The author of "Rab and his Friends" scarcely needs an introduction to
American readers. By this time many have learned to agree with a writer
in the "North British Review" that "Rab" is, all things considered, the
most perfect prose narrative since Lamb's "Rosamond Gray."
A new world of doctors, clergymen, shepherds, and carriers is revealed
in the writings of this cheerful Edinburgh scholar, who always brings
genuine human feeling, strong sense, and fine genius to the composition
of his papers. Dogs he loves with an enthusiasm to be found nowhere else
in canine literature. He knows intimately all a cur means when he winks
his eye or wags his tail, so that the whole barking race,--terrier,
mastiff, spaniel, and the rest,--finds in him an affectionate and
interested friend. His genial motto seems to run thus--"I cannot
understand that morality which excludes animals from human sympathy, or
releases man from the debt and obligation he owes to them."
With the author's consent we have rejected from his two series of "Horae
Subsecivae" the articles on strictly professional subjects, and have
collected into this volume the rest of his admirable papers in that
work. The title, "Spare Hours," is also adopted with the author's
sanction.
Dr. Brown is an eminent practising physician in Edinburgh, with small
leisure for literary composition, but no one has stronger claims to be
ranked among the purest and best writers of our day.
_BOSTON, December 1861._