He was by that time over seventy years of age, and, though none guessed
it, within a few weeks of his death. What he might have done, had he
given himself to literature only, it is impossible to guess. But he
caused so much happiness, and did so much good, in that gentle profession
of healing which he chose, and which brought him near to many who needed
consolation more than physic, that we need not forget his deliberate
choice. Literature had only his _horae subsecivae_, as he said:
_Subseciva quaedam tempora quae ego perire non patior_, as Cicero writes,
"shreds and waste ends of time, which I suffer not to be lost."
The kind of life which Dr. Brown's father and his people lived at Biggar,
the austere life of work, and of thought intensely bent on the real aim
of existence, on God, on the destiny of the soul, is perhaps rare now,
even in rural Scotland. We are less obedient than of old to the motto of
that ring found on Magus Moor, where Archbishop Shairp was murdered,
_Remember upon Dethe_. If any reader has not yet made the acquaintance
of Dr. Brown's works, one might counsel him to begin with the "Letter to
John Cairns, D.D.," the fragment of biography and autobiography, the
description of the fountainheads from which the genius of the author
flowed. In his early boyhood, John Brown was educated by his father, a
man who, from his son's affectionate description, seems to have confined
a fiery and romantic genius within the channels of Seceder and Burgher
theology.
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