(1810-1882)
John Brown, the son of a secession-church minister, was born in Biggar,
Lanarkshire, Scotland, September 22d, 1810, and died in Edinburgh, May
11th, 1882. He was educated at the Edinburgh High School and at the
University, and graduated in medicine in 1833. For a time he was a
surgeon's assistant to the great Dr. Syme, the man of whom he said "he
never wasted a drop of ink or blood," and whose character he has drawn
in one of his most charming biographies. When he began to practice for
himself he gradually "got into a good connection," and his patients made
him their confidant and adviser. He was considered a fine doctor too,
for he had remarkable common-sense, and was said to be unerring in
diagnosis.
[Illustration: JOHN BROWN]
Dr. Brown did not, as is commonly believed, dislike his profession; but
later on he took a view of it which seemed non-progressive, and his
success as a writer no doubt interfered with his practice. His friend
Professor Masson draws a pleasant picture of him when he first settled
in practice, as a dark-haired man with soft, fine eyes and a benignant
manner, the husband of a singularly beautiful woman, and much liked and
sought after in the social circles of Edinburgh. This was partly owing
to the charm of his conversation, and partly to the literary reputation
he had achieved through some articles on the Academy exhibition and on
local artists. Though he had little technical training, he had an eye
for color and form, an appreciation of the artist's meaning, and an
instinct for discovering genius, as in the case of Noel Paton and David
Scott. He soon became an authority among artists, and he gave a new
impulse to national art.
He contributed largely to the North British Review. In 1855 he published
'Horæ Subsceivæ,' which contained, among medical biography and
medico-literary papers, the immortal Scotch idyl, 'Rab and his Friends.'
Up to this time the unique personality of the doctor, with its
delightful mixture of humor and sympathy, was known only to his own
circle. The appearance of 'Rab and his Friends' revealed it to the
world. Brief as it is in form, and simple in outline, Scotland has
produced nothing so full of pure, pathetic genius since Scott.
Another volume of 'Horæ Subsceivæ' appeared two years after, and some
selections from it, and others from unpublished manuscript, were printed
separately in the volume entitled 'Spare Hours.' They met with instant
and unprecedented success. In a short time ten thousand copies of
'Minchmoor' and 'James the Doorkeeper' were sold, fifteen thousand
copies of 'Pet Marjorie,' and 'Rab' had reached its fiftieth thousand.
With all this success and praise, and constantly besought by publishers
for his work, he could not be persuaded that his writings were of any
permanent value, and was reluctant to publish. In 1882 appeared a third
volume of the 'Horæ Subsceivæ,' which included all his writings. A few
weeks after its publication he died.
The Doctor's medical essays, which are replete with humor, are written
in defense of his special theory, the distinction between the active and
the speculative mind. He thought there was too much science and too
little intuitive sagacity in the world, and looked back longingly to the
old-time common-sense, which he believed modern science had driven away.
His own mind was anti-speculative, although he paid just tributes to
philosophy and science and admired their achievements. He stigmatized
the speculations of the day as the "lust of innovation." But the reader
cares little for the opinions of Dr. Brown as arguments: his subject is
of little consequence if he will but talk. By the charm of his
story-telling these dead Scotch doctors are made to live again. The
death-bed of Syme, for instance, is as pathetic as the wonderful paper
on Thackeray's death; and to-day many a heart is sore for 'Pet
Marjorie,' the ten-year-old child who died in Scotland almost a hundred
years ago.
As an essayist, Dr. Brown belongs to the followers of Addison and
Charles Lamb, and he blends humor, pathos, and quiet hopefulness with a
grave and earnest dignity. He delighted, not like Lamb "in the habitable
parts of the earth," but in the lonely moorlands and pastoral hills,
over which his silent, stalwart shepherds walked with swinging stride.
He had a keen appreciation for anything he felt to be excellent: his
usual question concerning a stranger, either in literature or life, was
"Has he wecht, sir?"--quoting Dr. Chalmers; and when he wanted to give
the highest praise, he said certain writing was "strong meat." He had a
warm enthusiasm for the work of other literary men: an artist himself,
he was quick to appreciate and seize upon the witty thing or the
excellent thing wherever he found it, and he was eager to share his
pleasure with the whole world. He reintroduced to the public Henry
Vaughn, the quaint seventeenth-century poet; he wrote a sympathetic
memoir of Arthur Hallam; he imported 'Modern Painters,' and enlightened
Edinburgh as to its merits. His art papers were what Walter Pater would
call "appreciations,"--that is to say, he dwelt upon the beauties of
what he described rather than upon the defects. What he did not admire
he left alone.
As the author of 'Rab' loved the lonely glens on Minchmoor and in the
Enterkin, or where Queen Mary's "baby garden" shows its box-row border
among the Spanish chestnuts of Lake Monteith, so he loved the Scottish
character, "bitter to the taste and sweet to the diaphragm": "Jeemes"
the beadle, with his family worship when he himself was all the family;
the old Aberdeen Jacobite people; Miss Stirling Graham of Duntrune, who
in her day bewitched Edinburgh; Rab, Ailie, and Bob Ainslie. His
characters are oddities, but are drawn without a touch of cynicism. What
an amount of playful, wayward nonsense lies between these pages, and
what depths of melancholy under the fun! Like Sir Walter, he had a great
love for dogs, and never went out unaccompanied by one or two of them.
They are the heroes of several of his sketches.
Throughout the English-speaking world, he was affectionately known as
Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh. He stood aloof from political and
ecclesiastical controversies, and was fond of telling a story to
illustrate how little reasoning went to forming partisans. A minister
catechizing a raw plowboy, after asking the first question, "Who made
you?" and getting the answer "God," asked him, "How do you know that God
made you?" After some pause and head-scratching, the reply came, "Weel,
sir, it's the clash [common talk] o' the kintry." "Ay," Brown added,
"I'm afraid that a deal of our belief is founded on just 'the clash o'
the kintry.'"
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