Mr. Stevenson’s last letters to myself were
full of his concern for a common friend of ours, who
was very ill. Depressed himself, Mr. Stevenson
wrote to this gentleman—why should I not
mention Mr. James Payn?—with consoling
gaiety. I attributed his depression to any cause
but his own health, of which he rarely spoke.
He lamented the “ill-staged fifth act of life”;
he, at least, had no long hopeless years of diminished
force to bear.
I have known no man in whom the pre-eminently manly
virtues of kindness, courage, sympathy, generosity,
helpfulness, were more beautifully conspicuous than
in Mr. Stevenson, no man so much loved—it
is not too strong a word—by so many and
such various people. He was as unique in character
as in literary genius.
To say what ought to be said concerning Dr. John Brown,
a man should have known him well and long, and should
remember much of that old generation of Scotchmen
to whom the author of “Rab and his Friends”
belonged. But that generation has departed.
One by one these wits and scholars of the North,
these epigoni who were not, indeed, of the heroes,
but who had seen and remembered Scott and Wilson,
have passed away. Aytoun and Carlyle and Dr.
Burton, and last, Dr. Brown, are gone. Sir Theodore
Martin alone is left. In her memoir of Dr. Burton—the
historian of Scotland, and author of “The Book-hunter”—Mrs.
Burton remarks that, in her husband’s later
days, only Dr. John Brown and Professor Blackie remained
of all her husband’s ancient friends and coevals,
of all who remembered Lockhart, and Hogg, and their
times. But many are left who knew Dr. Brown
far better and more intimately than the author of this
notice. I can hardly say when I first became
acquainted with him, probably it was in my childhood.
Ever since I was a boy, certainly, I used to see
him at intervals, especially in the Christmas vacations.
But he seldom moved from Edinburgh, except in summer,
which he frequently passed in the country house of
certain friends of his, whose affection made much
of the happiness of his latest years, and whose unfailing
kindness attended him in his dying hours. Living
always in Scotland, Dr. Brown was seen but rarely
by his friends who resided in England. Thus,
though Dr. Brown’s sweetness of disposition and
charm of manner, his humour, and his unfailing sympathy
and encouragement, made one feel toward him as to
a familiar friend, yet, of his actual life I saw but
little, and have few reminiscences to contribute.
One can only speak of that singular geniality of
his, that temper of goodness and natural tolerance
and affection, which, as Scotsmen best know, is not
universal among the Scots. Our race does not
need to pray, like the mechanic in the story, that
Providence will give us “a good conceit of ourselves.”
But we must acknowledge that the Scotch temper is critical
if not captious, argumentative, inclined to look at
the seamy side of men and of their performances, and
to dwell on imperfections rather than on merits and
virtues. An example of these blemishes of the
Scotch disposition, carried to an extreme degree in
the nature of a man of genius, is offered to the world
in the writings and “Reminiscences” of
Mr. Carlyle.
