DR. JOHN BROWN

[Born in 1810, at Biggar in Lanarkshire, the son of Rev. John Brown, theologian and divine, he was educated first at Biggar and later at the High School of Edinburgh. From there he passed to Edinburgh University, and entered upon the study of medicine. He graduated as M.D. in 1833, and practised his profession in Edinburgh for the remainder of his life, attaining considerable reputation for professional skill, and for general culture combined with rare charm of mind and character. Outside his profession and the circle of his acquaintance he became known to the large English-speaking race by three volumes of miscellaneous essays, the first of which appeared in 1858, which their author entitled Hora Subseciva. The contents were of the most varied character, the first volume containing the larger proportion on topics of professional interest, but comprising essays and sketches of character, which for mingled charm of style, critical acumen, and humour, are amongst the choicest products of the century. The most famous of these sketches, that bearing the name of "Rab and his Friends," appeared in the first volume, and at once attracted attention. Dr. John Brown died full of years and honours in May 1882.]

IN the summer of 1858 there appeared a volume, from an Edinburgh publishing house, in which neither the author's name nor the title-page conveyed much idea to the South British lover of the Belles Lettres. The chief title was Hora Subsecivæ, and the sub-title "Locke and Sydenham, with other occasional papers." The writer was a Scotch physician of the name of Brown, and the bulk of the volume consisted of essays on purely professional topics. There was indeed one bearing the illustrious name of Arthur Hallam, but forty years ago the name had associations less widely diffused than now. But there were two pieces of writing in the volume which would at once reveal to the searcher for new planets in the literary heaven that one of singular originality and charm had "swum into his ken."

The first in order was the preface, in which all the qualities of the writer, afterwards to become so famous and familiar, appeared in a style of their own, as fresh and picturesque and engaging as

that of Charles Lamb or Louis Stevenson. 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 lovelinesses of scenery, and a deeply religious and sympathetic nature. The other contribution to the volume was speedily to eclipse all the rest in public favour, and to be identified for the remainder of his life with the writer's name. The title "Rab" is as closely bound up with the name of its originator, as that of "Tom Brown" is and will ever be with that of the late Thomas Hughes.

"Rab and his Friends" is indeed one of those happy masterpieces which it is difficult to criticise without falling into an uncritical ecstasy of praise. "The story," so its author informs us, "is in all essentials strictly matter-of-fact." The assurance was hardly necessary. Alike in material and in workmanship, it has nothing in common with the manufacture of pathetic fiction. We have only to compare it with the "best artificial" in certain popular Scottish "annals of the poor," to feel the difference. Its charm is that of absolute fidelity to life, reflected from the rare and beautiful personality of the narrator. For it is no mere photographic transcript of a remembered incident. The most perfect art controls it throughout-shown for instance in the skill with which the personality of the dog Rab (a humorous character), who begins and ends the story, is so blended with the fortunes of the human actors as never once to strike a jarring note, or disturb the serene flow of the pathetic interest.

Dr. John Brown has been sometimes called the Charles Lamb of Scotland, and no doubt there are points inviting comparison. The unconventionality and homeliness of the subjects which prompt many of the essays: the frank egotism of their treatment, the playfulness and discursiveness of his methods, suggest Lamb. Like the sheep's-head which he has made so famous, there is ever "a fine confused feeding" to be enjoyed from him. But if he be a Scottish Elia, it is an Elia with this difference--that the moral, and even the deeply religious motive is never missing from even the most unlikely topics. The son of a famous preacher, upon whom some of his finest comments were uttered (in his "Letter to John Cairns "), he bore upon his mind and genius the ineffaceable marks of his religious childhood. There is hardly an essay to which Lamb might not have fairly applied his witty translation of Horace's phrase "properer for a sermon." But the religiousness of the

man is so part and parcel of his genius as to disarm, or rather, not even to suggest criticism. 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. Tenderness and humour: the love of children and dogs and all helpless things: the enthusiasm for all that is best in human life and character, and inability to feel scorn for any living creature-all this may seem in these days an inadequate equipment for securing a hold upon readers, and becoming a power in literature. But somehow it lives on and stimulates, when each fresh instalment of the ingenious and the recondite on hand-made paper attracts for the moment, and then passes away for ever.

A. AINGER.

HER LAST HALF CROWN

"Yes."

66

HUGH MILLER, the geologist, journalist, and man of genius, was sitting in his newspaper office late one dreary winter night. The clerks had all left, and he was preparing to go, when a quick rap came to the door. He said "Come in," and in looking towards the entrance, saw a little ragged child all wet with sleet. "Are ye Hugh Miller?” 'Mary Duff wants ye." "What does she want?" "She's deeing." Some misty recollection of the name made him at once set out, and with his well-known plaid and stick, he was soon striding after the child, who trotted through the now deserted High Street, into the Canongate. By the time he got to the Old Playhouse Close, Hugh had revived his memory of Mary Duff; a lively girl who had been bred up beside him in Cromarty. The last time he had seen her was at a brother mason's marriage, where Mary was "best maid," and he "best man." He seemed still to see her bright, young, careless face, her tidy shortgown, and her dark eyes, and to hear her bantering, merry tongue.

Down the close went the ragged little woman, and up an outside stair, Hugh keeping near her with difficulty; in the passage she held out her hand and touched him; taking it in his great palm, he felt that she wanted a thumb. Finding her way like a cat through the darkness, she opened a door, and saying, "That's her!" vanished. By the light of a dying fire he saw lying in the corner of the large empty room something like a woman's clothes, and on drawing nearer became aware of a thin pale face and two dark eyes looking keenly but helplessly up at him. The eyes were plainly Mary Duff's, though he could recognise no other feature. She wept silently, gazing steadily at him. "Are you Mary Duff?" "It's a' that's o' me, Hugh." She then tried to speak to him, something plainly of great urgency, but she couldn't;

and seeing that she was very ill, and was making herself worse, he put half-a-crown into her feverish hand, and said he would call again in the morning. He could get no information about her from the neighbours: they were surly or asleep.

When he returned next morning, the little girl met him at the stair-head, and said, "She's deid." He went in and found that it was true; there she lay, the fire out, her face placid, and the likeness to her maiden self restored. Hugh thought he would have known her now, even with those bright black eyes closed as they were, in æternum.

Seeking out a neighbour, he said he would like to bury Mary Duff, and arranged for a funeral with an undertaker in the close. Little seemed to be known of the poor outcast, except that she was a "licht," or as Solomon would have said, a 66 strange woman." "Did she drink?" "Whiles."

On the day of the funeral one or two residents in the close accompanied him to the Canongate Churchyard. He observed a decent-looking little old woman watching them, and following at a distance, though the day was wet and bitter. After the grave was filled, and he had taken off his hat, as the men finished their business by putting on and slapping the sod, he saw this old woman remaining; she came up and curtseying, said, "Ye wad ken that lass, sir?" "Yes; I knew her when she was young." The woman then burst into tears, and told Hugh that she "keepit a bit shop at the close-mooth, and Mary dealt wi' me, and aye paid reglar, and I was feared she was dead, for she had been a month awin' me half-a-crown": and then with a look and voice of awe, she told him how on the night he was sent for, and immediately after he had left she had been awakened by some one in her room; and by her bright fire-for she was a bein well-to-do body—she had seen the wasted dying creature, who came forward and said, "Wasn't it half-a-crown?" "Yes." "There it is,"

and putting it under the bolster, vanished!

Poor Mary Duff, her life had been a sad one since the day when she had stood side by side with Hugh at the wedding of their friends. Her father died not long after, and her mother supplanted her in the affections of the man to whom she had given her heart. The shock made home intolerable. She fled from it blighted and embittered, and after a life of shame and misery, crept into the corner of her room to die alone.

"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my