failed to catch and keep the interest of the hearer. SMITH, WALTER C., 1882, Dr. John Brown, Good Words, vol. 23, pp. 449, 450.

Living always in Scotland, Dr. Brown was seen but rarely by his friends who resided in England. Thus, though Dr. Brown's sweetness of disposition and charm of manner, his humour, and his unfailing sympathy and encouragement, made one feel toward him as to a familiar friend, yet, of his actual life I saw but little, and have few reminiscences to contribute. One can only speak of that singular geniality of his, that temper of goodness and natural tolerance and affection, which, as Scotchmen. best know, is so rare among the Scotch. . . . 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. When you met him, he had some "good story" or some story of goodness to tell,-for both came alike to him, and his humour was as unfailing as his kindness. There was in his face a singular charm, blended, as it were, of the expressions of mirth and of patience.-LANG, ANDREW, 1883, Rab's Friend, Century Magazine, vol. 25, p. 241.

A darkish-haired man, of shorter stature than his father, with fine soft eyes, spirited movement, and very benignant manner, the husband of a singularly beautiful young wife, and greatly liked and sought after in the Edinburgh social circles in which he and she appeared. This was partly from the charm of his vivid temperament and conversation, and partly because of a reputation for literary ability that had been recently gathering round him on account of occasional semi-anonymous articles of his in newspapers and periodicals, chiefly art-criticisms.

To the end he loved his profession; to the end he practiced it; to the end there were not a few families, in and about Edinburgh, who would have no other medical attendant, if they could help it, than their dear and trusted Dr. John.-MASSON, DAVID, 1883, Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 47, pp. 282, 283.

In his medical capacity he was remarkable for his close and accurate observation of symptoms, skill and sagacity in the treatment of his cases, and conscientious at

tention to his patients. It may even be said that whatever position he may be thought to have taken in literature, he was first of all a physician thoroughly devoted to his profession, and, though not writing on strictly professional subjects, yet originally diverging into authorship on what may be called medical grounds. Naturally unambitious, it is doubtful if, with all his wide culture and enthusiastic love of literature, he would ever, but for his love of his profession, have been induced to appear before the world as an author at all. It is observable that the whole of the first volume of "Horæ Subsecivæ"-perhaps, though not the most popular, yet the most substantially valuable of the whole series— is almost exclusively devoted to subjects intimately bearing on the practice of medicine.-BROWN, J. TAYLOR, 1886, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. VII, p. 20.

I knew him first in Edinburgh, among those who loved him most dearly, because they knew him best. To know him at all was to love him much. He was one of those men whom, from the moment in which you hold their hand and look into their face, you believe, and find to be, sincere. Made to be a doctor, not only for his skill as a physician, his sympathies with suffering, his kindness to the poor, but because his very presence refreshed and cheered, there was warmth in his smile, and music in his voice, to revive the hopes of the sad.HOLE, S. REYNOLDS, 1893, Memories, p. 85.

Even as I sit, with the photograph before me, with his full-length figure holding his dog, and the memory of his presence clearly before that "inner eye," the pen still delays and hesitates in the attempt to describe him as he was. The fine skull, the tender in-seeing eyes, the firm mouth yet ready to break into fun with one of the earliest or latest Scottish anecdotes, all this we see and hear, and yet fail to portray him to those who knew him not.-FIELDS, MRS. JAMES T., 1894, A Shelf of Old Books, p. 78.

He had a very true social nature, and it was curious to observe how readily he entered into pleasant and friendly relations with anyone. If a stranger met him for the first time he seemed to have a kind of perfect tact in placing himself at once in the exactly appropriate footing with him. His way was, on being introduced, to move his spectacles up to his forehead, and some frank, cordial, original, or unexpected

smiling remark, some odd touch of humor, some pleasant reference, perhaps to something the other had done or made himself famous by, broke down at once the barrier of non-acquaintance. Peace be to the memory of a true and noble soul! Brave, frank, open-hearted, steadfast, generous, unselfish-a soul which had, perchance, in its abounding energy, over-weighted itself with too much and too many things, and failed because at last it came up against the impossible.-BROWN, JOHN TAYLOR, 1901-03, Dr. John Brown, a Biography and a Criticism, ed. Dunlop, pp. 41, 73.

GENERAL

The tone of the book, its true unsectarian liberality, its scholarly taste and feeling, and the unobtrusive and unaffected piety which breathes over its pages, are exactly what we would expect from such a culture. ... The "Horæ Subseciva" indeed not infrequently recalls the "Religio Medici;" there is the same quaintness, clear insight, genial heartiness, and recondite research.

The story of "Rab and his Friends" is a veritable gem. It is true, simple, pathetic, and touched with an antique grace which, in such vicinity, charms and surprises. If any pre-Raphaelite aspirant would learn how Doric homeliness may be united with the utmost perfection and symmetry of form, let him read this beautiful episode.SKELTON, JOHN, 1859, Professional Sectarianism, Fraser's Magazine, vol. 59, pp. 448, 450.

Will you tell Dr. John Brown that when I read an account of "Rab and his Friends" in a newspaper, I wished I had the story to read at full length; and I thought to myself the writer of "Rab" would perhaps like "Adam Bede." When you have told him this, he will understand the peculiar pleasure I had on opening the little parcel with "Rab" inside, and a kind word from Rab's friend. I have read the story twice-once aloud, and once to myself, very slowly, that I might dwell on the pictures of Rab and Ailie, and carry them about with me more distinctly. I will not say any commonplace words of admiration about what has touched me so deeply; there is no adjective of that sort left undefiled by the newspapers. The writer of "Rab" knows that I must love the grim old mastiff with the short tail and the long dewlaps-that I must have felt present at the scenes of Ailie's last trial. ELIOT, GEORGE, 1859, To John Blackwood,

Feb. 13; George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters and Journals, ed. Cross, vol. II, p. 60.

I am much obliged to you for introducing me to Dr. Brown's book, which I like very much. There is a soul in it somehow that one does not find in many books, and he seems to me a remarkably good critic, where his Scoticism doesn't come in his way. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1862, To James T. Fields, Aug. 2; Letters, ed. Norton, vol. I, p. 322.

One very obvious characteristic of these papers ["John Leech and Other Papers"] is their appearance of ease and spontaneity. They impress us as the work of one full of his subject, delighted with it, and expressing quite naturally and of necessity his delight to his readers. We can believe that they were composed with something of the rapidity with which "Rab and his Friends'' was written-between twelve and four of a summer morning, as the author tells us in one of his pleasantly garrulous prefaces, in which, in true essayist's fashion, he buttonholes his reader and talks with him as fa

miliarly as with a friend.-GRAY, J. M., 1882, John Leech and Other Papers, The Academy, vol. 21, p. 169.

He was essentially an essayist of the type of Addison and Charles Lamb, blending humour and pathos and quiet thoughtfulness, not inferior to theirs, with a power of picturesque description which neither of them had. For though city-bred like Lamb, his delight was not "in the habitable part of the earth," but in its lonely glens and by its quiet lakes, on Minchmoor, or in the Enterkin, or where Queen Mary's "baby garden" shows its box-wood border grown into trees among the grand Spanish chestnuts in the Lake of Menteith. How it was that he came to find his right vein, I cannot tell; but its first "lode" produced the touching story of Rab and Ailie and Bob Ainslie, which at once gave him a foremost rank among our English humorists.SMITH, WALTER C., 1882, Dr. John Brown, Good Words, vol. 23, p. 448.

By constitution, no less than by circumstances, Dr. John Brown was unfitted for large and continuous works, and was at home only in short occasional papers. One compensation is the spontaneity of his writings, the sense of immediate throb and impulse in each. Every paper he wrote was, as it were, a moment of himself, and

we can read his own character in the collected series. . . . These Art-criticisms of Dr. John Brown, however, are hardly criticisms in the ordinary sense. No canons of art are expounded or applied in them. All that the critic does, is to stand, as it were, before the particular picture he is criticising, a Wilkie, a Raeburn, a Turner, a Landseer, a Delaroche, a Holman Hunt, or, as it might happen, some new performance by one of his Edinburgh artist-friends, Duncan, Sir George Harvey, or Sir Noel Paton, exclaiming, "How good this is, how true, how powerful, how pathetic!" . . . His most elaborate paper of Art-criticism is that entitled "John Leech." It is thoroughout a glowing eulogium on the celebrated caricaturist, with notices of some of his best cartoons, but passing into an affectionate memoir of the man, on his own account and as the friend of Thackeray, and indeed incorporating reminiscences of Leech and Thackeray that had been supplied him by a friend of both as material for a projected Memoir of Leech on a larger scale. If not in this particular paper, at least here and there in some of the others, the query may suggest itself whether the laudation is not excessive. One asks sometimes whether the good Dr. John was not carried away by the amiable fault of supposing that what happens to be present before one of a decidedly likeable kind at any moment, especially if it be recommended by private friendship, must be the very nonsuch of its kind in the whole world. -MASSON, DAVID, 1883, Dr. John Brown, Edinburgh, Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 47, pp. 283, 288.

Three volumes of essays are all that Dr. Brown has left in the way of compositions: a light, but imperishable literary baggage. His studies are usually derived from personal experience, which he reproduced with singular geniality and simplicity, or they are drawn from the tradition of the elders, the reminiscences of long-lived Scotch people, who, themselves, had listened attentively to those who went before them. Among Dr. Brown's papers on children, that called "Pet Marjorie" holds the highest place. Perhaps certain passages are "wrote too sentimentally," as Marjorie Fleming herself remarked about the practice of many authors. But it was difficult to be perfectly composed when speaking of this fairy-like little girl, whose affection was as

warm as her humour and genius were precocious. "Infant phenomena" are seldom agreeable, but Marjorie was so humorous, so quick-tempered, so kind, that we cease to regard her as an intellectual "phenomenon." Her memory remains sweet and blossoming in its dust, like that of little Penelope Boothby, the child in the mob cap whom Sir Joshua painted, and who died very soon after she was thus made immortal.— LANG, ANDREW, 1883, Rab's Friend, Century Magazine, vol. 25, pp. 245, 246.

Dr. John Brown (born in 1810) is one of the writers whose fame greatly exceeds the amount of their productions. It is built upon a few sketches-scarcely a substantial volume among them. Indeed it may be said to rest almost exclusively upon the little brochure entitled "Rab and his Friends," by which he is known almost wherever English is spoken. The tenderness and insight of that little book,-though its hero is a dog and the attendant figures those of a homely and aged pair without any beauty but of the heart, or romance save that subdued and profound and everlasting romance which attends the footsteps of devoted love even in the humblest tracks has gained, with scarcely a dissentient voice, the interest and affection of every reader. The author had a great personal popularity wherever he went, of the same character as that gained by his book, the appreciation of all who knew him of a singularly kind and amiable nature. Of such a reputation the critic has nothing to say, books and man being equally raised above the usual measurements and balances of literary criticism. OLIPHANT, MARGARET, O. W., 1892, The Victorian Age of English Literature, p. 582.

The keenest interest in his own profession was found in close alliance with the widest literary outlook; the liveliest humour, and appreciation of it in others; a poet's and a painter's eye for the loveliness of scenery, and a deeply religious and sympathetic nature. . . . His style, imitated from no one model, is the easy, unstudied style of a good letter-writer and talker, yet rising often into a singular beauty and eloquence when some deep moral emotion possesses him. Again and again we feel that with him, as with Samuel Johnson, his wisdom was "the Wisdom of the Just." John Brown is already a classic, because he has made himself loved much. He is yet one

more witness that it matters little for an essayist what are his themes, if only the personality of the writer is delightful, and is diffused and discernible through all his work.-AINGER, ALFRED, 1896, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. v, pp. 540, 541.

Brown wrote a style of very high merit. In the miscellaneous collection of his writings, which he entitled "Horæ Subsecivæ." there is much to remind the reader of Lamb. Yet he was guiltless of imitation and the resemblance which exists because he had the same fine humour and the same sensitiveness of perception as the earlier writer. No one has written better than Brown about dogs; and his comprehension of them and his power of depicting them are seen even better in "Our Dogs" than in the famous essays on Rab, where the human figures divide the interest with the great mastiff. Brown's critical papers are few, but they show that he knew how to get at the heart of his subject.-WALKER, HUGH, 1897, The Age of Tennyson, p. 210.

Never was an author more deeply or more justly loved. His many friends recall with a peculiar softening his exquisite qualities of mind and heart-his delicate infancy and frolicsome humour, his earnest pleading for downrightness and intensity of character and life, the sweetness of his charity, his unselfish thoughtfulness for others, and his childlike freshness, simplicity and honest impulsiveness. All loved him for his sunny nature; those who knew him best were still

more endeared to him by the mysterious cross which this sweet and gentle spirit, in long intervals of gloom, was called upon to bear.-GRAHAM, RICHARD D., 1897, The Masters of Victorian Literature, p. 448.

It is difficult to characterise the "Horæ Subsecivæ" as a whole. They range over a great variety of topics, and vary not a little in tone and manner of treatment. But apart from this, there are some incidental points in them which cannot fail to strike the reader, and make him feel the charm at once of a remarkable intellect and of a very attractive personality in the writer. We discover at once that he is full of keen but quiet and measured enthusiasm, dwelling with delight on all that is beautiful and true, and best and greatest, either in human character or in inanimate nature. You recognize in him also a man of unfailing sense and intelligence, with a peculiar power of insight-a widely-read man, an accurate thinker, and possessing what I would call an original gift of style. It is curious how he throws his whole nature into his literary work-not merely his intellect, as most men do, but his tastes, his loves, his whims, his hobbies, and the pervading flavour of his humour. Perhaps I might say that the strong personal element in the book, if not to be regarded as its main characteristic, is that which first attracts the attention.-BROWN, JOHN TAYLOR, 1901-03, Dr. John Brown, a Biography and a Criticism, ed. Dunlop, p. 103.

PERSONAL

He had many stories of our dear old friend, which would have amused you, showing that he was on his death-bed what he had been throughout life, the same gro

tesque mixture of deep devotional feeling, with a levity of expression which scandalized those who did not understand him, as if, having been forced into seriousness for a minute or two, the pent-up animal spirits