1 DARWINIANISM. 



Dr. Brown had a marvellous' power of memory, and 

 he was, almost from childhood upwards, a voracious 

 reader of the most indiscriminate material. So much so, 

 that he ran risk at times of his omniscience in so many 

 and widely different subjects being regarded " as bordering 

 on pedantry, and the interest he seemed to take in them 

 as affected." It was poetry, however, that had certainly 

 the greatest attraction for him ; his Lectures even blossom 

 and bloom with quotations from the whole circle of verse, 

 both classical and modern ; " and his common-place books 

 are filled with copious extracts from French, Italian, 

 German, Spanish poetry." To keep him at rest " during 

 a very dangerous illness before he was five, an immense 

 volume of old ballads was procured for him, and he con- 

 tinued quietly in bed till he had got the greater part of 

 them by heart." Spending his holidays at the house of 

 his uncle when a schoolboy, " he regularly read through 

 a copy of Shakespeare in it." Despite of both ballads 

 and Shakespeare, however, despite, too, of living during 

 the very fervour of the second great outburst of inspired 

 poetry in England, that, namely, on the part of the 

 Words worths, Scotts, Coleridges, Campbells, Moores, 

 Byrons, it was Pope that was for Brown (as for Byron 

 indeed), par excellence, still t/ic poet ! While in his Lec- 

 tures he has only two quotations from Shakespeare, he- 

 has no less than thirty-eight from Pope. " Pope was 

 the model whom Dr. Brown," says his biographer, " had 

 most frequently before his eye ; he often said that every 

 poet ought continually to read him." The " Imitations 

 of Horace," doubtless, are still to be enthusiastically 

 named excellent ; but I fancy most tastes, be the reason 

 where it may, are too dull nowadays to be kindled to 

 more than faint praise (still very sincere, nevertheless) 

 for Essays on Criticism, or Essays on Man, for Eloisas to 

 Aldards, or even Rapes of the Lock, His Homer keeps 



