n," in the first
edition, with Byron's manuscript notes. Dr. Brown had a great love and
knowledge of art and of artists, from Turner to Leech; and he had very
many friends among men of letters, such as Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Thackeray.
Dr. Brown himself was a clever designer of rapid little grotesques, rough
sketches of dogs and men. One or two of them are engraved in the little
paper-covered booklets in which some of his essays were separately
published--booklets which he was used to present to people who came to
see him and who were interested in all that he did. I remember some
vivacious grotesques which he drew for one of my brothers when we were
schoolboys. These little things were carefully treasured by boys who
knew Dr. Brown, and found him friendly, and capable of sustaining a
conversation on the points of a Dandy Dinmont terrier and other mysteries
important to youth. He was a bibliophile--a taste which he inherited
from his father, who "began collecting books when he was twelve, and was
collecting to his last hours."

The last time I ever saw Dr. Brown, a year before his death, he was kind
enough to lend me one of the rarest of his treasures, "Poems," by Mr.
Ruskin. Probably Mr. Ruskin had presented the book to his old friend; in
no other way were it easy to procure writings which the author withdrew
from publication, if, indeed, they ever were, properly speaking,
published. Thus Dr. Brown was all things to all men, and to all boys. He
"had a word for every one," as poor people say, and a word to the point,
for he was as much at home with the shepherd on the hills, or with the
angler between Hollylea and Clovenfords, as with the dusty book-hunter,
or the doggy young Border yeoman, or the child who asked him to "draw her
a picture," or the friend of genius famous through all the world,
Thackeray, when he "spoke, as he seldom did, of divine things."

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. Since
Scott, these ancient ladies with wonderful memories have had no such
attentive listener or appreciative reporter as Dr. Brown. His paper
cal