short time opened to receive 
 the remains of her devoted and broken-hearted 
 husband. Rab again looks on at a distance, then 
 slinks home to the stable; refuses food; will not 
 leave Jess the old mare, or permit an approach to 
 her; and becomes so dangerous as to necessitate a 
 ' happy despatch ' — which, as the narrator expresses 
 it, ' fit end for Rab, quick and complete : — his teeth 
 and his friends gone, why should he keep the peace 
 and be civil ? ' 
 
 Next to 'Rab and his Friends,' the paper which 
 has excited most popular interest is 'Marjorie 
 Fleming.' It came from Dr. Brown's hands in 1860. 
 In 1858 there was published in Kirkcaldy, by the late 
 Mr. Henry Brougham Farnie, a small book, the title 
 of which was 'Pet Marjorie/ a story of child life fifty 
 years ago, inscribed by permission to Lady Harriet 
 St. Clair. The author was at that time, I believe, 
 a journalist, and afterwards distinguished himself 
 as the writer of the libretto of Les Cloches de 
 Corneville and several songs. He seems to have 
 had access to the Journal which the child genius 
 had kept, and from this he extracted many 
 
90 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 interesting passages, making a most readable narra- 
 tive. Dr. Brown, I believe, had seen this little book, 
 but still it was open to him to treat the story of that 
 remarkably clever and lovable child as he thought 
 best. Her relatives confided the Journal and letters 
 to him with additional particulars regarding her 
 life and death. In reading over the respective 
 biographies there is not a sentence in Dr. Brown's 
 writing which approaches a trespass on Farnie's 
 work. Throughout, there is a very great differ- 
 ence in the quotations from the Journal; and 
 the discrimination and lively critical ability with 
 which Dr. Brown has handled this most interest- 
 ing subject have gained for the story, as in 
 the case of 'Kab and his Friends,' universal 
 admiration. The subject must have been a truly 
 delightful one to himself: — a child so young, 1 so 
 precocious, so utterly unconscious of her own abilities 
 and attractions, so observant, so natural and quaint 
 in her ways, and so full of love and affection. With 
 what grace and artistic skill does he introduce the 
 subject ! What could be more delicious in incident 
 
 1 Born 15th January 1803, and died 19th December 1811. 
 
SIR WALTER SCOTT AND PET MARJORIE 91 
 
 and character than the scene in which the then 
 ' great unknown ' novelist is described, when, finding 
 himself one day 'off' the fang' in writing his 
 Waverley, he hastened to a neighbouring house and 
 carried off to his own in Castle Street during an ' on- 
 ding o' snaw,' in the cul de sac of his shepherd's 
 plaid, his pet Marjorie ; and then, after unfolding it 
 and holding her on his knee, spending hours of mer- 
 riment and wonderment with the 'rosie wee wifie,' 
 pretending to be taught by her childish rhymes, 
 and in return teaching her curious old ballads, and 
 getting her to recite passages from Shakespeare ! * 
 And then, could any words be more pathetic or in 
 better taste than these, when the biographer comes 
 to draw the curtain over this young life ? ' This 
 dainty, bright thing is about to flee, — to come " quick 
 to confusion." The day before her death (Sunday) she 
 sat up in bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as 
 with the light of a coming world, and with a tremu- 
 lous old voice repeated the following lines of Burns 
 — (a remarkable choice for a child) — heavy with 
 the shadow of death and lit with the phantasy of 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series iii. p. 204. 
 
92 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 the judgment - seat, the publican's prayer in para- 
 phrase : — 
 
 "Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene ? 
 Have I so found it full of pleasing charms 1 
 Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between, 
 Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms ; 
 Is it departing pangs my soul alarms ? 
 Or Death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode ? 
 
 For guilt, for Guilt, my terrors are in arms ; 
 I tremble to approach an angry God, 
 And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod. 
 
 " Fain would I say, ' Forgive my foul offence ! ' 
 Fain promise never more to disobey ; 
 But, should my Author health again dispense, 
 Again I might desert fair virtue's way ; 
 Again in folly's path might go astray ; 
 Again exalt the brute and sink the man ; 
 
 Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, 
 Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan 1 
 Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran 1 
 
 " thou great Governor of all below ! 
 If I might dare a lifted eye to Thee, 
 Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, 
 And still the tumult of the raging sea ; 
 With that controlling power assist even me 
 Those headlong furious passions to confine, 
 
 For all unfit I feel my powers to be 
 To rule their torrent in the allowed line ; 
 O, aid me with Thy help, Omnipotence Divine ! " 
 
' JEEMS THE DOOR-KEEPER ' 98 
 
 ' Do we make too much of this little child who 
 has been in her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these 
 fifty and more years ? We may of her cleverness, — 
 not of her affectionateness — her nature. What a 
 picture the animosa infans gives us of herself, her 
 vivacity, her passionateness, her precocious love- 
 making, her passion for nature, for swine, for all 
 living things, her reading, her turn for expression, 
 her satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, 
 her repentances ! We don't wonder Walter Scott 
 carried her off in the neuk of his plaid and played 
 himself with her for hours.' 1 
 
 Another most justly popular paper of Dr. Brown's, 
 — a genuine sketch drawn from personal observation, 
 — is ' Jeems, the Door-keeper ' 2 of his father's church 
 in Broughton Place ; concluding with a Lay Sermon 
 addressed to a Young Men's Christian Instruction 
 Association, for which the sketch of Jeems was 
 written. 
 
 Jeems is portrayed as having had an extensive 
 Khadamanthine face and nose; small keen eyes; a 
 large body with short legs, covered by a huge blue 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series iii. pp. 229-30. 2 Ibid., pp. 281-99. 
 
94 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 great-coat which reached down to his heels. He 
 appears to have had an exalted idea of the impor- 
 tance of his office — as most beadles have — and was 
 most steady and energetic in the discharge of its 
 functions. One of these occasionally was the treat- 
 ment of 'thae young hizzies/ as he called the ser- 
 vant girls who fainted in the church. Having been 
 indoctrinated with clear views as to the nature and 
 treatment of syncope, Jeems laid them flat on the 
 floor, and with great zest and dexterity ripped up their 
 stay-laces with a ' gully ' knife kept for the purpose ! 
 But despite his uncouth appearance and apparent 
 coarseness, the predominating traits of Jeems's char- 
 acter were 'rugged tenderness,' contentment in life, 
 and simple godliness. John, as a boy and youth, 
 frequently breakfasted with him in his lonely room 
 at the top of a long stair in the Canongate. - Jeems 
 made capital porridge, and I think I see and hear 
 him saying his grace over our bickers 1 with their 
 brats 2 on ; ' and then taking his Bible and Psalmbook 
 out of an old, but now unrocking, wooden cradle 
 — (for a wife and baby had died thirty-five years 
 
 1 Wooden bowls. 2 Skins. 
 
JEEMS 95 
 
 before)— and ' reading, not without a certain homely 
 majesty, the first verse of the 99th Psalm, then 
 launching out into the noble depths of Irish. . . . 
 He had what he called family worship, morning and 
 evening, never failing — even although alone. He not 
 only sang his psalm, but gave out and chanted the 
 line in great style; and on seeing me one morning 
 surprised at this, he said, " Ye see, John, oo " — mean- 
 ing himself and his wife — (whom he never mentioned 
 by name, but only as she or her) "began that 
 way." At this so-called family worship, ' Jeems did 
 what I never heard of in any one else : he had seven 
 fixed tunes — one for each day in the week — and on 
 Tuesday, the day on which his wife and child had 
 died, Coleshill, that soft, exquisite air, — monotonous, 
 melancholy, soothing, and vague, like the sea, — was 
 what he invariably sang.' The children in the stair 
 could tell the day of the week by the tune which 
 reached their ears. One more particular in the 
 sketch of this remarkable 'grim old Rhadaman- 
 thus, Bezaleel, U.P. Naso,' and another respect- 
 ing the limner who has so felicitously drawn it. 
 Jeems having been bred a weaver, his friend John 
 
96 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 one day said to him, 'What kind of weaver are 
 you ? ' ' I'm in the fancical line, Maister John ; 
 I like its leecence.' 'So/ Dr. Brown in the paper 
 exclaims, ' exit Jeems — impiger, iracundus, acer — 
 torvus visu — placide quiescat ! ' x And with sudden 
 and fantastic transition from the humorous and 
 pathetic regarding 'this dear old-world specimen of 
 home-spun worth,' the Doctor becomes the preacher 
 to the Young Men of the Association— speaking of 
 himself, now as in the fancical line ; and in virtue 
 of his leecence commenced a series of clever, 
 curiously quaint, and deeply spiritual exegetical 
 remarks in his own peculiar style, on the pursuit of 
 truth, and the possession of wisdom, taking these 
 words as his text : — 
 
 ' On Tintock tap there is a Mist, 
 And in the Mist there is a Kist, 
 And in the Kist there is a Cap ; 
 Tak' up the Cap and sup the drap, 
 And set the Cap on Tintock tap.' 
 
 The Lay Sermon, or exposition spun out of this 
 novel subject, is well worthy of being solemnly and 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series iii. pp. 289. 
 
LOVE OF NATURE. TOUR IN THE HEBRIDES 97 
 
 prayerfully read, and inwardly digested by young or 
 old. 
 
 Dr. Brown had a passionate love of nature ; what- 
 ever in her was sweet and soothing, weird-like or 
 grand, and in the varied aspects of sunshine, cloud 
 or storm. The effects of these on him were soul- 
 felt ; not mere impressions of sensual admiration, 
 but mingled feelings of wonder, adoration, and 
 veneration, exciting in him an inarticulate hymn of 
 praise. As he had taken frequent excursions with 
 congenial friends in the south and west of Scotland, 
 in Wales, in the Cumberland Lake country (when 
 visiting Ruskin), and in Ireland, also continental tours, 
 it would have been interesting to have had from 
 him other descriptive papers besides 'Minchmoor' 
 and ' The Enterkin.' But only in letters to friends 
 were his thoughts on these occasions expressed, 
 such as while on a tour in the Hebrides and 
 Argyllshire Highlands, he wrote: 'I was out all 
 night in Tobermory Bay worshipping, pagan-like, the 
 heavenly host ; then off at three in the morning past 
 Ardnamurchan with the biggest and most blazing of 
 
98 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 morning stars, and presently the sun rising up. I 
 never saw such a scene ; we were in a sort of extem- 
 pore heaven, earth, and sky, and sea — one imagery; 
 and the hills of Morven, and the enchanted hills of 
 Skye, and Kum, and Eigg, and even Muck, all in 
 unspeakable beauty and strangeness.' . . . ' The 
 Coolin hills are not to be spoken of with one's hat on. 
 I am for ever dreaming about them, and the glorious 
 Coruisk. ... It was perfect : first gloomy, the ridges 
 hidden by fleecy mist ; then they revealed their awful 
 faces, and were seen clear against the sky in their 
 wild tragic forms ; then shrouded again ; and then 
 one looking out here and there as if to say, 'don't 
 presume, we are all here.' It is a wonderful place 
 for power and a certain weird solemnity : we were 
 quite filled with the glory of the place.' 
 ' In his paper on ' Minchmoor,' l while crossing with 
 him from Traquair to Yarrow, we seem to feel 
 the awe of the weird and solitary scene — especially 
 around * the haunted spring ; ' and see with him, on 
 reaching the flat head of the moor, the distant range 
 of the Cheviots and Lammermoors, which burst on 
 
 1 Hot. Sub., Series iii. p. 241, 
 
'minchmoqr' 99 
 
 the view, while the 'great round-backed, kindly, 
 solemn hills of Tweed and Ettrick lie all about like 
 sleeping mastiffs — too plain to be grand, too ample 
 and beautiful to be commonplace.' In this fancied 
 excursion he relieves, as it were, fatigue, by remini- 
 scences of the place where Sir Walter Scott met, and 
 parted for the last time, with Mungo Park, the distin- 
 guished African traveller ; and of a crack with a ' fine 
 specimen of a Border herd — young, tall, sagacious, 
 self-contained, and free in speech and air,' who in 
 praise of Jed, his fine collie, black and comely, 
 gentle and keen, said, with a true south country 
 accent : ' Ay, she 's a fell yin ; she can dae a' but 
 speak ; ' and who, on being asked if the dog needed 
 much teaching, replied : ' Her kind needs nane ; she 
 sooks 't in wi' her mither's milk.' And on descending 
 into the beautiful, classical, and deservedly besung 
 vale of Yarrow our thoughts turn to the Border raids ; 
 the Douglas tragedy, and the Dowie Dens; to the 
 Flower of Yarrow, the bold Buccleuch, and the out- 
 law Murray. Altogether this paper is most refresh- 
 ingly racy and artistic. It recalls the lines of 
 Wordsworth as to the experience of one viewing such 
 
100 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 varied scenery — the mind filled with equally varied 
 
 associations : — 
 
 ' Who thinks and feels 
 And recognises ever and anon 
 The breeze of nature stirring in his soul : ' J 
 
 for while reading it we can fancy even feeling the 
 
 exhilarating breath of mountain air ; and at each step 
 
 throughout the ascent from Traquair experiencing 
 
 the charm of the ever shifting views of the vale of 
 
 the Tweed with its — 
 
 ' silver stream, 
 Glittering in the sunny beam.' 
 
 Though not so fascinating to many as ' Minchmoor/ 
 'The Enterkin' has fine word-pictures, giving us 
 glimpses into the wild loneliness of that Pass : — ' the 
 wonderful steepness and narrowness of the glen, its 
 beauty, solemnity, eeriness, gentle gloom, depth, and 
 height, its unity and sacred peace.' 2 
 
 ' It is not quiet, is not ease, 
 But something deeper far than these ; 
 The separation that is here 
 Is of the grave ; and of austere, 
 Yet happy feelings of the dead.' 
 
 1 The Excursion, Book iv. 2 Hor. Sub., vol. iii. p. 349. 
 
' queen mary's child-garden ' 101 
 
 Then as to ' Queen Mary's Child-Garden,' short as 
 the article is, it may be reckoned in its few sentences 
 as second, and akin in respect of pure and simple 
 pathos, to that of ' Marjorie Fleming.' Think of 
 Mary Stuart's 'little walk, and its rows of box- 
 wood, left to themselves for three hundred years. 
 Yes, without doubt, "here is that first garden of 
 her simpleness." Fancy the little lovely royal child, 
 with four Marys, her play-fellows, her child-maids of 
 honour, with their little hands and feet, and their 
 innocent and happy eyes, pattering about that garden 
 all that time ago, laughing and running and garden- 
 ing as only children do and can. . . . There is some- 
 thing " that tirls the heart-strings a' to the life " in 
 standing and looking on this unmistakable living relic 
 of that strange and pathetic old time. Were we Mr. 
 Tennyson, we would write an Idyl of that Child-Queen 
 in that garden of hers, eating her bread and honey, 
 getting her teaching from the holy men, the monks 
 of old, and running off in wild mirth to her garden 
 and flowers, all unconscious of the black, lowering 
 thundercloud on Ben Lomond's shoulder.' 1 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series ii. p. 176. 
 
102 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Regarding Art, I have already noticed Dr. Brown's 
 first important paper, ' Notes on Art,' and I need do no 
 more than refer again to his other early article in the 
 North British Review on 'Modern Painters.' These 
 two papers, and those on ' John Leech/ ' Sir Henry 
 Baeburn,' and 'Sir Edwin Landseer's picture, There's 
 Life in the Old Bog yet,' abundantly show, what all 
 his friends knew well, his intense love of Art, and 
 warm appreciation and knowledge of the masters in it. 
 ' Art (he has said) is part of my daily food, like the 
 laughter of children, and the common air, the earth, 
 the sky ; it is an affection, not a passion to come and 
 go like the gusty winds, nor as principles cold and 
 dead ; it penetrates my entire life, and is one of the 
 surest and deepest pleasures : — ' ] 
 
 ' Nature he loved, and next to Nature Art. 1 
 
 As an Art Critic no one who reads what he has 
 written regarding art can doubt his powers in that 
 respect, and his correct ideas of the true principles 
 which should govern works of art. A single passage 
 from the article on John Leech is sufficient to show 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series ii. p. 231. 
 
A LOVER OF ART. ' JOHN LEECH ' 103 
 
 this. ' This intense realism and insight [speaking of 
 Leech], this pure intense power of observation, is that 
 which makes the Greek so infinitely above the 
 Roman sculptors. The Greeks knew nothing of what 
 was under the skin — it was considered profane to 
 open the human body and dissect it, — but they 
 studied form and action with that keen, sure, unfor- 
 getting, loving eye, that purely realistic faculty, 
 which probably they, as a race, had in more exquisite 
 perfection than any other people before or since. The 
 Romans had no misgivings or shyness at cutting into 
 and laying bare their dead fellows, as little as they 
 had in killing them, or being themselves killed. 
 They must needs show off their knowledge and their 
 muscles, and therefore they made their statues as if 
 without skin, and put on often as violent and often 
 impossible action as ever did Buonarotti. Compare 
 the Laocoon and his boys (small men rather) with 
 the Elgin Marbles, the riders on the frieze so comely 
 in their going, so lissome ; their skin slipping sweetly 
 over their muscles ; their modestly representing not 
 of what they know, but of what they see.' 1 
 
 1 Hot. Sub., Series iii. pp. 15, 16. 
 
104 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Dr. Brown recognises in Leech — though a carica- 
 turist — the highest perfection of art, that which 
 is realistic in form, expression, and character; so 
 that life and motion, humour and pathos, comedy 
 and tragedy, are all depicted with perfect purity, 
 good taste, unmistakable truthfulness, and incom- 
 parable power. ' We do not know any liner instance 
 of blamelessness in art or literature, such perfect 
 delicacy and cleanliness of mind, — nothing coarse, — 
 nothing having the slightest taint of indecency, — no 
 double entendre, — no laughing at virtue, — no glori- 
 fying or glozing at vice, — nothing to make any one 
 of his own lovely girls blush, or his own handsome 
 face hide itself. This gentleness and thorough 
 gentlemanliness pervades all his works. They are 
 done by a man you would take into your family and 
 to your heart at once.' 1 Noticing the fertility of 
 Leech's pencil, he says : ' In Punch alone, up to 1862, 
 there are more than 3000 separate drawings, with 
 hardly the vestige of repetition ! and in nothing is his 
 realistic power more seen than in ■ those delightful 
 records of his own holidays. A geologist will tell 
 1 Hor. Sub., hi. p. 33. 
 
LEECH 105 
 
 you the exact structure of the rock in the Tay at 
 Campsie Linn where Mr. Briggs is carrying out that 
 huge salmon in his arms, tenderly and safely, as 
 if it were his first-born.' l 
 
 It is well known that after Leech's decease his 
 family furnished Dr. Brown with many specimens of 
 his works and writings, and information in regard to 
 his life for the purpose of having a memoir written of 
 him ; but this unfortunately happened at a time when 
 Dr. Brown was affected with serious illness, and the 
 work was never entered on. 
 
 The article on Leech in the Horce Subsecivce was first 
 printed in the North British Review, illustrated with 
 a number of admirable woodcuts; but these being 
 absent in its new form, Dr. Brown feared ' it might be 
 dished for want of the plates — to give a twist to 
 Rogers's well-known joke.' 2 
 
 Some who did not know Dr. Brown's real dis- 
 criminating power respecting works of art have com- 
 plained of his notices as sometimes too laudatory; 
 but it must be remembered that the published art 
 notices of the Royal Scottish Academy Exhibition by 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., iii. pp. 19. 2 Ibid., Preface, p. G. 
 
106 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 him were only respecting the works of artists in 
 the highest rank of their profession. He was ever on 
 the look-out for that which was really good in art, 
 and ever ready to bestow praise on those to whom 
 praise was justly due: he saw abundance of what 
 was weak and poor in art, only to be passed by with a 
 smile or a kindly private joke; and much of that 
 which was mediocre in effort was treated with faint 
 praise, or with encouragement to the artist to go on 
 in the hope of something better being produced in 
 course of time. 
 
 Before leaving the subject of Art I must say a word 
 or two on Dr. Brown's own ability in sketching. He 
 never was taught to draw, and never did anything in 
 the way of colouring, but with his pen he showed no 
 small ability in sketches of a comic character. Many 
 of his friends treasure the possession of these rapidly 
 executed drawings. They have already been spoken 
 of as frequently done in correspondence with juvenile 
 friends, or left as calling-cards. Perhaps the two 
 best of his sketches are a representation of Jeems the 
 Door-keeper as a frontispiece to that paper ; and one 
 bearing the title 'Pity the sorrows of us poor houseless 
 
RtTSKIN ON DR. BROWN'S ARTISTIC SKILL 107 
 
 dogs.' Mr. Kuskin in an article on ' The Black Arts' — 
 namely,the development of etching, photogravure, and 
 photography, in Cassell's Magazine of Art, says : — 
 'There is a little book, a very precious and pretty one, 
 of Dr. John Brown's, called " Something about a Well." 
 It has a yellow paper cover, and on the cover a careful 
 woodcut from one of the doctor's own pen sketches — 
 two wire-haired terriers begging, and carrying an old 
 hat between them. There is certainly not more than 
 live minutes' work, if that, in the original sketch ; but 
 the quantity of dog life in those two beasts — the hill 
 weather that they have roughed through together, 
 the wild fidelity of their wistful hearts, the pitiful, 
 irresistible mendicancy of their eyes and paws — fills 
 me with new wonder and love every time the little 
 book falls out of any of the cherished maps in 
 my study. ... I begin to wish for a little less to 
 look at, and would for my part gladly exchange 
 my tricks of stippling and tinting for the good 
 doctor's gift of drawing two wire-haired terriers 
 with a wink.' 
 
 The sketch of the dog Wasp, on a preceding page, 
 is another felicitous expression given by a few 
 
-FST JjS$\ W£LU Qi? 
 
 Note.— This early sketch was given to one of my daughters by Dr. Brown, 
 drawn probably about the time, 1862, when he wrote in the columns of the 
 Scotsman his ' Plea for a Dog Home.' 
 
MEMORIAL PAPERS 109 
 
 lines of what Mr. Ruskin has called 'the quantity 
 of dog life.' 
 
 The above-mentioned article on John Leech, 
 although mainly devoted to the subject of art, 
 belongs to the group of Dr. Brown's Memorial 
 Papers. That group is a large one, embracing 
 memories of his father in a ' Letter to John 
 Cairns, D.D.' ; articles on ' Locke and Sydenham ; ' 
 ' Dr. Chalmers ; ' ' Dr. George Wilson ; ' ' Dr. Andrew 
 Combe ; ' ' Dr. Henry Marshall ; ' ' Edward Forbes ; ' 
 'Dr. Adams of Banchory;' 'David Ritchie (or the 
 Black Dwarfs bones);' 'Thackeray's Death;' 'The 
 Duke of Athole;' 'Struan;' 'Dr. John Scott and his 
 Son;' 'Mr. Syme;' 'Sir Robert Christison;' and 
 ' Miss Stirling Graham of Duntrune.' x 
 
 In these biographical and memorial' sketches 
 there is much truthful delineation of very 
 different types of men; there are many most 
 interesting incidents and anecdotes introduced; 
 
 1 This was the old lady of whose most amusing pranks, — 
 ' Her quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, 
 Dr. John also writes in his paper on her book Mystifications : Horce 
 Subsecivce, Series iii. pp. 117-165. 
 
110 DK. JOHN BROWN 
 
 there is abundant evidence of the writer's literary 
 powers, his quaint and racy style, naive humour, 
 genial and sympathetic nature ; and especially of his 
 warm appreciation of whatsoever things in human 
 character and action are true, honourable, pure, 
 lovely, and of good report. Some have considered 
 John Brown as too generally appreciative in these 
 notices, and that his own goodness and amiability 
 led him into an excess of praise. But, as has been 
 already said respecting his notices of certain works 
 of art and artists, it may be said of the subjects of 
 these articles, that of his own choice he became the 
 biographer only of those whom he could conscien- 
 tiously hold up to the world as worthy of admiration 
 and esteem for some acts in life, or special qualities 
 of mind and heart. There was nothing cynical or 
 disputatious in his nature ; and perhaps that appre- 
 ciation of excellence in others contributed somewhat 
 at times to his self-depreciation, or abnegation of 
 personal worth. Throughout life, public controversy, 
 or even private discussion, was distasteful and 
 avoided ; while it was known to intimate friends that 
 he formed very decided impressions and opinions 
 
MR. ANDREW LANGS OPINION 111 
 
 regarding men and things to which he held, though 
 not perhaps to the tenax propositi extent which, he 
 himself averred, was a heredity of the family of 
 Browns. 
 
 Mr. Andrew Lang has well said : ' We must acknow- 
 ledge that the Scotch temper is critical if not cap- 
 tious, argumentative, inclined to look at the seamy 
 side of men and of their performances, and to dwell 
 on imperfections rather than on merits and virtues. 
 An example of these blemishes of the Scotch disposi- 
 tion, carried to an extreme degree in the nature of a 
 man of genius, is offered to the world in the writings 
 and ' reminiscences ' of Mr. Carlyle. Now Dr. John 
 Brown was at the opposite pole of feeling. He had 
 no mawkish toleration of things and people intoler- 
 able, but he preferred not to turn his mind that way. 
 His thoughts were with the good, the wise, the 
 modest, the learned, the brave of times past, and he 
 was eager to catch a reflection of their qualities in 
 the characters of the living, of all with whom he came 
 into contact. He was, for example, almost optimistic 
 in his estimate of the work of young people in art or 
 literature. From everything that was beautiful or 
 
112 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 good, from a summer day by the Tweed, or from the 
 eyes of a child, or from the humorous saying of a 
 friend, or from treasured memories of old Scotch 
 worthies, from recollections of his own childhood, 
 from experience of the stoical heroism of the poor, he 
 seemed to extract matter for pleasant thoughts of 
 men and the world, and nourishment of his own 
 great and gentle nature. I have never known any 
 man to whom other men seemed so dear, — men dead 
 and men living. He gave his genius to knowing 
 them, and to making them better known, and his 
 unselfishness thus became not only a great personal 
 virtue, but a great literary charm.' * 
 
 Quotations have already been made from several of 
 the memorial papers above enumerated, particularly 
 from those on Thackeray, Leech, and Syme; but 
 I cannot leave the group without some comment 
 on that of his own father's life. It is not 
 only the longest of the memorial series, but, to 
 my mind, it is far excellence the finest of all his 
 writings. In consequence of the ambiguous title of 
 
 1 The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, vol. xxv., December 
 1882J No. 2, p. 241. 
 
' LETTER TO DR. CAIRNS ' 113 
 
 a 'Letter to John Cairns, D.T>.,' — the late lamented 
 Principal of the United Presbyterian Theological 
 College — I think it has not attracted the wide atten- 
 tion which otherwise it might have done. A dedica- 
 tion of the Article to that learned and widely 
 esteemed preacher and professor, considering the 
 origin of 'the Letter,' and the ecclesiastical and 
 friendly relations to the subject of it, would have 
 been highly proper; but the title should certainly 
 have been more specific, as a memorial of the life and 
 work of such a distinguished divine as the Kev. Dr. 
 John Brown. For the tens or hundreds of thousands 
 at home and abroad who have read, laughed, and 
 wept over ' flab and his Friends,' I believe compara- 
 tively few have had their attention drawn to this 
 ' Letter,' in which the son invests his father's life with 
 a peculiar interest, while he so happily depicts his 
 environments, and delineates the characters and per- 
 sonalities of progenitors, contemporaries, and associ- 
 ates. 1 I have already quoted somewhat freely from 
 that 'Letter' in speaking of John's early life, etc.; 
 but to such as have not read it I commend it as 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series ji. pp. 1-100. 
 H 
 
114 t»E. JOHN BROWN 
 
 a masterpiece of artistic biography, written with 
 singular freshness, sweetness, simplicity, and power, 
 while abounding with touches of humour and pathos. 
 The way in which he works out within moderate 
 limits the various phases of his father's life — his 
 habits and character in youth, as a husband and 
 parent, a preacher and professor, — is very charming. 
 The esteem in which his father was held at an early 
 period of life in Biggar, and the sacredness of his 
 mother's memory is touchingly described in these 
 words : — ' At my mother's death, his sorrow and loss 
 settled down deep into the heart of the countryside. 
 She was modest, calm, thrifty, reasonable, tender, 
 happy-hearted. She was his student-love, and is 
 even now remembered in that pastoral region for her 
 " sweet gentleness and wife-like government : " while 
 he was so young and bright, so full of fire, so unlike 
 any one else, so devoted to his work, so chivalrous 
 in his look and manner, so fearless, and yet so 
 sensitive and self contained; and she so wise, good, 
 gentle, gracious, and frank.' 1 
 
 For his father, John's reverence and admiration 
 
 1 Hor. Sub. , Series ii. p. 7. 
 
THE REV. DR. BROWN 115 
 
 was great. He says: 'The idea of his life, what 
 
 he was as a whole, what was his self, all his 
 
 days, would — to go on with words which not time 
 
 or custom can ever wither or make stale, — 
 
 ' Sweetly creep 
 Into my study of imagination ; 
 And every lovely organ of his life 
 Would come apparelled in more precious habit — 
 More moving delicate, and full of life, 
 Into the eye and prospect of my soul, 
 Than when he lived indeed ; ' 
 
 as if the sacredness of death and the bloom of 
 
 eternity were on it ; or as you may have seen in an 
 
 untroubled lake, the heaven reflected with its clouds, 
 
 brighter, purer, more exquisite than itself; but when 
 
 you try to put this into words, to detain yourself 
 
 over it, it is by this very act disturbed, broken and 
 
 bedimmed, and soon vanishes away, as would the 
 
 imaged heavens in the lake if a pebble were cast 
 
 into it, or a breath of wind stirred its face. 1 Again 
 
 he says : ' I never knew a man who lived more truly 
 
 under the power, and sometimes under the shadow, 
 
 of the world to come.' 2 Then as to his physical 
 
 appearance, and his manner in the pulpit, we have 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 3. a Ibid. p. 46. 
 
116 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 this remarkable though somewhat lengthy delineation : 
 'My father was tall, slim, agile, quick in his move- 
 ments, graceful, neat to nicety in his dress, with much 
 in his air of what is called style, with a face almost too 
 beautiful for a man's, had not his eyes commanded 
 it and all who looked at it, and his close, firm mouth 
 been ready to say what the fiery spirit might bid; 
 his eyes, when at rest, expressing— more than almost 
 any other's I ever saw — sorrow and tender love, a desire 
 to give and to get sympathy, and a sort of gentle 
 deep sadness, as if that was their permanent 
 state, and gladness their momentary act; but when 
 awakened, full of fire, peremptory, and not to be 
 trifled with ; and his smile, and flash of gaiety and 
 fun, something no one could forget; his hair in 
 early life a dead black; his eyebrows of exquisite 
 curve, narrow and intense; his voice deep when 
 unmoved and calm, keen and sharp to piercing 
 fierceness when vehement and roused — in the pulpit 
 at times a shout, at times a pathetic wail; his 
 utterance hesitating, emphatic, explosive, powerful, — 
 each sentence shot straight and home ; his hesitation 
 arising from his- crowd of impatient ideas, and his 
 
THE REV. DR. BROWN 11 7 
 
 resolute will that they should come in their order, 
 and some of them not come at all, only the best, 
 and his settled determination that each thought 
 should be dressed in the very and only word which 
 he stammered on till it came, — it was generally worth 
 his pains and ours.' 1 
 
 A recent writer says: 'If Dr. John Brown did 
 not inherit all his father's mental grasp and 
 concentration, he added a delicacy of perception, 
 a breadth of mental vision, a fineness of intellectual 
 fibre, and a human sweetness of nature, to which 
 the old Seceder Minister, grand old man as he 
 undoubtedly was, could hardly lay claim.' 2 
 
 Not the least interesting, certainly the most 
 amusing, parts of 'the Letter' consist of incidents 
 and anecdotes introduced by Dr. John, not only of 
 his father, but of his great-grandfather, grandfather, 
 his uncles and their contemporaries, ecclesiastical 
 and civil, which give an artistic sparkle to almost 
 every page, and a zest, without which biographical 
 writing is apt to prove flat and dull. 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series ii. pp. 21, 22. 
 
 2 Robert Richardson, B. A„ U. P. Magazine, January 1892, p. 7. 
 
118 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 The other articles in the Horce Subseeivce, which 
 I have not specially noticed, namely, 'Locke and 
 Sydenham ; ' ' Art and Science, a contrasted Parallel ; ' 
 ' Education through the Senses ; ' ' Free competition in 
 Medicine ; ' ' Excursus Ethicus ; ' ' "With Brains, Sir ! ' 
 'Henry Vaughan;' and 'Arthur Hallam' are of a 
 most strictly philosophical and critical character. 
 I will merely draw attention to the first and most 
 philosophical of these, that concerning John Locke, 
 the distinguished author of the Essay on Human 
 Understanding, and Thomas Sydenham, spoken 
 of as ' the Prince of practical Physicians.' 1 Of them 
 Dr. Brown remarks : ' The one was the founder of 
 of our analytical philosophy of mind, and the other 
 our practical medicine ; and they were not only great 
 personal friends, but of essential use to each other 
 in their respective departments.' 2 Locke, by early 
 experience in the practice of medicine, and by his 
 intimacy with Sydenham, appears to have gained 
 great benefit from the close observation of 'facts, — 
 objective realities; ' and was so led to adopt the same 
 method in the study of mental science; while 
 
 1 Hot, Sub. i, 'Locke and Sydenham,' p. 54. 2 Ibid. p. 36. 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR MASSON 119 
 
 Sydenham was strengthened in the practice of his 
 profession by like inductive methods in the pursuit 
 of scientific truth, and in their application to 
 diagnosis and treatment. 
 
 Professor Masson thus critically and incisively 
 expresses himself 1 regarding Dr. Brown's views in this 
 article on ' Locke and Sydenham,' as well as on others 
 in his more or less philosophical and literary papers : 
 — ' They all propound and illustrate one idea, which 
 had taken such strong hold of the author that it may 
 be called one of his characteristics. It is the idea 
 of distinction or contrast between the speculative, 
 theoretical, or scientific habit of mind, and the 
 practical or active habit. In medical practice and 
 medical education more particularly, Dr. John Brown 
 thought there had come to be too much attention 
 to mere science, too much faith in mere increase 
 of knowledge and exquisiteness of research and 
 apparatus, and too little regard for that solid breadth 
 of mind, that soundness of practical observation, and 
 power of decision in emergencies, — that instinctive 
 
 1 ' Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh,' Macmillan's Magazine, Feb- 
 ruary 1883, pp. 284-5, and lately reprinted in Edinburgh Sketches 
 and Memories : A. and C. Black, London and Edinburgh. 
 
120 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 or acquired sagacity, which had been conspicuous 
 among the best of the older physicians. . . . Dr. 
 John never tired of inculcating this distinction; it 
 is the backbone of all those papers of his that have 
 been just mentioned, and it appears in others. In 
 his special little essay called 'Art and Science' he 
 formulates it thus : — 
 
 IN MEDICINE 
 
 SCIENCE 
 
 Looks to essence and cause. 
 
 Is diagnostic. 
 
 Has a system. 
 
 Is post-mortem. 
 
 Looks to structure more than function. 
 
 Studies the phenomena of poisoning. 
 
 Submits to he ignorant of nothing. 
 
 Speaks. 
 
 ART 
 
 Looks to symptoms and occasions. 
 Is therapeutic and prognostic. 
 Has a method. 
 Is ante-mortem. 
 
 Looks to function more than structure. 
 Buns for the stomach-pump. 
 Submits to he ignorant of much. 
 Acts. . 
 
 ' Now, in the particular matter in question, so far as it 
 is here represented, we should doubtless all agree 
 with our friend. We should all for ourselves, in 
 serious illness, infinitely prefer the attendance of any 
 tolerable physician of the therapeutic and prognostic 
 type to that of the ablest of the merely diagnostic 
 type, especially if we thought that the genius of the 
 latter inclined him to a post-mortem examination. 
 Hence we may be disposed to think that Dr. John 
 
PRACTICAL HABIT OF MIND 121 
 
 did good service in protesting against the run upon 
 science, ever new science, in the medicine of his day, 
 and trying to hark back the profession to the good 
 old virtues of common sense, practical clear-sighted- 
 ness, and vigorous rule-of-thumb. What I detect, 
 however, underneath all his expositions of this 
 possibly salutary idea, and prompting to his reitera- 
 tions of it, is something deeper. It is a dislike in 
 his own nature to the abstract or theoretical in 
 all matters whatsoever. Dr. John Brown's mind, 
 I should say, was essentially anti-speculative. His 
 writings abound, of course, with tributes of respect to 
 science and philosophy, and expressions of astonish- 
 ment and gratitude for their achievements; but it 
 may be observed that the thinkers and philosophers 
 to whom he refers most fondly are chiefly those older 
 magnates, including Bacon, Newton, Locke, and 
 Bishop Butler, among the English, whose struggle 
 was over long ago, whose results are an accepted 
 inheritance, and who are now standards of orthodoxy. 
 All later drifts of speculative thought, and especially 
 the latest drifts of his own day, seem to make him 
 uncomfortable. He actually warns against them as 
 
122 DE. JOHN BROWN 
 
 products of what he calls "the lust of innovation." 
 This is a matter of so much consequence in the study 
 of Dr. Brown's character that it ought not to be 
 passed over lightly.' 
 
 This one idea which Professor Masson notices as 
 having taken such a strong hold of Dr. Brown's mind, 
 was, I confess, at the period when he wrote his paper 
 on 'Locke and Sydenham,' strongly sympathised in 
 by myself. Having imbibed the teachings of such 
 masters as Abercrombie and Syme; and impressed 
 by the close personal observation of morbid signs 
 and symptoms, while watching the wonderful evolu- 
 tions of the vis medicatrix naturce, Dr. Brown could 
 not abide — to use a common but expressive phrase 
 — the theories, and hypotheses, and reckless experi- 
 ments of the period. He thus saw science suffering 
 at the hands of professed devotees by rash specu- 
 lation, and not benefiting as it ought by the 
 observation of facts carefully ascertained from the 
 exercise of the senses, and arranged and applied by 
 inductive reasoning. It was in reality the science of 
 healing that he pleaded for, perfected by the practice 
 of its art ; and, as the relations of these to each other 
 
LETTER FROM DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 123 
 
 now stand, I am convinced that, had he lived to the 
 present time, he would have hailed with greatest 
 satisfaction the wonderful developments on proved 
 and rational basis, and estimated the advances thus 
 accomplished as of great value in the interests of 
 truth and humanity. 
 
 Enough has, I think, been quoted from Dr. Brown's 
 published writings to show that in their style, intel- 
 lectual power, humour, pathos, genial spirit, there is a 
 most distinct individuality, while there is in them 
 much to admire, enjoy, and afford matter for reflec- 
 tion. I should imagine there can be little disposition 
 felt by any one to subject them to very close — far less 
 adverse — criticism. In a letter which I had from the 
 venerable author of The Autocrat of the Breakfast 
 Table, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, dated 24th 
 August 1890, he says : ' Dr. John Brown was one of 
 those few authors whom we love too well to criticise ; 
 not that he had anything to fear from criticism, for 
 his subjects were always interesting, and his style a 
 model of simplicity and purity. But we take him to 
 our hearts almost before he has' got hold of our 
 intellects. ... All the passages you have quoted 
 
124 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 from him, all that you have told about him, awaken 
 the feelings with which I read ' Rab and his Friends ' 
 and ' Marjorie Fleming.' I have found much instruc- 
 tion in reading his ' Locke and Sydenham,' but the 
 tenderness, the sweetness, the natural pathos of these 
 two stories give them a special place in my 
 affections.' 
 
 As I have already said, all Dr. Brown's writings 
 bear the unmistakable stamp of originality; their 
 character is unique, and the style unquestionably his 
 own, not formed on any classic model, ancient or 
 modern. They have been spoken of as bearing some 
 resemblance, if not in style, at least in matter, 
 and especially in humour and pathos, to those of 
 the gifted author, Charles Lamb. But although 
 John Brown is known to have admired the genius 
 and enjoyed the humour of Charles Lamb, the 
 individuality of their respective works is markedly 
 distinct, as might be expected, from the widely dif- 
 ferent early social relations, environments, course of 
 life, professions, and nature of trials of the two men, 
 impressing a different stamp on the mind and heart. 
 Dr. Brown's writings were, as he himself expressed 
 
A RICHLY STORED MIND 125 
 
 it, ' done on the quick.' They are, therefore, natural 
 and pure ; full of -wisdom, goodness, and truth ; drawn 
 as it were from the deepest recesses of a spiritual 
 nature. In saying this I may transfer a figure of 
 his own in writing of a worthy and learned friend, 
 long since gone before him : — ' His thoughts were as a 
 spring of pure water flowing from the interior heights 
 of a mountain, distilled by nature's own cunning. 
 And again : — ' He was of the primary formation, had 
 no organic remains of other men in him : he liked 
 and fed on all manner of literature ; knew poetry well ; 
 but it was all outside of him; his thoughts were essen- 
 tially his own.' x It may truly be said that literature 
 was his daily food. He hungered and thirsted after 
 knowledge of all lands. From boyhood to the end of 
 his life his reading was extensive in prose and in 
 poetry, and he had consummate facility and discrimi- 
 nation in extracting the essence of that which was 
 wholesome and nourishing for the mind; and of 
 culling that which was interesting, beautiful, and 
 sweet. All his published writings, more especi- 
 ally ' Locke and Sydenham,' ' Henry Vaughan,' and 
 
 1 Hoi: Sub., Series ii. p. 89. 
 
126 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 the 'Excursus Ethicus,' show how richly cultured 
 and stored his mind was ; and how reliable he was 
 as a critic. 
 
 In Dr. Brown's correspondence the same power 
 of separating the wheat from the chaff in litera- 
 ture is as conspicuous, while in that familiar 
 medium of communication his excellent qualities 
 of head and heart were abundantly reflected. Sir 
 Theodore Martin writing to me lately says : ' To 
 the last I remained in touch with Dr. John, and I 
 cherished every letter — and they were many that I 
 had from him — every one containing something so 
 finely phrased, and so delicately felt, as could have 
 come from nobody but himself.' His style was not 
 in flowing and finished periods, as, for example, in 
 the Letters of Cowper, that paragon of epistolary 
 writing ; for his sentences were short, and transition 
 from one subject to another often singularly abrupt. 
 But the charm of Dr. Brown's letters lay in their 
 naturalness, freshness, and homeliness; quaint ex- 
 pressions varied with strokes of easy humour; and 
 generally expressed in a fine sympathetic tone, with 
 
SELECTION OF LETTERS 127 
 
 loving touches of the good in persons and things, — 
 even of things which, to some people, might seem 
 trivial. With all this, however, there was no lack 
 of pithy remark, or dogmatic criticism on topics of 
 the day, literary and political. 
 
 In the foregoing pages these characteristics have 
 been to some extent illustrated by the letters already 
 quoted, but the following limited selection from the 
 large correspondence to which I have had access may 
 throw additional light on the many-sided aspects of 
 Dr. Brown's mind and character; and, while pleasingly 
 recalling him to the memory of old familiar friends, 
 may convey to others who have only known him 
 through his published works a more complete con- 
 ception of the man. These letters I have arranged 
 as much as possible in chronological order, Dr. Brown 
 often noting only the day of the week on which 
 he wrote. I have also carefully excluded matters 
 which concerned living individuals, and everything 
 which was of too professionally private or sacred a 
 nature to be brought before the eye of the public. 
 For the same reason the publication of any of the 
 many letters I received from him is not admissible. 
 
128 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 ADDITIONAL SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 Edinburgh, 
 23rd August 1834. 
 To George Harvey, Esq. 
 , , Stirling. 
 
 My dear Friend,- — I write this more by way of provok- 
 ing you to write than from having any news. I am wearying 
 in my own selfish way for your reappearance, and find that 
 somehow or other the 'Painter lad' is concerned rather 
 closely with my comfort and enjoyment. The bathing has 
 been at a stand-still, and the walks up Dublin Street are no 
 longer so frequent, and I have forgotten to look up at the 
 truly darkened window within which used to sit Mr. G. 
 Harvey painting the ' G-laiks ' and the Water Lily. I hope 
 you have been comfortable and well, indeed I am sure you 
 must have been happy at home and beside your father, who 
 must even now appear at the very gate of heaven, shining 
 more and more unto the perfect day. I know of no sight 
 more heavenly than that of a good old man, whose taber- 
 nacle is gently changing, while his mind unbroken and full 
 of good hope has already entered within the veil, and look- 
 ing back on a long life of humble godliness can say, 
 ' Surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the 
 days of my life ; ' and forward, can add, ' and I shall dwell 
 in the house of the Lord for ever.' I cannot tell you how 
 I envy such a state of mind. I am sure it is the only right 
 one, and yet I am not sure that I am in it; indeed I am almost 
 quite sure I am not, but I have no business vexing you 
 
LETTER TO MR. GEORGE HARVEY 129 
 
 with these black thoughts ; indeed you must almost laugh 
 at me halting in so stupid a way between two opinions — 
 knowing better, doing worse. You must excuse this, and if 
 you and I continue friends you must bear with a great deal 
 more. . . . The engraving 1 has been framed and looks 
 nobly. You mentioned that a front light would be best, 
 but I found that the glaze of the glass made the figures 
 almost invisible. I have hung it near one of the windows, 
 pretty low down, so that the particulars are well seen. 
 Grandmother is greatly delighted with it, and is making 
 discoveries daily and repeating them with great glee. The 
 state of the Poll at present is 44 human heads, 4 Canine, 
 and 6 Equine, but it is understood that the indefatigable 
 old lady will be able to report and discover sundry 
 more. The more I look at it the more I like it, and if I 
 may be allowed to criticise, I like it more on account of 
 the general tone, the religious feeling, than the cleverness 
 and force of the drawing. I somehow look at it more as 
 the production of a man than of a mere artist. I think 
 this is the highest praise that can be given to any produc- 
 tion of the hands. I hope you will not have reason to re- 
 gret the vexation and trouble you have had about it, and 
 that at least in a pecuniary view you will be no loser. I 
 wish you would get some of the small ones £me-engraved. 
 I am wearying to learn where you are, and what you have 
 been doing. If it is not too much trouble, will you write 
 me soon 1 It will be a great gratification to me, though 
 1 The Battle of Drumclog. 
 I 
 
130 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 perhaps irksome to you. I have been working away in 
 the old half idle, half busy, half serious, half foolish way. 
 One thing however I am sure of — namely, that I am your 
 affectionate friend, John Brown. 
 
 [1834 probably, but not dated.] 
 To George Harvey, Esq. Stirling. 
 
 My dear Friend, — I should have answered your kind 
 and most amusing letter long ago, but what with meetings 
 of wise men, dinners, processions, gold boxes, etc., I have 
 been truly crazed for the last fortnight. I was particularly 
 vexed when I heard that you had been in on Monday the 
 15th. When are you coming here, and when are the 
 nights of the toasted Biscuits again to begin ? The whole 
 town has been moved into a most ungainly gaiety, and 
 nothing now will be tolerated but the last roarings of the 
 lion, or some more last words from Earl Grey. I was at the 
 dinner 1 and was amazed and delighted. The Chancellor 2 
 appeared to me the cleverest man I had ever heard speak, 
 — such ease, variety and irresistible vehemence. When, to- 
 ward the end of his speech, he spoke of the Tory Crew, 
 after a long overwhelming sentence of abuse heaped to 
 overflowing, he concluded with a shriek which made even 
 his friends quail. He has been likened to a lion, but he is 
 neither a lion nor a leviathan ; he is an eagle, and has an 
 
 1 The great banquet in Edinburgh to Earl Grey when Prime 
 Minister, ISth September 1834. " Lord Brougham. 
 
LETTER TO MR. GEORGE HARVEY 131 
 
 eagle's scream. I can hardly believe any mortal failing 
 to feel 
 
 ' The terror of Ms beak, 
 The lightning of his eye.' 
 
 But I fear/if he has the spirit of an archangel, it is that of 
 an evil one. Lord Durham took us all by storm : he seems 
 the very soul of honesty. ... I have been luxuriating in 
 the Exhibition at the Academy. Etty's ' Combat ' seems to 
 me one of the finest pictures I ever saw, and Judith, as 
 a majestic illustration of the deeds of a high-souled woman, 
 is unequalled. I saw ' The Foundling.' I liked it of course, 
 but there is more to me in the true half-finished sketch. 
 There is a wonderful little thing of Roberts' — the Cathe- 
 dral in Rotterdam ; and some of Thomson's peculiar touches. 
 I am delighted to think, from what Logan 1 tells me, that 
 you were at last doing yourself justice, and painting with 
 more depth and seriousness of feeling than the vulgar taste 
 may like ; but I am confident that it is there, in the pathos, 
 the subdued tenderness of the Art, that you are strongest, 
 and by which you will be seen to live longest. ' The Rink,' 
 however, I trust is not forgotten. In the midst of all the 
 worldly din and uproar in which I have been, you may be 
 sure I have not been so caring of the most important of all 
 things. I can, however, sincerely say that whether from 
 mere slavish terror, or from real conviction of my utter un- 
 godliness, I have had the realities of eternity oftener and 
 
 1 The late Sheriff Logan. 
 
132 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 more consecutively before me than for a long time. . . 
 — Ever your affectionate friend, John Brown. 
 
 To the Same. 51 Albany Street, 
 
 Jvly\oth, 1845. 
 My dear Harvey, — Logan, I suppose, has informed 
 you of our proposed invasion of Kilmun. I am de- 
 lighted at the prospect of seeing it and you, ' I have been 
 very much worn out with my own and other people's work, 
 else I would have written to you sooner, but as soon as I 
 come in and sit down I fall asleep ! 
 
 ... I hope you are getting stronger and that you 
 are playing yourself like a very child, making your mind 
 as well as your body run wild and at play. You have 
 passed through a very strange year. The shadow of 
 death has been very heavy and deep over it, but it has, I 
 doubt not, and certainly should, have made ' the Land of 
 Emmanuel ' brighter to you than ever, and more attractive. 
 She 1 has been there for many months, and I doubt not has 
 not seldom thought of you and her children. What a 
 world of significance and of either comfort or terrible fear 
 in the words ' the things that are seen are temporal, the 
 things that are unseen are Eternal.' Mrs. Brown joins me 
 in best regards to Miss Harvey and the children and your- 
 self. I am already wearying for Thursday morning. — 
 Yours ever, John Brown. 
 
 1 Mrs. Harvey. 
 
LETTER TO MR. GEORGE HARVEY 133 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Monro's Cottage, Cbieff, 
 
 August 15th, 1846. 
 
 My dear Harvey, — I write this first because I cannot 
 help thanking you for having been in some degree the 
 means of my being at this moment where I am, and as 
 happy as I have been and will yet be. 
 
 It is at the top of the hill and commands a horizon of 
 seventy miles at the least, the nearest radius of which is 
 fifteen miles, and the furthest somewhere in Argyllshire, 
 either Ben More or some big fellow near him. . . . The 
 view towards Comrie is wonderful, every hour it has new 
 beauties, and the Grampians lying all about in glorious con- 
 fusion, and giving strength and a sort of awfulness to the 
 exquisite beauties of the woods and waters. They keep 
 me in a continual state of pleasant but solemn exaltation : 
 ' the strength of the hills is His also ' — ' the perpetual 
 hills ' — ' Who by His strength setteth fast the mountains 
 being girded with power,' there is indeed no searching of 
 His understanding. We had a day of unmingled delight 
 on Wednesday. We got a gig, and all three (Catherine 
 and Duchy and me) set off to Comrie ; and by-the-by Mrs. 
 B. intends writing you a complaint at your working upon 
 her womanish credulity in the matter of the earthquakes. 
 She sat for miles with ears cocked up for the hollow noises, 
 but none came. However on returning they got up several 
 very decent ones just before entering Comrie. I suppose 
 
134 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 the earthquake had not been wide-awake at that early hour. 
 St. Fillans ! the lochside ! its gleams and shadows and 
 its peace profound ! — big Ben Vorlich looking down with 
 a surly smile and Duchy looking up at him with most 
 insolent indifference : her gravity and utter nonchalance 
 at the fine scenery, and her zeal and excitement at all the 
 domestic cats, made our raptures very droll. At Lochearn- 
 head we put up the horse and gig and took a walk of three 
 miles up Glen Ogle. I, leaving my companions at the burn- 
 side, got among the blocks of enormous stones on the hill- 
 side, some of them as big as your house, and all of them were 
 as if pausing on the way down the hillside ; in fact I got 
 quite terrified and thought I saw them above me beginning 
 to move, and I cut off to my wife as hard as I could. How 
 we did enjoy the grandeur and the primeval look of every- 
 thing — all just as it was six thousand years ago. I have 
 never yet seen the Highlands worthily expressed by paint- 
 ing — the spirituality is not rendered : I think you could do 
 it. Why don't you ? M'Culloch has not it in him, and 
 Thomson overdid it, or rather he made it untrue and epical 
 (as John Blackie would say). I would here in the stoutest 
 words reiterate what I have often said, that you can paint 
 landscapes better than any one in Scotland, and than any 
 one I have seen out of it, except Turner. I have no doubt 
 the being brought up at Stirling, with these great mountains 
 with their glories constantly before and in your eyes, had 
 much to do with the constitution of your mind, which, with 
 a foundation of strong intellect and sense of humour, not 
 
LETTER TO MR. GEORGE HARVEY 135 
 
 ' uninformed with phantasy,' and that shaping spirit of 
 imagination, enables a man to realise the ideal to him- 
 self and others. But how I have run on ! I intended to 
 fill this letter chiefly with my delight at seeing "Wilkie's ' Sir 
 David Baird.' I saw it to-day and was quite overpowered 
 by its greatness and exquisite feeling. They may talk of 
 the ' Great Painters,' but if he is not one, I have nothing 
 to say to them. It is a truly heroic picture, filling the 
 mind and satisfying the idea of the case. What a dignity 
 and oriental grace in the dead Sultan, and what a curl of 
 scorn on his thin lip, and the women with their eyes and 
 teeth, and their weak but womanly looks, and that sapper 
 with his lantern, and the darkness over Sir David's head, 
 and the native doctor feeling Tippoo's heart, and their 
 Highlandmen, and the feeling of understanding the whole 
 business and the realising the strange fact of our subduing 
 and putting our feet on the neck of their Sultan and Great 
 Mogul, — this struck me as one of the highest things about 
 the picture. But I must end. ... I shall see you when 
 I return, which will be on Tuesday at the furthest. Give 
 our kind regards to your sister and take the same to your- 
 self. — Yours ever truly, John Brown. 
 
 To the Same in London. 51 Albany Street, 
 
 24th April 1846. 
 
 My dear George Harvey, — You never did a kinder 
 
 thing than sending me your hearty letter this morning. I 
 
136 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 was just needing such a thing. ... It was like an ex- 
 cellent oil. I went round and found you were off, and I sup- 
 pose you would be about Melrose at that time, if you went 
 by the ' Chevy.' 1 How I would like to have gone up with 
 you, and have had a look at the 'Bible' in the rooms. 
 Be sure and tell me all you hear about it. . . . Next 
 week if I have time I mean to do Etty praising Judith, 
 and some of his more intellectual pictures as stoutly as 
 I can, but deprecating his wasting his powers on mere sen- 
 suous beauty. Then I shall have Scott and M'Culloch and 
 Maclise, and finish off with some general observations on 
 the place that one should hold in public estimation, etc. 
 etc. etc. I took my father into the Exhibition and led 
 him up to Wilkie, and left him. I saw him quite over- 
 come with emotion, all but weeping. He did the same at 
 the Glen. 2 He was quite delighted with the Mater Scoto- 
 rum, and with Turner's Tay Bridge, which I prefer now 
 very much to Mercury and Argus. Crichton is to try to 
 get me a good print of the 'Distraining,' if you see him and 
 can manage it without trouble. I like the ' Communion ' 
 more and more, and if I had any spare money would will- 
 ingly buy a share in it. It is a grand print. I don't know 
 any other in point of intense power comes near it, except 
 that transcendent ' First Supper,' with which in my mind 
 it has much in common. By-the-by, I am cherishing more 
 and more the design of writing something for you to 
 
 1 The ' Chevy Chase ' coach. 2 ' The Enterkin,' by Harvey. 
 
LETTER TO SHERIFF DICK 137 
 
 illustrate. We shall be in no hurry, but we shall astonish 
 the natives. It is the carrier and his wife, and will give 
 you room for displaying every one of your powers ; your 
 humour as well as your pathos. I would be so delighted 
 to sail down the stream of time for a few years after I am 
 dead along with you. I have often thought of it, and if 
 G-od spares us both it shall be done, and well done. Pretty 
 impudence say you, and very like diffidence of your powers, 
 and yet quite compatible. . . . — Yours affectionately, 
 
 John Brown. 
 
 To Coventry Dick, Esq. 1 
 
 51 Albany Street, 
 
 August 1845. 
 My dear Coventry, . . . When we ' get to the other 
 side,' the shine will be taken out of many of our ' strong 
 thinkers,' — ' men of clear and fixed principles.' I saw a 
 fine thought of Bishop Leighton's the other day. He says, 
 ' the imperfect knowledge and the sort of fearlessness and 
 vague conjecturings of this present world puts him in mind 
 of a man lying awake in the dark.' . . . There is a great 
 charm about Voltaire. His style is exquisite, as perfect 
 as can be imagined. No pretence, no humbug, no sentiment- 
 ality, no big words, no higher principles, no morality or 
 principle whatsoever. What an exquisite grin he would ex- 
 cite if he were alive now-a-days, and cast his keen and 
 cool eyes on such books as Woman's Mission, twelfth edition; 
 
 1 See page 42, note i . 
 
138 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 The Mothers and Women and Daughters of England, etc. etc. 
 I know what you refer to about Socrates ; I have read it, 
 and all but wept at its beauty, and grandeur, and melan- 
 choly. It is to me a great wonder. Do you remember 
 what he says to his accusers and condemners ? I know no 
 death but that of the man, Christ Jesus, at all to be com- 
 pared to it. . . . Have a whole mind in some thinkings, 
 never mind how wild, how fantastic, how contradictory, 
 how unorthodox they be. It will do you good to fling 
 them out, and with me they are safe enough, and will be 
 welcome, because they are wild, and wilful, and wonderful, 
 and it may be wicked. . . . Write to me when you are in 
 the mood, and be sure you will always rejoice me. — Yours 
 ever affectionately, John Brown. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Ceiefs, August \8th, 1846. 
 
 My dear Coventry. — 1 am still here, as in enchanted 
 ground, and have been be-Crieffed for nearly a fortnight. 
 I got" your letter to-day and was amazingly delighted with 
 it, and said amen to every sentence of it. . . . 
 
 Landor is rather an uncommon man than a great one ; 
 and a good deal of his fame is owing to that felicitous hap- 
 hazard and wilful wildness of thought ; and to his learning 
 and large-mindedness, making it dangerous to do anything 
 but praise him, lest one betray his own ignorance. But 
 
LETTER TO SHERIFF DICK 139 
 
 after all, there is real stuff in him, and his style is divine, 
 having strength and beauty and delicacy and unexpected- 
 ness and yet naturalness. His odd spelling I don't admire ; 
 and he is full of arrogance and pretence, and a sort of gratuit- 
 ous quarrelsomeness. His arrogance seems a state, not an 
 act, of his mind, and it mars, more than he is aware, the 
 effect of his best thoughts. His ' Gebir ' I could not read 
 through ; it had too much colour in it, and too little light, 
 and wanted a backbone. There is more imagination and 
 more of the poetical element in his prose. There are some 
 fine lines about flowers in one of his small poems ; . hut he 
 is not a poet, though he is poetical both in conception and 
 reception, but he has not the divine gift of crystallising 
 thought. 
 
 You should try and read his 'Shakespeare's Trial ;' it is an 
 extraordinary feat, but not a thing to be praised for much 
 more than his showing how nearly it is possible, and how 
 altogether it is impossible, for one man to be out and out 
 any other man for a length of time. But then there are 
 very fine bits in it; and it gives you now and then a 
 glimpse of the true man Shakespeare, clownish and 
 simple, and deep and happy-tempered, and unconscious. 
 It is amazing how Landor in this and in his 'Ima- 
 ginary Conversations ' keeps up the spirit of the talk, and 
 how impossible it is to anticipate what he is to say next. 
 But after all he has rather proved the impossibility of these 
 ' Imaginary Conversations ' than anything else. They are 
 tiresome and ineffectual and always come short of the idea. 
 
140 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 You must read the ' Short Conversations with Essex and 
 Spenser.' I may be wrong, but my recollection of it is as 
 of something quite exquisite, full of tenderness and fine 
 touches of character, and freer than usual of his faults. How 
 
 could regard Savage as an ass ? Perhaps he meant the 
 
 wild ass spoken of in Job, snuffing up the East wind, who 
 scorneth the multitude of the city, the range of whose pas- 
 tures is the mountains, and who searcheth after every green 
 thing and who regardeth not the urging of the driver ! 
 But the homely asinus domesticus necnon stwpidus he is 
 not. . . . Don't think Landor is one of my gods : he 
 is half man, half devil, half god, and I would not greatly 
 miss him were he to cease to have ever been. We have 
 had in spite of the shabbiest of weather some royal explora- 
 tions, C' riding upon a little Highland pony as full of 
 
 mettle as Mr. Landor. And no wonder ; its ancestor by the 
 male line was one of the Barbary Arabians cast ashore on 
 Argyllshire after the wreck of that glorious humbug the 
 Spanish Armada, so she (she is a mare !) has the Highland 
 pride and bottom and spunk, with a fine mixture of Spanish 
 grandiosity and Arabian wildfire. Yesterday we were at the 
 ' Sma' Glen,' where the late Mr. Ossian was buried, — ' a 
 wonderful place for beauty and wildness and grandeur.' 
 
 Do look into 'Shakespeare's Trial' and above all 'Essex and 
 Spenser.' ' The Pentameron ' and many of the ' Conversa- 
 tions' I know nothing of. ' Pericles and Aspasia ' has very 
 fine passages, some of great tenderness, but, as a whole, it 
 does not fulfil what is required in any such work of Art ; 
 
LETTER TO SHERIFF DICK 141 
 
 indeed, his obscurity is a cardinal and unpardonable sin, 
 and a refuge too for the want as well as the excess of thought. 
 I go to Edinburgh to-morrow. — Ever yours, 
 
 John Brown. 
 
 To the Same. 51 Albany Street, 
 
 30th November 1846. 
 My dear Coventry. — When am I to get your first Bute 
 letter, the first of an endless series 1 I hear you are well 
 and have been at Arran. I wish I could get off for two- 
 and-a-half days to see you and the divine Arran hills. 
 . . . Have you seen ' The Oxford Graduate "I It is an 
 astonishing book, full of goodness and truth and beauty, 
 and written in language that Augustine, if he had been a 
 Saxon, or Bichard Hooker, or Jeremy Taylor might well be 
 proud of. His theory of beauty, and his doctrine anent 
 imagination and art, to my mind is the most satisfactory 
 and the most worthily illustrated of any, ancient or modern. 
 . . . — Yours ever, J. B. 
 
 To the Same. 23 Rutland Street, 
 
 January 1856. 
 My dear Coventry, — When I read Baden Powell's 
 book, * which, however, I did with insufficient care and 
 thought, I was greatly puzzled as to what could be his 
 opinions on Christianity and the Bible. He seemed to me 
 to believe in the eternity of matter, which is surely a form 
 1 On Judaism and Christianity. 
 
142 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 of atheism. All that geology seems to me to reveal in this 
 matter, is the probable immense age of matter, a good many 
 billions of millions of years older than we reckoned it, but 
 it has never seemed to me to put away altogether — though 
 it puts further back — the primal feat of God. The ' be- 
 ginning ' is not less beginning because it was some myriads 
 further off. I did not like his book as a whole, though 
 much of it is interesting. He is an unsettled, and un- 
 settling, uncomfortable thinker. This sort of thing I 
 dislike, for some reasons among others that are not very 
 philosophical perhaps. I never get any length into the 
 miracle question without getting stuck in mud and mist. 
 What is the true scientific objective nature of our Saviour's 
 miracles 1 What were they ? we know what they seemed to 
 be, and are thought to be, and what they did. Do you 
 know Hampden's Bampton Lectures? You would like 
 them ; the style is hard and stiff, but the thoughts are ex- 
 cellent. . . . Good-bye, my dear, dear friend. May God 
 grant me some measure of your contented, cheerful, faith- 
 ful, loving spirit. — Yours ever, J. Brown. 
 
 Wallington Hall, 
 To the Same. Newcastlb-on-Ttke, 
 
 13th August 1856. 
 My dear Coventry, —You are a kind good soul, one 
 of the kindest and goodest I have seen as yet, as far 
 
LETTER TO SHERIFF DICK 143 
 
 as any one man can think the same as another on such 
 matters. I agree with your lines on ' God and the Uni- 
 verse.' I like the old idea of God containing everything, 
 and of old inhabiting His own Eternity and dwelling alone. 
 Go on with your numbers. We had the same thundering 
 and raining for three days, but fortunately for us there 
 could not be imagined a house in which one may less grum- 
 blingly pass three days indoors in the country. Sir Walter 1 
 and his smallest and briskest and artisticalest of wives are 
 pleasanter than most people, and easier too. And there is 
 a capital library of old and new ; lots of the best books of 
 prints, etc., such as you seldom see out of public libraries ; 
 a large and excellent museum of natural history, geology, 
 and odds and ends; good music; and one of the finest col- 
 lections of old china in England. He is a great oddity, a 
 great antiquarian, and hungry for all new inventions and 
 knowledge. A first-rate classic, a geologist, one of the best 
 botanists and entomologists in Britain ; a phonetic man, 
 a teetotaler, and Maine Law man, a phrenologist, and, to 
 crown all, a friend and patron and dedicator of our old 
 Ellison, the Born-natural. 
 
 I announced under your ' E. V. K.' your conversion to 
 Tennyson, and we turned up 'Maud' to the four lines, and 
 we all agreed that no man born could withstand them. 
 What say you now to ' CEnone,' and the ' Gardener's 
 Daughter ' ? . . . — Yours ever, J. B. 
 
 1 Sir Walter Trevelyan. 
 
144 DE. JOHN BROWN 
 
 To Mr., now Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., after receiving a 
 copy of his ' Life and Translation of Horace.' 
 
 23 Rutland Street, 
 21st April 1870. 
 
 My dear Theodore Martin, — I have been shame- 
 fully (you may well think shamelessly) unkind in never 
 till now thanking you for your beautiful Horace, with its 
 additions. I have nothing to say for myself, except that I 
 use all my old (and new) friends equally ill. I have fallen 
 into a state of chronic heartlessness, can neither read, nor 
 think, nor feel. Be thankful you are in all these respects 
 quite the reverse. 
 
 I like your Life of Horace greatly, better than Lord 
 Bulwer Lytton's, and your translations better still. His 
 seem to me bitter bad. 
 
 The book, which many a time has been beseeching to be 
 thanked for, was lifted by me just now from under some 
 others where it had been buried, and I opened it at page 
 239 — open you it there, and tell me if that first half of ' To 
 Nesera ' is ' no that ill ' done. Good-bye, my dear old 
 friends. God bless you both and keep you long to each 
 other, and may you do as an old couple did the other day — 
 the gardener of Mugbie Hill and his wife. They were both 
 ill in the same room, he died in the morning and she at 
 night, never having known that he was gone and being 
 spared that pang ; — so be it to you two spouses — without 
 the illness. Eemember me with much regard to your sine 
 qua non. — Yours ever affectionately, J. Brown. 
 
LETTER TO SIR THEODORE MARTIN 145 
 
 On receiving copy of ' Life of Horace ' in the ' Classics for English 
 
 Readers. ' 
 
 23 Rutland Street, 
 
 Edinburgh, 20 Sept. 1870. 
 
 My dear ' Theodore Martin,' — Felix tu ! Thanks for 
 this delightful fireside Horace. I have been sipping it in 
 my easy chair and with delectation all evening, and 
 thinking how pleasantly the 'lonely kindly man' would 
 turn over the leaves, if Blackwood would only send it 
 (' from the author ') to the Elysian Fields ! You are a 
 sort of wonder to me. You must have a roomy skull. I 
 was glad to get a little note from Miss Thackeray, and 
 very sorry to miss her. She is a fine creature, and has 
 won for herself a tidy bit of freehold, down to the centre 
 and up to the zenith, with which nor man nor woman 
 may intermeddle. I am sure you (dual) are good and 
 kind to her. That is just and good — your bit about her 
 father — satire and sympathy, as the natty Neaves had it. 
 
 Good-night ! my dear old friend. Don't I see you in 
 
 that light blue dress with hooks and eyes, and an upright 
 
 martial collar— at set. 8 the envy of all Arnott's ! x Yours 
 
 and the placens uxor's. — Ever truly, 
 
 J. Brown. 
 
 To Mrs. M . Moulineahn, 
 
 \\th Sept. 1874. 
 
 My dear friend, — I don't think I can visit your — why 
 
 not boldly call it ' AIBTS/ this time?— and to my sorrow. 
 
 • 1 Writing-school, Edinburgh. 
 K 
 
146 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 I went and saw , and that glorious baby. What 
 
 legs ! what potentiality, lurking in these folds ! what a 
 
 serene susceptivity ! showing off his legs was a study 
 
 for Parmegiano. By-the-bye, John Ruskin has sent me 
 plates of Fra Angelico's ' Marriage,' and ' Death of the 
 Virgin,' which, in spite of their heavy killing shadows, are 
 wonderfully sweet and spiritual. Did I tell you how 
 pleased I have been with Myers's ' Catholic Thoughts on 
 the Bible and Theology' ? It is excellent. You don't 
 need to read ' good ' books, because the seed is in yourself, 
 but this is one you would rejoice in. Much of it is so 
 like Mr. Erskine (Linlathen), but it is more compact and 
 crystalline than his, and has much of his lively love and 
 
 fervour. Tell that he is a deacon with the gun ; I 
 
 like him more than most. J and B are coming 
 
 to-night to go up all sorts of inaccessible rocks between 
 this and Ben Nevis. We had a great reading of Cowper 
 last night. What a true poet as well as a deep Christian 
 
 he is, — spite of his sad personal gloom Yours 
 
 sincerely, J. B. 
 
 The following letter was in answer to one from Sir Theodore 
 Martin sending him a copy, privately printed, of Lady Martin's 
 ' Letters on Ophelia and Portia. ' 
 
 23 Rutland Street, 
 
 Edinburgh, 21st Nov. 1880. 
 My dear old Friend, — Thanks for your kind letter 
 and the gift of these two delightful letters. I have just 
 
LETTER TO SIR THEODORE MARTIN 147 
 
 read them with great pleasure, and the Lady Helena and 
 you must pardon me for adding, with surprise. ' Can she 
 do this, too ? ' said I to myself. I never read anything so 
 good on Ophelia. The dear young thing, 'in the first 
 garden of her simpleness,' has never before had such 
 justice done to her sweet virginal nature ; and it is ex- 
 cellent on Gertrude, and fresh. Of Hamlet, who can say 
 what suffices % — but what Lady Martin says is to the quick 
 — the acorn in the flower-pot serves for much. All that 
 early autobiographical bit is delightful, and why should 
 we (the great We) not also get it 1 
 
 The effect of Hamlet's nature on Ophelia's is exquisitely 
 done, and, as only a woman could say it, she opened out to 
 him as a blossom to the sun. . . . 
 
 Portia is very good, though Ophelia is more original. 
 It set me to read the end of the play. How delicious all 
 about the rings ! and the using her juridical training is 
 brought out well. . . . 
 
 Have you read Don Quixote lately? If not, do — if 
 possible, of course (and what in that line is not possible 
 to you 1) in Spanish. Lowell told me the other day that 
 all English translations are 'brutal,' and Lockhart's dis- 
 honest; but I know no better, and anything brighter, 
 sweeter, funnier, altogether better than the Don and Sancho 
 I know not in Shakespeare, Scott, or anywhere. . . . 
 
 I daresay you know the old French song which is still 
 sung by the Breton sailors, and which Thackeray told me 
 was the original (!) of ' Little Billee.' If you don't, it will 
 
148 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 amuse you both, but his touching has adorned and enriched 
 it. Why did he die 1 ! Why didn't he come down here 
 and get cured by Syme? and he would have been alive 
 now, and ' Denis Duval ' would have been finished. He was 
 at quite his best when he died. . . . — I am, yours ever 
 sincerely, J. B. 
 
 To Lady Martin. 
 
 23 Rutland Street, 
 1st Jan. 1882. 
 
 Dear Lady Martin, — Let me thank you from my 
 heart for your letter and for ' Juliet/ You must be sweet- 
 blooded, and so must he. I have just finished Juliet, and 
 it is the next best thing to hearing and seeing you as 
 Juliet. It seems to me wonderfully done, — to have the 
 power of doing the thing and the power of describing. 
 How it is done seems to me a very rare combination. 
 That is interesting about Dickens [an anecdote of him 
 told in a note in Lady Martin's letter on Juliet] ; I wish I 
 could like him as you do, or as we both like Thackeray. 
 
 I heard how you entranced them at St. Andrews. You 
 will get all these women into a volume, and a portrait of 
 yourself. 
 
 What became of M'Leay's water colour of you? 1 I 
 used to like it with its short forehead. 
 
 I am glad you think of Imogen, ' white, radiant, spotless, 
 
 1 It was presented to the Edinburgh National Gallery by 
 Sir Theodore Martin. 
 
HIS SPIRITUALITY 149 
 
 exquisitely pure.' I am not sure that I do not love her 
 more than any of them. It is fit that you should end 
 with Kosalind. How I hear and see you now ! Do you 
 remember a wreath that was flung to you ? But I must 
 not weary you. 
 
 Let me again thank you for your forgiveness and for 
 your ' Juliet.' — Yours and that faithful man's, ever 
 affectionately, J. Brown. 
 
 Some of the foregoing letters, and many of those 
 which are withheld, afford abundant evidence of Dr. 
 Brown's highly strung and deeply reverent spiritual 
 nature. Although in certain moods he appeared and 
 wrote in apparent exuberance of spirit, there was more 
 frequent evidence of an undercurrent of serious 
 thought and feeling. 
 
 Spirituality, I should say, was perhaps the 
 most distinguishing characteristic of his mental 
 constitution. As an essence it pervaded his entire 
 life and work. Although reserved on sacred subjects, 
 it was frequently apparent to those most intimate 
 with him, that even in states of sunny brightness 
 and sparkling humour, a dark cloud of emotion 
 overspread his countenance, revealing the workings 
 
150 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 of the inner man. In his later years he was often 
 seen with his eyes closed, as if excluding the outer 
 world from his thoughts, and giving himself up to 
 devout contemplation. Divine reverence and human 
 sympathy were as parts of himself. This was alike 
 shown in a keen appreciation of nature — the glory 
 of the heavens, and the grandeur and beauty of the 
 earth ; in his gentle and tender consideration for the 
 feelings of others, and in sympathy with all sorrow 
 and suffering. As a physician frequent contact with 
 suffering humanity unhinged him much, and was 
 indeed one of the greatest burdens of his life. It was 
 from such impressions of God's perfections and man's 
 sinfulness ; and from such indwelling sensibilities and 
 views of life's seriousness and his own unworthiness, 
 that like Wordsworth, Cowper, Coleridge, and some 
 other gifted men, he suffered acutely at times ; and 
 thus too it was that his occasional strokes of 
 humour were shaded by a grave expression, and 
 a quaint or cheery remark uttered while his aspect 
 otherwise indicated a degree of mental depression. 
 Doubtless, however, from the possession of this 
 highly sensitive nature and keen spiritual discern- 
 
A SINCERE CHRISTIAN 151 
 
 ment, the world has benefited not a little by his 
 writings touching responsive chords in many hearts. 
 
 A near relative of his own, and one who knew John 
 thoroughly has truly said : — ' He was a sincere, humble 
 and devout Christian. His religion was not a thing 
 that could be put off or on, or be mislaid or lost ; it 
 was in him, and he could no more leave it behind, 
 than he could leave his own body behind. It was in 
 him a well of living water, not for himself so much as 
 for all around him. And his purity, truth, goodness, 
 and Christ-like character were never more clearly 
 seen than in those periods of darkness when they 
 were hidden from . his own sight. He very seldom 
 spoke expressly of religion ; he held " that the greater 
 and the better — the inner-part of man is, and should 
 be private — much of it more than private ; " but he 
 could not speak of anything without manifesting 
 what manner of man he was; and his ideas on 
 religion can be, imperfectly no doubt, but so far, 
 truly gathered from his writings.' x 
 
 In his interesting paper on Arthur H. Hallam, Dr. 
 
 1 Professor Crum Brown's Obituary notice, Edinburgh Medical 
 Journal, June 1882, pp. 1130-4. 
 
152 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Brown's views regarding divine revelation are thus 
 strongly and beautifully expressed. He says : — ' There 
 is something very striking to us in the words, " Revela- 
 tion is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite 
 Being." This states the case with an accuracy and 
 distinctness not at all common among either the 
 opponents or the apologists of revealed religion in 
 the ordinary sense of the expression. In one sense 
 God is for ever revealing Himself. His heavens are 
 for ever telling His glory, and the firmament showing 
 His handiwork ; day unto day is uttering speech, and 
 night unto night is showing knowledge concerning 
 Him. But in the word of the truth of the gospel God 
 draws near to His creatures; He bows His heavens 
 and comes down. 
 
 " That glorious form, that light unsufferable, 
 And that far-beaming blaze of majesty" 
 
 he lays aside. The Word dwelt with men. "Come then 
 let us reason together ; " — " Waiting to be gracious ; " 
 — " Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any 
 man open to Me, I will come in to him and sup with 
 him, and he with Me." It is the father seeing the 
 
HARMONY OF THE WORKS AND WORD OF GOD 153 
 
 son while yet a great way off, and having compassion, 
 and running to him and falling on his neck and kiss- 
 ing him ; " for it was meet for us to rejoice, for this my 
 son was dead, and is alive again, he was lost and is 
 found." Let no man confound the voice of God in 
 His works with the voice of God in His Word ; they are 
 utterances of the same infinite heart and will ; they 
 are in absolute harmony; together they make up 
 " that undisturbed song of pure concent ; " one " per- 
 fect diapason;" but they are distinct; they are 
 meant to be so. . . . Nature and the Bible, the Works 
 and the Word of God are two distinct things. In the 
 mind of their Supreme Author, they dwell in perfect 
 peace, in that unspeakable unity which is of His 
 essence; and to us His children, every day, their 
 harmony, their mutual relations, are discovering 
 themselves ; but let us beware of saying all Nature 
 is a revelation as the Bible is, and all the Bible is 
 natural as Nature is : there is a perilous juggle here.' 1 
 Dr. Brown's own clergyman, 2 in referring to 
 
 1 Hor. Sub., Series ii. pp. 469-71. 
 
 2 The late Eev. W. G. Forbes, of the United Presbyterian 
 Church, Eyre Place, Edinburgh. 
 
154 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 his death, said among other things : — ' His religious 
 faith coloured all his thoughts. His was a re- 
 ligion of the heart, and not of the life only; it 
 appeared more in profound devoutness . than in 
 exulting demonstrative faith.' These and all Dr. 
 Brown's utterances in his published papers and 
 correspondence are in perfect harmony on religious 
 faith respecting the revelation of God the Father and 
 of the Son and of the Holy Spirit : they may well be 
 pondered over in those days when there is so much 
 doubt, so much scepticism in the air regarding these 
 eternal verities. What could be more touchingly 
 simple and reverentially expressed, what more indi- 
 cative of firm belief in God the Father and in the 
 living and divine personality of Jesus of Nazareth 
 than is written in the concluding paragraphs of his 
 lay sermons, Plain Words on Health, addressed to 
 Working People I 1 — ' Good-night to you all, big and 
 little, young and old, and go home to your bedside. 
 There is Some One there waiting for you; and His 
 Son is here ready to take you to Him. Yes, He is 
 waiting for every one of you, and you have only to 
 
 I. * Hot. Sub., Appendix, vol. i. p. 90. 
 
CONCLUSION OF ' PLAIN WORDS ON HEALTH ' 155 
 
 say, " Father, I have sinned — make me " — and He sees 
 you a great way off. But to reverse the parable, it is 
 the First-born, your Elder Brother, who is at your 
 side, and leads you to your Father, and says, 
 "I have paid his debt;" that Son who is ever 
 with Him, who is all that He hath. I need not 
 say more. You know what I mean. You know 
 Who is waiting, and you know Who it is that 
 stands beside you, having the likeness of the Son 
 of Man. Good-night I The night cometh, in which 
 neither you nor I can work — may we work while it is 
 day ; whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
 thy might, for there is no work or device in the grave 
 whither we are all of us hastening; and when the 
 night is spent, may we all enter on a healthful, a 
 happy, an everlasting to-morrow ! ' 
 
 In the following letter — for to a few familiar and 
 sympathetic friends he did venture at times to 
 express himself freely — he says : — 
 
 Qth May 1864. 
 My dear Friend, . . . You should go on writing. You 
 may rest assured it will do good. It is indeed very close 
 
156 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 ' dealing,' and is much needed in these days when near- 
 ness to God is getting rarer and rarer ; and unless we are 
 near, unless we are in God, we are without Him, we are 
 far from Him, — away in darkness and cold, feeling less and 
 less the attraction of His infinite Godhead. ... Go on 
 expressing yourself regarding the mystery of evil and 
 misery, evolving the mystery of goodness, and happiness, — 
 of God in Christ reconciling a whole world to Himself and 
 therefore to itself. I have been thinking much lately of 
 Jacob's wrestling with the angel till the dawning of the 
 day, and being blessed and gaining the unutterable Name 
 only when touched in the hollow of the thigh and made to 
 feel his own nothingness : ' when I am weak, then am I 
 strong '• — Yours ever, J. B. 
 
 Again to the same friend, speaking of the power 
 and duration of mutual love and tenderness, he 
 says : — 
 
 ' It is the best proof that God and God alone is the full 
 portion of our cup, and makes it run over ; and that it is 
 only reflexly through Him that His best creatures — His 
 own dear children — enter into each other's hearts and 
 souls, and are commingled inextricably and for ever. We 
 are lost, taken up in Him, and we pass out of Him carry- 
 ing with us His fulness.' 
 
SPIRITUAL SIDE OF ART 157 
 
 In another letter he thus wrote to Mr. Coventry 
 Dick :— 
 
 23 Rutland Street, 
 21st August 1864. 
 
 My dear C. . . . I had a talk with Jowett to-day 
 about Ecclesiastical matters. I think you and he would 
 much agree. Yes, I back that paraphrase 'I'm not 
 ashamed to own my Lord,' etc., against Renan and all his 
 crew. Have you read the Apologia 1 A very strange, 
 sincere, insane, beautiful, painful performance and con- 
 fession it is. I am so glad I was grounded in historic 
 Christianity in my youth, and am almost mechanically 
 secured against these fellows and their guns and shells, 
 their torpedoes and mines.' — Yours affectionately, J. B. 
 
 The spiritual side of art in painting had great attrac- 
 tions for Dr. Brown. Hence his delight in viewing some 
 of the religious works of the old masters, and hence 
 a bond of intimacy with our own distinguished limner 
 Sir Noel Paton. And in the sister art of music, he 
 also had intense delight, though he could neither 
 play on any instrument, nor sing — ' except in church.' 
 When music was good he would sit a whole evening 
 an enchained listener ; and nothing pleased him more 
 at his own house than when any one possessing a 
 
158 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 fresh, sympathetic, cultivated voice sang choice 
 ballads or sacred melodies to him. Handel and 
 Beethoven were his favourite composers; and 
 whenever the Oratorio of the Messiah was performed 
 in our city, he was sure to be present. I remember 
 him saying that he found its sublime strains more 
 elevating, and more promotive of religious feeling 
 than any sermon he ever heard. It was to him 
 something higher than mere artistic pleasure, — it was 
 a pure devotional exercise, exalting the soul and 
 sanctifying the place. 
 
 Dr. Brown's views of the connection of morality 
 and religion are admirably expressed in a letter to 
 the late Principal Shairp of St. Andrews : — ' All true 
 morality merges in and runs up into religion ; all true 
 religion blossoms and breathes out into morality, 
 and practical and immediate goodness and love. 
 What is the whole duty of man but his entire 
 special morality ; and what is man's whole duty ? — 
 love to God and love to man, not excluding himself 
 as being a man.' 1 As the Rev. James Stalker 
 
 1 Principal Shairp and his Friends, by Professor Knight, p. 265. 
 John Murray, London. 
 
HARMONY OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 159 
 
 says in his Imago Christi, 'one of the greatest 
 services of Jesus to the world was to harmonise 
 religion and morality;' and indeed it may be said 
 that the love of humanity is synonymous with the 
 love of Christ, and that the evidence of this in a man 
 is an all-round practical goodness. So, in all the 
 relations of active life the regulating principles 
 of Dr. Brown's nature were simplicity, sincerity, 
 integrity, truthfulness, humility, and love; and 
 nothing was more abhorrent to him than irreverence, 
 heartlessness, affectation, ostentation, pretentiousness, 
 sham, or hypocrisy. At his mother's knee he was 
 first instructed in the faith as it is in Christ ; in the 
 manse at Biggar he breathed a truly holy atmo- 
 sphere ; in boyhood and youth he was the companion 
 of his godly father; in student life he passed 
 unscathed through its perils ; he early entered the 
 communion of the church of his fathers; and to 
 the last was a regular and devout attender on its 
 ordinances. But it is not necessary to lift the veil 
 of private life further than to say, that he was most 
 affectionate in his family and exemplary in the 
 discharge of all his personal and family duties. 
 
160 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Dr. Brown took a warm interest in the United 
 Presbyterian Church, and had a large acquaintance 
 with the clergy of that denomination in particular. 
 Conjoined with myself as a medical adviser to its 
 Mission Board from about 1850 until removed by 
 death, he shared with me the examination of its 
 missionaries, catechists, and their wives, ere they 
 were sent to different spheres of labour; and 
 frequently attended them when they returned to 
 this country on furlough or sick-leave. In January 
 1878 each oi us received from members of the 
 Mission Board and others a handsome piece of silver 
 plate as an acknowledgment 'for more than a 
 quarter-of-a-century's gratuitous services.' On the 
 day of his death, when the Synod of that Church 
 was sitting, the late Principal Cairns announced the 
 event to a deeply affected audience, and passed a 
 warm and touching eulogium on the literary and 
 religious character of Dr. Brown, and his services 
 to the Church. This was followed by a tribute in 
 equally glowing terms by the late Dr. John Ker, 
 who concluded with these words : — 'What a delightful 
 thing it was that a mind such as Dr. Brown possessed 
 
THE EVENTIDE 161 
 
 held so close to the great truths of the gospel that 
 were so dear to them all ; and that in the eventide 
 it was light with him ! ' 
 
 That eventide came somewhat suddenly and un- 
 expectedly, as for several months, to the delight of 
 all his friends, Dr. Brown had been in excellent 
 health and spirits, and fitness for professional 
 work, even as in the best of his days. But in the 
 beginning of May 1882 he was confined to the house 
 with what at first appeared to be an ordinary cold, 
 though he was able to correct some proofs to be 
 added, I believe, to that edition of the Horce 
 Subsecivce from which all the references in these 
 pages have been made. Little did he or any one 
 anticipate that this was to be the finis of his literary 
 labours; and that 'the windows' were so soon 'to 
 be darkened' and 'the mourners to go about the 
 streets.' On the 8 th, unmistakable signs of pneu- 
 monia and pleurisy were observed, and he seems to 
 have had some premonition of what was to come, as he 
 said to me, 'Alexander, this is the beginning of the end.' 
 True it was, for although at first these symptoms 
 seemed to yield to the treatment used by Dr. George 
 
162 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Balfour and myself, his strength rapidly failed ; and 
 he breathed his last on the early morning of the 11th. 
 During these last days of prostration, he 
 seemed frequently to be engaged in prayer; the 
 clouds, which so often during a varied and trying 
 life obscured his spiritual horizon, had now no 
 existence ; and his whole aspect was that of patience, 
 calmness, and perfect peace. To her who was so 
 much esteemed by him, and who has written • so 
 lovingly of his life, 1 he said, some days before the 
 end came : ' I know that this is something vital,' — 
 pointing to his chest. Then — as it happened to be 
 Sunday — he asked if she had been at church, and 
 what the text was ; and being told that it was, ' In 
 the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good 
 cheer, I have overcome the world.' 'Wonderful 
 words,' he said, folding his hands and closing his 
 eyes, repeating slowly, 'Be of good cheer:' then, 
 after a pause, ' and from Him, our Saviour ! ' 
 
 On the 16th of May, Dr. John Brown's mortal 
 
 1 Dr. John Brown and his Sister Isabella, by E. T. M'L., pp. 24, 
 25. Edinburgh, David Douglas, 1890. 
 
THE LAST RESTING-PLACE 163 
 
 remains were conveyed from Rutland Street to his 
 father's burying ground in the New Calton Ceme- 
 tery, followed by a large company of mourners. 
 Along the whole line of route and within the 
 cemetery ground, there was a throng of deeply 
 sympathetic spectators, doubtless variously impressed 
 and affected as they realised from personal intimacy, 
 or otherwise, the loss sustained in the departure of 
 the quaint, humorous, delicately subtle, and pathetic 
 writer ; the liberal-hearted and interested citizen ; the 
 beloved physician ; and the sweet, gentle, and genial 
 friend. These manifestations of profound sympathy 
 and sorrow were in strange contrast with the cloudless 
 sky and bright sunshine of that day, which lit up 
 Princes Street, along which ' Randolph ' 1 had so 
 often trod, and for the preservation of whose beauty 
 and surroundings he had so spiritedly written. 
 
 Thus lived and departed one who was loving, 
 lovable, and beloved: whose memory is warmly 
 cherished by all who enjoyed his friendship and 
 society; and whose name will doubtless be handed 
 
 1 The nom de plume of Dr. Brown's letters in the Scotsman on 
 the amenity of the city. 
 
164 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 down to posterity as one of the most original and 
 charming of writers, — nearly the last of that remark- 
 able galaxy of talented men who adorned our city 
 during the last half century. 'Mark Twain,' with 
 whom Dr. Brown more than once had pleasing 
 personal intercourse, writing to a friend recently, 
 expressed himself in these happy and forcible 
 words: 'He was the most extensive slaveholder 
 of his time, and the kindest, and yet he died 
 without setting one of his bondsmen free.' 
 
 The In Memoriam notices which appeared 
 immediately after Dr. Brown's death in the news- 
 papers and journals of the day, all breathed the 
 same spirit of loving and reverent admiration. With 
 three of these, in verse, I will close this narrative, 
 laying them, as it were, as wreaths on the tomb 
 of my departed friend. 
 
 JOHN BROWN 
 
 The yellow violet on the hill 
 
 Came forth to-day in tenderest mien, 
 
 A month before its earliest time, 
 And up my heart leapt full, I ween. 
 
IN MEMOBIAM 165 
 
 But sudden rose a saddening thought, 
 That quick repressed the impulse meet, 
 
 For I had learned the hour before, 
 Thy noble heart had ceased to beat. 
 
 The violet comes from out the death 
 Of winter, when thy tender eyes, 
 
 That would have watched it with all love, 
 Are closed to every glad surprise. 
 
 Thou, Scotland's son by birth and blood, 
 The heir of all she loves, reveres ; 
 
 Her pith of sense, her power of worth, 
 Her humour, pathos, pitying tears. 
 
 No borrowed strain, no trick of Art — 
 The home-grown theme thine offering ; 
 
 ' Ailie ' and ' Rab/ ' Pet Marjorie ' 
 
 And ' Minchmuir ' with its haunted spring. 
 
 Thy life a fount of simple joys, 
 
 A sum of duties nobly done ; 
 The meed of love, the memory dear, 
 
 In human hearts for ever won. 
 
 Yet not unclouded was thy sky ; 
 
 Some hours of doubt and dark were thine, 
 Ere brighter grew thy close of day, 
 
 The splendour of a sun's decline. 
 
166 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 Thou truest friend, thou warmest heart, 
 Where art thou now 1 my spirit cries. 
 
 "Within the veil, I see thee stand, 
 
 And round thee are the pure and wise. 
 
 The brow, the face, we loved on earth, 
 These, these are thine ; what nobler guise, 
 
 The crown above thy silver locks, 
 And radiant o'er thy gentle eyes ! 
 
 J. V. 
 
 May 12th, 1882. 
 
 'JEYE BEE' 
 
 (A favourite signature among friends) 
 
 sweet and pure and tender heart, 
 
 With the child's gift to pray and play, 
 That, artless in thy perfect art, 
 Couldst blissful tears to us impart, 
 And smile the blissful tears away. 
 
 Most human thou of human kind ; 
 
 Children with rapt gaze hung on thee ; 
 To thee dumb creatures looked to find 
 The meanings which their wistful mind 
 
 Was groping for, and could not see. 
 
 1 Professor Veiteh of Glasgow. 
 
IN MEMOEIAM 167 
 
 We were the better for the mirth ; 
 
 We were the better for the tears, 
 We were the better seeing worth 
 In the dumb creatures of the earth — 
 
 Their loves, their hatreds, and their fears. 
 
 Dear, loving soul, that strove to win 
 
 The secret of the earth and heaven, 
 Because thou lovedst them ; and in 
 The ' Minchmoor ' and the ' Enterkin ' 
 The secret unto thee was given. 
 
 Thou mad'st ' Pet Marjorie ' the pet 
 
 Of all our homes, and ' Eab ' our friend ; 
 And quaint Pitlyal's lady yet 
 Who shall not own him in her debt, 
 For mirth no wit of man could mend 1 
 
 And now that wealth of joy and love, 
 
 Must it lie buried in the grave ? 
 Or has it gone to worlds above, 
 For heaven had need of it to move 
 Its life, too, with a larger wave 1 
 
 We are so little : God requires, 
 
 The greatness of His thought to prove, 
 Some altars burning with strange fires, 
 Some souls that grasp at large desires, 
 And run not in the common groove. 
 
168 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 But heaven is richer for this gain, 
 
 If life is poorer here on earth 
 Which hears not that low voice again. 
 And the memory and the pain ! 
 
 The sadness of remembered mirth ! 
 
 But clouds have passed away from thee ; 
 
 There is no sorrow in thy voice ; 
 And in the Presence thou dost see 
 This jarring life's deep harmony — 
 
 And that is well, and we rejoice. 
 
 Walter G. Smith. 
 
 IN MEMOEIAM— Dr. John Brown 
 
 A gentle master-spirit passed away, 
 And the dear City that he loved so well 
 
 No more shall see that fine, head silvery grey ; 
 But in our hearts his memory keeps its spell. 
 
 His own was like a deep and crystal well, 
 Cooling the warm air in the still noon day, 
 
 Its springs close hid in some green forest dell ; 
 Bubbling sweet water fresh and clear alway. 
 
IN MEMORIAM 169 
 
 Pathos was his, a soft and lambent light 
 
 Touching to love and tears the hearts of men ; 
 
 And humour did his will — the Ariel sprite 
 Came at his call and tipped his mirthful pen. 
 
 How long before our Northern Athens know 
 Spirit so blameless, heart so rare, as thou 1 
 
 EOBERT ElOHARDSON. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 No. I 
 
 When the foregoing pages were ready for the press the follow- 
 ing communication was kindly sent to me by Mr. J. E. Findlay 
 of Aberlour, in response to a request for any reminiscence of, or 
 letters from, Dr. Brown, during their long and close intimacy. 
 
 My acquaintance with Dr. John Brown began about 
 1850, and soon ripened into friendship, close, cordial, and 
 unclouded till his death. To me, as having charge of the 
 literary department of the Scotsman, he addressed him- 
 self on all matters connected with books and art — in notes 
 or notelets rather than in letters — besides which he was 
 latterly an almost daily visitor at the office, so that we had 
 frequent talk on all manner of topics. Most of his corre- 
 spondence with me was therefore, so to speak, trivial and 
 ephemeral, and was torn up day by day, but I have still a 
 few of his letters ; kept as being fuller, if not more character- 
 istic, than those minor effusions — for all were characteristic. 
 As far back as February 1850, in a letter written from 
 Bridge of Allan, to which he says he had been ' driven by my 
 
 170 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM MR. J. R. FINDLAY 171 
 
 doctor in search of sleep, which I have found in abundance 
 here, and have been revelling in it,' he writes : — 
 
 ' Poor Sir William Allan is dead — another of our bright 
 and familiar lights gone out — another of our best and 
 ablest and most lovable men has "joined the famous 
 nations of the dead ! " Did you know him 1 He was a rare 
 bit of true spirit, and humour, gentleness, fortitude and 
 generosity. Up to the last he was at work with all his 
 fire and industry at his picture of Bannockburn. The 
 second last time I saw him I came upon him before he saw 
 me — it was a scene Wilkie might have put out all his 
 power into. The little, rugged, wasted, old man was lying 
 on two chairs near the fire (like a shipwrecked but 
 undaunted sailor), his shepherd's plaid round him, his 
 bonnet on his brow, and his legs covered with some of his 
 Circassian and Moorish gear — he was lying there, gazing 
 keenly all over his immense canvas, enjoying what he had 
 done and kindling up at what he saw he could yet do.' 
 
 Brown's cordial appreciation of his old friends — his 
 elder friends, I might say in those cases — is shown in 
 like manner in another letter of the same year : — 
 
 ' I send you Lord Jeffrey's letter to Mrs. Sydney Smith. 
 Read it, and if you can, insert it to-morrow with the head- 
 ing "Lord Jeffrey's last letter." It is so like him and 
 shows how entire he was to the end, how full of honest 
 industry, candour, and that quick, rich, affluent intellect 
 and affection which we will never again see matched. It 
 
172 APPENDIX I 
 
 is a beautiful closing to the long, busy, brilliant, useful 
 and happy day, of that divine old man, " whom never 
 more shall we forget, or see." But I am getting news- 
 paperish.' 
 
 I may be excused recalling the fact that the Scotsman 
 was one of the first journals in the kingdom — I might per- 
 haps safely enough say the very first — to discern that in 
 Thackeray a new luminary had arisen above the literary 
 horizon. In its columns warm praise was accorded to the 
 early numbers of Vanity Fair when they were left un- 
 noted, or only coldly welcomed, by London newspapers. 
 Mr. Eussel had a keen appreciation of the deeper, finer 
 quality of Thackeray's genius as compared with that of 
 Dickens, by whose popularity he was for a time over- 
 shadowed. Pendennis having fallen to me to review, Dr. 
 Brown break s out in excessive laudation of the notice : — 
 
 ' My (or to speak in the dual sense " Our ") biggest and 
 best thanks for your review of " Pen." It is worthy of 
 the book, which involves no end of the best praise. Your 
 own remarks, and T. Campbell's bit about Brown, go to 
 the quick of the matter. To make use of a perhaps too 
 sacred illustration, he, Thackeray, is " quick and powerful, 
 he pierces to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow, 
 and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the 
 heart ;" once there, he looks out and knows all things. I 
 wish you had saved Helen from utter softness, as if she had 
 1 Editor of the Scotsman. 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM MR. J. R. FINDLAY 173 
 
 a weak, or no spine, by referring to the true moral courage, 
 shown by her in the matter of her "first love." This 
 should never be forgotten, and the relation Laura (the 
 spiritual one) bears to her in this way is wonderfully 
 subtle and fine. But you will think I am going to write an 
 article upon yours. I write chiefly to get quit of our thanks, 
 and to ask you to send a copy of the Scotsman to Thackeray 
 at Kensington. He needs and relishes this sort of rational 
 praise. I wish in next number you would give us a paper 
 on his style, both in itself and as the medium of his mind.' 
 
 Many such kind letters he wrote ; sometimes of thanks 
 for notices of anything he himself had written in reviews, 
 often in praise of what he thought well-merited laudation 
 or censure bestowed on books, or anything else that in- 
 terested him ; as when he says of two papers of Russel's : 
 — ' I was so delighted with the pounding that ancient and 
 
 ebriose apothecary got in those two articles : it is 
 
 the very truth, most sure ! ' 
 
 I find that I have preserved a copy of a letter of June 
 25, 1861, addressed to him along with his reply, or rather 
 replies : — 
 
 My dear Dr. Brown, — The Scotsman has long had a 
 burden on his conscience in regard to his relations with 
 you as a contributor. These relations grew up loosely ; we 
 ought long ago to have put them on a business footing. 
 We cannot do so even now; however, we cannot commence a 
 
174 APPENDIX I 
 
 new score without confession of our sins of omission hither- 
 to. We therefore beg your acceptance of the enclosed 
 fifty guineas of conscience money. You must not regard 
 such request as an attempt to release ourselves in the small- 
 est degree from the sense we proudly entertain of many 
 and great obligations, but as a far too tardy and quite in- 
 adequate token of the fact that your inestimable kindness 
 and service have not been unappreciated. This I write for 
 and with all the best wishes of my uncle, 1 the editor, and 
 yours most faithfully, J. R. Findlay. 
 
 ' 23 Rutland Street, 
 Edinburgh, 25th June. 
 ' My dear John Findlay, — I would almost that this 
 had not happened. Not that I am not only gratified at — 
 but grateful for — this gift ; far too big as it is for any value 
 received. But my writing for you has been always so truly 
 a labour of love, born and dying in and for that alone. 
 It has been so much a greater pleasure to me than it ever 
 can have been an advantage to you, this having your hon- 
 oured and kindly vehicle for my diversions ; I have so 
 often been kept from dark thoughts by the little excitements 
 thus caused, that I feel I am getting everything and giving 
 nothing. Still I know it would vex you, and your heroic 
 and chivalrous uncle, if I refused what besides is in itself 
 always welcome to an Edinburgh doctor, and therefore I 
 thank you for it and keep it, thanking you also for all your 
 1 Proprietor of the Scotsman, 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM MR. J. R. FINDLAY 175 
 
 good nature and good services — without which any little 
 glory I may have got with my pen would have been still 
 less. Do you remember me writing you ages ago from 
 Bridge of Allan begging to be put on the Free List 1 I 
 often think of it as a very " cheeky " proceeding. Now tell 
 all this to " uncle " and thank him and yourself evermore 
 for the matter and for the manner of your gift. So, long 
 life to the Scotsman and to all who work for Him ! — Yours 
 ever truly, J. Brown. 
 
 ' Received Fifty Guineas.' 
 
 ' 23 Rutland Street, 
 Edinburgh, 26th June. 
 ' My dear Pen., — I am taken so all of a heap by your 
 letter and its contents, that I had not noticed your saying 
 that " the editor " joined with you and the old man. I 
 am very vex'd at this. Now this is a real and great addi- 
 tion to my gratification. I know he hates praise even 
 when he knows it is due, and therefore I only thank him — 
 I thank my stars that we have him — the noblest, most un- 
 selfish and truthful, as he is the most powerful public writer 
 of our time, and a man who has political wisdom in the 
 concrete to an amount and of a quality we have not seen 
 since Burke. — Yours and his ever truly, J. Brown.' 
 
 ' Pen ' is contraction for Pendennis, which he fancied an 
 appropriate name or nickname for a young journalist. A 
 little note, apparently referring to some sharp criticism he 
 
176 APPENDIX I 
 
 had made on something that had appeared in the Scotsmcm, 
 and against which I had remonstrated, illustrates very 
 touchingly his tenderness of feeling and modest estimate 
 of himself and his powers : — 
 
 ' My dear Pen., — I am ashamed of myself and I ought 
 never to have said a word after all your kindness and help. 
 But the truth is, I now do nothing but the wrong thing. 
 I have a curious infelicity about everything I do, or say, 
 or feel, or don't feel, or say, or think, or do ; still, I think 
 I am, yours truly, J. B.' 
 
 Though Dr. John was inclined and desired to see good 
 in everything and everybody, he was no weak or universal 
 admirer. If he would admit of no flaw in the two gods of 
 his idolatry — Thackeray in letters and Syme in surgery — 
 he had a sound and sometimes a severe — though never 
 bitter — judgment of men generally ; and indulged in not 
 a few keen antipathies — hatreds would be too strong a 
 word. But though he would indicate his dislike of shams 
 and quackeries in medicine, in literature, or in divinity by 
 a sharp phrase or two, he quickly passed on as from an 
 unpleasant topic. Nor did his friendships cloud or warp 
 his judgment of the powers or works of his friends. I find 
 him saying of Sir William Allan, in declining to write a 
 notice of his pictures : — ' I do not know what to say about 
 Sir William. I do not estimate him high as a painter. 
 He was a greater man than a painter, and I do not know 
 that I could get up enthusiasm enough to make me write 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM MR. J. R. FINDLAY 177 
 
 anything worth giving you.' Of Dickens, again, he would 
 certainly have said that lie was greater as an author than 
 as a man; and was most humorously severe on the 
 meretricious style in which he performed his famous 
 ' Readings.' I hardly ever thought the good doctor unjust 
 except in his estimate of Thackeray's great rival ; he could 
 not abide the brother so near the throne. 
 
 In a letter forwarding a friend's remonstrance against a 
 criticism of a popular picture he says : — ' All the tribe are 
 more sensitive than the ladies now-a-days are to our 
 horrid hoofs when their tails are trod upon. Did you 
 ever see the devil look out from their sweet eyes on those 
 little and quite unavoidable, except by an acrobat, oc- 
 casions?' Then he adds on one of those bits written 
 across the paper, in which he indulged : — ' What is the 
 direct Scripture authority against having more wives than 
 one 1 " No man can serve two masters ! " ' In a like 
 spirit of fun he gives in another note what he calls, ' my 
 last epitaph ' : — 
 
 ' Beneath this stone lies Pat M'Larty 
 
 In humble hope to rise in glory, 
 His doctor's name was Moriarty, 
 
 Who soon obliged him arte mori.' 
 
 In March 1882, the year of his death, he writes : — 
 
 '23 Rutland Street, 
 Edinburgh, 1 Mar. 
 'My dear Pen., — To whom am I grateful for that very 
 and far too pleasant notice 1 I am afraid it is to you, and 
 
 M 
 
178 APPENDIX I 
 
 hope also. But you know there are some constitutions 
 that sugar, however refined, is not good for ; still, it is not 
 all bad, for, with all my conceit, and no one knows its 
 size as I do, I am greatly the better of such heartening, as 
 you have given, and need it too, at times. 
 
 ' There are many things in my mind I might say to yon, 
 as the past and its dead rise up — but enough — thank you ; 
 for you must prove yourself not guilty — I hold you now 
 so to be — for this kindness and much else. — Yours and all 
 yours, ever truly, J. Brown. 
 
 'You are quite right about the occasional "too-muchness."' 
 
 You, as his oldest and most intimate associate, must 
 feel how faintly our dear kind old friend is reflected in 
 those scraps. To them you will perhaps permit me to add 
 a portion of a notice of his collected Horce which 
 appeared in the Scotsman a month or two after his death, 
 as giving some expression to the feelings of all who, like 
 ourselves, knew him long and well : — 
 
 ' When so rare a spirit as that of the author of Bab and 
 his Friends passes from us, it adds something to the regret 
 of those who knew him that they can convey no adequate 
 conception of their loss to those who did not. It seems 
 a duty to their friend's memory to try ; their failure, 
 inevitable failure, is inevitably depressing. Genius of the 
 greater, sterner, more aggressive sort is more easily 
 described ; the delicate, subtile, endearing qualities of a 
 genius less robust perhaps, but not less genuine, seem to 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM MR. J. R. FINDLAY 179 
 
 evade delineation. Browning's poem, "Waring," reflects 
 this feeling in regard to the unknown living ; it is intensified 
 and saddened in the case of the well-known dead. Still 
 more emphatically so when the man is, or, alas ! was, 
 greater and better than his works — by which alone he can 
 be most widely known — even though to know him by 
 them be to love him. The kindly regard that surrounded 
 Dr. John Brown, like a genial atmosphere of universal 
 friendship, was largely the reflection and emanation of his 
 own amiable nature ; but it was based also in profound 
 esteem for his high moral qualities, and in a latent 
 acknowledgment of intellectual power which somehow or 
 other never seemed to have full scope, or rarely worked at 
 its strongest or best. "Wise and delightful as his writings 
 are, they all want the completeness of the man ; they give 
 no adequate conception of his fulness, his readiness, his 
 playfulness and humour. He had passed through the dark 
 valley of severe domestic sorrow and bereavement; the 
 shadow of a great affliction hung ever around him ; yet he 
 walked amongst us in serene, if humble cheerfulness, his 
 professional hours steadily occupied, and his leisure calmly 
 devoted to letters and the claims of friendship. Though 
 a clouded, his could not justly be called an unhappy lot ; 
 sunshine was shed over it by the love of all who knew 
 him, and by the admiration of thousands who never saw 
 him in the flesh, coming to him through many avenues. 
 His fame was, like his own nature, gentle and mellow, yet 
 true and firm. And as his character had in it what Burns 
 
180 APPENDIX I 
 
 calls " the carle stalk of hemp," so, we venture to predict, 
 will his literary reputation prove stable and lasting. It is 
 much to say of any man, in those days of literary pro- 
 fusion, that anything he has done will long survive or be 
 cherished ; but it may safely be said that Dr. John Brown 
 has given the world some things which, busy and oblivious 
 though it be, it will not willingly let die. Perhaps, had 
 time been vouchsafed, he might have given more ; his mind 
 seemed, after periods of inaction and depression, to have 
 recovered tone and fertility just before he was taken away; 
 and in the revisal of his works, and the spontaneous 
 renewal of correspondence with friends, earnest seemed to 
 be given of unexhausted or even unworked powers. He 
 enriched the new edition of his Horm Subsecivce with 
 several new papers, chief of which he modestly spoke 
 of in his preface as "a few words on Dr. John Scott, 
 Mr. Syme, and Sir Robert Christison," adding, queerly and 
 very characteristically, " they are addressed more to myself 
 than to any one else." They are, in fact, much of the 
 nature of soliloquies — outpourings of the affectionate regard 
 in which he held especially the two first-named men ; 
 attempts at expressing, without attempting to discharge, 
 the debt of gratitude which he never ceased to feel for the 
 early guidance and friendship and trust of those masters 
 of their craft and his. Nor could he send forth a second 
 edition of the latest of the series — the kind reception of 
 which, a few weeks before, had astonished even more than 
 it delighted him — without many characteristic touches. 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM MR. J. R. FlNDLAY 181 
 
 One of these exhibited him in the previously imrevealed 
 character of a writer of tender and graceful and ex- 
 quisitely well-fashioned verse — possibly the only example 
 of his exercise of that faculty ; the fact that it was unique, 
 if so it be, being perhaps accounted for by the deep and 
 concentrated local inspiration it exhales. The lines are 
 entitled, ' : The Tummel at Moulinearn," with the motto — 
 
 ". . . Numerisque 
 Lege solutis. . . ." 
 
 In answer to a query as to their authorship he wrote : — 
 " ' The Tummel ' is by your old friend, and as rough in its 
 going as the river — but that's to me a sacred region — its 
 very names to me are dear ; " then, as if he could trust 
 himself no further, breaking away to a quite foreign topic. 
 If the lines are ' rough in their going,'' they are all the 
 more truly descriptive : — 
 
 " Past runs the sunlit Tummel, 
 
 Strong from his wilds above, 
 Blue as the ' body of heaven, 1 
 
 Shot like the neck of a dove ; 
 He is fresh from the moor of Rannoch, 
 
 He has drained Loch Ericht dread, 
 And mirror'd on Cairie's waters 
 
 Ben-y-Houlach's stately head : 
 He has mourned round the graves of the Struans 
 
 Hid in the night of the wood, 
 He glides by the pleasant slope, 
 
 Where our old Dun-Alister stood. 
 
182 APPENDIX I 
 
 Schiehallion has heard him chafing 
 
 Down by his sunless steep, 
 And has watched the child of the mountains, 
 
 Deep in his loch asleep. 
 He 's awake ! and off by Bonskeid, 
 
 He has leapt his Falls with glee, 
 He has married the swirling Garry, 
 
 And they linger in Faskally." 
 
 Never was an outworn metaphor more neatly managed ; 
 dandled into freshness and neat suggestion, sparkling and 
 lively as the streams to which it adds yet another name 
 and illustration.' 
 
 I find among my papers a letter from Thackeray to Dr. 
 Brown written at the very beginning of their friendship, 
 evidently in reply to Dr. Brown's invitation that he should 
 stay with him on his approaching visit to Edinburgh, when 
 he delivered his lectures on ' The English Humorists.' Dr. 
 Brown must have good-naturedly handed it to me as 
 being like himself an early admirer of the great novelist. 
 There seems no harm in your printing it here. It is 
 sufficiently Thackerayish ; and shows the cordial relations 
 between the two men at an early period of their friend- 
 ship : — 
 
 ' Kensington, 
 October 9, 1851. 
 ' My dear Dr. Brown, — I find your letters on my return 
 home from the country, and thank you for them and your 
 kindnesses all. 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM MR. J. R. FINDLA.Y 183 
 
 ' I don't know yet whether it will be December or 
 January when I shall behold Rutland Street and my 
 friends there. I want to go to Cambridge in November if 
 the scheme is feasible, but can't move in it until the 
 vacation is over and my friends in Cambridge are returned 
 thither. 
 
 ' The gates of L'pool and Manchester are also open to 
 me, and I shall take these places either before or after 
 Edinburgh, as seems best to rny advisers. Until the men 
 are back at Cambridge, in about a week, I can't, therefore, 
 say when the Titmarsh Van will begin its career. But as 
 I don't intend to touch the proceeds of the lectures myself 
 (beyond actual travelling charges) and resolutely invest 
 all the winnings for my two girls and their poor mother, 
 I 'm bolder than I should be otherwise in the business, 
 and determined to carry it through with brazen resolu- 
 tion. 
 
 ' In order to this end you see I must work as if nothing 
 had happened, and am under stringent engagements to 
 write a novel which will come out as I sail for America. 
 Now to do this I must have my own way, my own 
 lodgings, factotum, liberty, cigar after breakfast, etc., 
 without all of which I can't work ; and the forenoon being 
 spent in study, the afternoon in healthful exercise, then 
 comes the evening when we will trouble Dr. Brown to go 
 down to the cellar for that etc., etc. You have brought 
 me into very good company in print, I dare say there are 
 good fish still in the sea. 
 
184 APPENDIX II 
 
 'With my best thanks and regards to Mrs. Brown, 
 Believe me, yours most faithfully, 
 
 ' W. M. Thackeray. 
 ' Wood shall be the man, and thank you.' 
 
 The postscript alludes to Mr. George Wood, Music- 
 seller, who took charge of the tickets, advertisements, and 
 hall for the lectures. J. R. F. 
 December 1892. 
 
 No. II 
 
 Two hundred and sixty-four years have now elapsed since 
 William Harvey published his treatise On the Circulation of 
 the Blood, and dedicated it to King Charles r., who took a 
 lively interest in that discovery ; and although Harvey was 
 derided by many in the profession and the public as 
 ' crack-brained ' during the years he was elaborating his 
 theory, and for some time after the discovery was complete 
 and given as such to the world, yet he lived to see its 
 triumph ; and ever since he has been regarded as the 
 greatest physiologist the world has produced. 
 
 Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, Vesalius, Servetus, and several 
 others, had certain vague notions as to the anatomy and 
 functions of the heart and blood-vessels ; and long before 
 Hippocrates, the Royal Preacher, Solomon, in his surpass- 
 ing wisdom, wrote in the Book of Ecclesiastes of the 
 'pitcher,' the 'fountain] the 'wheel,' and the 'cistern.' 
 
WILLIAM HARVEY 185 
 
 But it remained for Harvey, after years of patient experi- 
 mental investigation, to demonstrate the motor power of 
 the heart, and the all-round circulation ; and the glory of 
 this brilliant discovery has never since been dimmed, al- 
 though others, particularly Malpighi, perfected the physi- 
 ology of it. If Harvey had possessed a microscope, he 
 himself, in all probability, would have demonstrated the 
 transmission of arterial and venous blood in the capillary 
 circulation. The course of the circulation is now, there- 
 fore, established for ever, and the name of Harvey immor- 
 talised by it. 
 
 Dr. Brown has written regarding Harvey, when compar- 
 ing him as a representative man of science with Sydenham, 
 representing the art of medicine : — ' No man, in teaching 
 anatomy or physiology, when he comes to enounce each 
 new subordinate discovery, can fail to unfold and enhance 
 the ever-increasing renown of that keen, black-a-vised, little 
 man, with his piercing eyes, small and dark and full of spirit; 
 his compact, broad forehead, his self-contained, peremptory 
 air ; his dagger at his side and his fingers playing with 
 its hilt, to whom we owe the little book Be, Motu Cordis et 
 Sanguinis Circulatione. This primary, capital discovery, 
 which no succeeding one can supersede or obscure, he 
 would leave consummate to mankind : but he could not 
 leave the secret of his making it ; he could not transmit 
 that combination of original genius, invention, exactness, 
 perseverance, and judgment, which enabled him, and can 
 alone enable any man, to make such a permanent addition 
 
186 APPENDIX II 
 
 to the fund of scientific truth. But what fitted Harvey 
 for that which he achieved greatly unfitted him for such 
 excellence in practice as Sydenham attained. He belonged 
 to the science more than the art. His friend Aubrey says 
 of him, that " although all his profession allowed him to be 
 an excellent anatomist, I have never heard of any who ad- 
 mired his therapeutic way." ' Dr Brown adds, 'A mind of his 
 substance and metal, speculative and arbitrary moreover, 
 with a fiery temper and an extemporaneous dagger as its 
 sting, was not likely to take kindly to the details of prac- 
 tice or make a very useful family doctor.' x 
 
 The scepticism and derision which attended Harvey's 
 discovery, also his protracted investigations in regard to 
 the generation of animals, together with troubles in the 
 State and his connection with Court life, must have had 
 much to do in affecting his success as a physician. But 
 the sympathy which he met with from Royalty in respect 
 of scientific research, the turned tide of professional opin- 
 ion in respect of his merits as a physiologist, and his ad- 
 vancing years, seem to have had a mellowing influence on 
 a disposition which in youth was said to be choleric ; his 
 dagger was laid aside, and the latter part of his life was 
 spent, we are told, in acts of generosity and munificence, 
 which strongly exhibited the love he bore to his profession, 
 and the anxious desire he had to promote its future in- 
 terests. These acts were chiefly directed to the College 
 of Physicians of London, whose fellows had come to give 
 1 Hor. Sub., vol. i. ' Locke and Sydenham,' pp. 59, 60. 
 
MlNTO HOUSE SURGICAL HOSPITAL, 1829-34 187 
 
 him due honour and respect, and consisted not only in 
 building, furnishing, and stocking a fine museum, but in 
 bequeathing a sum of money to institute an annual festival 
 in the view of ' maintaining friendship and mutual love 
 in the profession.' He further desired that an oration 
 should be delivered on these occasions to commemorate 
 the example of those who had adorned the profession, and 
 so incite others ' to search out the secrets of Nature by 
 experiment.' 
 
 The Harveian Society of Edinburgh was therefore in- 
 stituted, firstly, to honour the 'immortal memory of 
 Hakvey; ' and secondly, to advance the best interests of 
 the profession. 
 
 No. Ill 
 
 The apprenticeship system, in medical teaching, which 
 existed in the Minto House Hospital clays, and which 
 came to a close soon after 1837, 1 had great advantages 
 when under masters who held office in an hospital, dis- 
 pensary, or any large institution, and when studies and 
 habits were properly supervised ; but under other cir- 
 cumstances that bond was a waste of time, and the result 
 in many instances unfavourable, even disastrous. In the 
 early course of the student's life, under such masters as 
 
 i See 'Harveian Address,' Edin. Med. Journal, May 1890, 
 p. 1054. 
 
188 APPENDIX III 
 
 Abercrombie, the Bells, Liston, Lizars, Syme, and others, 
 there was less theoretical teaching, less done by cramming 
 and more by private practical instruction and impressions 
 photographed, as it were, on the brain from sight and 
 touch. The study was thus made fascinating from its com- 
 mencement by the gradual child-like opening up of a road 
 through the gates of the senses to higher knowledge ; and 
 so by quickening the power of observation, desire was 
 created for further insight of the mysteries of life, health, 
 and disease. The tendency of this on passing the suc- 
 cessive milestones of study was to intensify interest in the 
 wonderful developments and adaptations both of the science 
 and art of medicine ; and thus it was in those early days 
 at Minto House. Mr. Syme, being a first-rate botanist, 
 chemist, anatomist, physiologist, and pathologist, as well 
 as a skilful surgeon, met and talked with his apprentices 
 in the large garret room, — the Museum of the Hospital, — 
 and turned to excellent account in demonstrations, the 
 anatomical, pathological, and surgical preparations, models, 
 and plates which he possessed. Besides, they had the 
 advantage of dissecting parts removed at operations ; of 
 conducting autopsies ; and occasionally performing surgical 
 operations on the bodies of those who died in the Hospital 
 before removal for burial. Then in the ordinary work and 
 routine of the Hospital and the Dispensary very great ad- 
 vantages were enjoyed : in the laboratory, pharmaceutical 
 and dispensing practice ; in the Hospital, experience as 
 dressers, clerks, and assistants at operations ; in the indoor 
 
PROFESSOR SYME 189 
 
 work of the Dispensary, personal experience from contact 
 with an infinite variety of medical as well as surgical disease, 
 even in the performance of the minor operations of surgery ; 
 and at patients' homes, that sort of experience which is 
 of incalculable importance to the young doctor. Besides 
 all this, the knowledge obtained from Syme's clinical and 
 systematic lectures, and assistance in consultation, tended 
 to produce that fitness for general practice which no amount 
 of cramming in the early days of study from books or 
 lectures could accomplish. Now, of course, an apprentice- 
 ship system is incompatible with the enormous boundaries 
 of medical science, and the present arrangements of our 
 educational institutions. The gradual development of 
 sound clinical teaching in the hospital — the introduction 
 of which in Scotland was greatly due to Mr. Syme ; the 
 institution of practical classes in almost all the depart- 
 ments of medical education ; and, latterly, the establish- 
 ment of laboratories for scientific research, and now a fifth 
 year added to the curriculum for clinical and practical 
 training, have effectively met the remarkable evolutionary 
 requirements of medical science and art. 1 
 
 No. IV 
 
 As years advanced Professor Syme's fame as a surgeon 
 
 and teacher was more and more widely extended. He 
 
 was not a brilliant operator like Liston, or Fergusson, or 
 
 i See Edin. Med. Journal, May 1890. 
 
f 
 
 AS . .-. ** 
 
 ' . s 
 
 F'rom Eiwrarivn 
 bu .1. Fried. 
 
PROFESSOR SYME 191 
 
 James Duncan ; but neat, cautious, sufficiently bold and 
 rapid, while safe, from his thorough knowledge of anatomy. 
 His hand too, which was remarkably fine in symmetry, 
 was strong and steady; and his self-possession and resource 
 were always equal to a difficulty or the unexpected. As 
 he was short in stature so was he laconic in speech ; his 
 publications were conspicuous for conciseness of expression; 
 in consultation he was brief from accuracy of tactus, 
 quickness of diagnosis, rapid perception of the important 
 features of a case, and the honesty and common-sense of 
 his conclusions ; and his prescriptions were also short and 
 simple in the extreme. In correspondence, too, his rule 
 was to write wide on either of two sizes of note-paper, 
 according to the importance of the matter in hand, and 
 never to turn the page unless there was some special 
 requirement to do so. Indeed he was a man of brevity 
 all round; and as some one truly said, 'He never un- 
 necessarily wasted a word, a drop of ink, or of blood ! ' 
 By some he was considered short in temper — nay, he has 
 been spoken of as irritable, quarrelsome, and cold-hearted ; 
 but those who said this could not have known him 
 intimately. That he was frequently engaged in medical 
 controversy and strife is undeniable, but these were 
 troublesome times in our profession in Edinburgh — very 
 different from the present ; and in most of the frays in 
 which he was a combatant he was either standing on 
 the defensive from assaults on himself — the outcome 
 of professional jealousy or clique. — or had the courage, 
 
192 APPENDIX IV 
 
 in cases of unprofessional conduct, 'to rush in where 
 angels feared to tread.' Those -who knew him best 
 esteemed him most. His hospitality was remarkable ; and 
 friendships once formed became attachments warm and 
 enduring. Five years apprenticed to him, twenty-two 
 years connected with him in Minto House Hospital, 
 first in its public and afterwards in its more private 
 character, and installed soon after graduation as his 
 ordinary family attendant, a period altogether extending 
 over nearly forty years, there never occurred a hitch or 
 disagreement between us. I had thus the best oppor- 
 tunities of estimating the true worth of his character, 
 seeing him in all circumstances — professional, social, and 
 domestic; in times of joy and sorrow, of sunshine and 
 clouds ; amid the fame of surgical achievements, the 
 enjoyment of worldly prosperity, as also in public and 
 private trials, and when the pleasures and activities and 
 triumphs of life came to a sudden close, and nothing 
 remained before him but the prospect of the ' dark valley ' 
 and ' the beyond.' ' As a surgeon and great operator, he 
 was ever actuated by kind and humane feelings, deeply 
 felt, although not effusively expressed. Often did I 
 witness his sympathy with suffering which he was unable 
 to relieve, and his distress in beholding the grief of others, 
 when operative measures failed to preserve the lives of 
 beloved friends. It was, too, a precept constantly im- 
 pressed by him on pupils, that it was much more creditable 
 1 His death occurred 26th June 1870. 
 
PROFESSOR SYME 193 
 
 to cure a disease by simple means than by operative 
 procedure : or, as may be stated in the words of John 
 Hunter's favourite maxim, ' Mutilation of the body is the 
 confession of a surgeon of the imperfection of his art.' 
 In regard also to vivisection, Syme strongly deprecated it 
 unless some very important point in physiology or pathology 
 was likely to be ascertained thereby; and he used to 
 abuse Majendie and other experimentalists of the period 
 for atrocities committed in haphazard, objectless research. 
 Medical men and students have been greatly slandered 
 for supposed acts of unnecessary vivisection ; it was not 
 practised at Minto House, and only on two occasions 
 during my connection with Syme did he himself vivisect. 
 These were the occasions — and I assisted him — when by 
 operating on a dog he established the interesting and im- 
 portant fact of the power of the periosteum to form new 
 osseous substance independently of assistance from the 
 bone itself. 
 
 Bold as an operator, and also as a controversialist, I 
 may also add, Syme was a man of no small pluck when 
 circumstances were trying to courage. This I had frequent 
 opportunities of observing; but it was conspicuously 
 evinced on entering on his duties in the enemies' camp, so 
 to speak, when performing his first operation in the Royal 
 Infirmary, considering the amount and kind of opposition 
 which he had for years encountered. The operation was 
 one in which for expedition and dexterity, as well as 
 ultimate success, his then antagonist Liston was justly 
 
194 APPENDIX IV 
 
 celebrated. The theatre was crowded — many medical men 
 in addition to students and the apprentices of the rival 
 surgeons being present. The first steps of the operation 
 were executed with precision and rapidity, but an unex- 
 pected difficulty occasioning a brief pause having occurred, 
 the friends of Liston and Lizars laughed while those of 
 Syme looked stern and downcast. However, after a 
 minute or two of calm examination, the operation was 
 quickly and safely completed, amid an audible expression 
 of applause. From that day Syme cut his way into 
 universal favour, and had the largest and most loyal 
 following in the wards of the Hospital. 
 
 Syme's translation to the Eoyal Infirmary on 14th May 
 1833 was doubtless of great importance to himself, the 
 profession, and the public, inasmuch as it was, in clerical 
 phraseology, ' a change to a wider field of usefulness,' 
 namely, the possession of a larger number of beds for 
 clinical instruction in connection with his professorship ; 
 but many regretted the termination of the 'Edinburgh 
 Surgical Hospital,' an institution so unique in its character, 
 so useful as a rival in medical education, and good works, 
 and which had communicated a charm and impulse to the 
 lives of many pupils ; and no one regretted it at the time 
 more than myself, as I was Resident Pupil, and had still 
 before me nearly two years of apprenticeship. 
 
MINTO HOUSE AS A MAISON DE SANT^ 195 
 
 NO. V 
 
 Although in May 1833 Minto House was closed as a Public 
 Surgical Hospital, Professor Syme, having yet nineteen 
 years' lease of the premises to run, and fifteen apprentices 
 whom he was under obligations to supervise professionally, 
 determined to continue a few beds in the House for 
 private patients, and also to maintain the public Dis- 
 pensary for the benefit of his apprentices. In this new 
 phase of the institution, its superintendence was confided 
 to me; and up to April 1834, when I was laid aside 
 with a severe attack of typhus, a large amount of active, 
 attractive, and beneficial work was carried on in both of 
 its departments. From various causes, however, after that 
 period the institution languished considerably ; and Syme, 
 feeling it financially burthensome, while unable from in- 
 creasing engagements to direct its affairs and give profes- 
 sional supervision to the remaining apprentices, entered 
 into an arrangement adopting Dr. Brown and Dr. Cornwall 
 — a former apprentice — along with myself, as medical and 
 surgical officers, while he was to be consulting surgeon 
 and operator in cases sent into the Hospital by him- 
 self or when requested by us. Accordingly on 9th 
 January 1837 the institution, with twelve beds, was 
 opened as a Private Hospital or Maison de Banti ; and the 
 Public Dispensary was continued as formerly. The ex- 
 pectation of funds to support this new institution were, 
 
196 APPENDIX V 
 
 the board of patients, the board of a resident pupil, 
 the fees of pupils for dispensary practice, and pharmacy 
 under a qualified apothecary, recognised by the medi- 
 cal authorities ; and lastly, from public subscriptions and 
 donations. 
 
 For ten years, under a board of Directors, these arrange- 
 ments were carried on with much cordiality, and very 
 great benefit to the public, and to numerous pupils ; but 
 Dr. Brown having now obtained a good footing in private 
 practice and not caring for a longer term of hospital duties, 
 while, desiring more time for the cultivation of those 
 literary tastes and aspirations which were afterwards 
 turned to such splendid account, resigned the medical 
 officership; and Dr. Cornwall, taking advantage of this 
 break in the partnership, retired at the same time. Thus 
 left, in 1847, in sole charge of the institution, I carried it 
 on, with the aid of a number of energetic pupils, until 
 1852, the closing year of Professor Syme's lease. 
 
 The termination of an institution 'so unique in character, 
 so wisely benevolent in design, and so eminently beneficent 
 in its results,' as expressed in the Directors' last report, 
 was deeply regretted by many. It was the only institution 
 of the kind in Britain having for its object the treatment 
 of diseases affecting a large class of people holding a most 
 important place in society. The Hospital received those 
 who were too independent in means and spirit to enter a 
 public charity, although not rich enough, or so conveniently 
 circumstanced as to obtain suitable attendance and other 
 
MINTO HOUSE HOSPITAL UNTIL 1852 197 
 
 needful comforts during sickness; and the Dispensary 
 afforded the means of relief to the same class, and to such 
 of the industrious poor as entertained a praiseworthy 
 dislike to rank with paupers, and who wished to con- 
 tribute a little, in proportion to their ability, towards the 
 means of obtaining relief. As evidence that in both 
 departments much good was accomplished, I have only to 
 state that in these fifteen years 1117 important cases, 
 mostly of surgical disease, were boarded and treated in the 
 Hospital; and that 59,568 patients obtained advice and 
 medicine at the Dispensary clinique or attendance at their 
 own homes. And not the least of the benefits conferred 
 during that period was the valuable instruction in the 
 practice of medicine and surgery obtained by 133 resident 
 and non-resident pupils. It only remains to be stated that 
 during the last two years of the Institution subscriptions 
 from the public were not solicited, it having become entirely 
 self-supporting, realising fully the expectation that an 
 Hospital and Dispensary can be maintained on such 
 principles.