28 DARWIN I ANISM. 



his Chair, and they have to be made. They are seen (or 

 heard) to rise, ever, as it were, with a certain hollow swell ; 

 but they always overbrow failure, and even exact, suddenly 

 at times, an involuntary praise. Now, as was the writing 

 of l)r. Thomas Brown, so was his speech. It was nothing 

 if not refined. His biographer expressly states, " Dr. 

 Brown's conversational style was not less correct than 

 his written discourse ; " and " even from the time he was 

 a boy, Dr. Brown was most fastidious in everything he 

 wrote." So it was, probably, that in such references, 

 there was talk of the manner of Brown " bordering on 

 pedantry." "He conceived," it seems {Life, p. 335), "that 

 every philosophical writing ought to resemble a system of 

 pyramids, each a whole in itself, and all to constitute one 

 great pyramid ! " It is this pyramidal writing, pyramidal 

 speaking youngster under twenty, that we are to suppose 

 approaching Dr. Darwin, hat in hand, to set him right. 

 And his accost is a very boyish one. He repudiates, as 

 regards Zoonomia, " disrespect to its ingenious author, by 

 whom he has been often instructed, and always de- 

 lighted ; " and exclaims of this author, " may he long 

 continue to delight, and instruct the world, and prove, 

 that, whatever influences age may have, in enfeebling the 

 body, it has little, in destroying the energies of a well- 

 regulated mind ! " (Ah, " a well-regulated mind ! " it 

 was a category then !) These are just a few words ; but 

 they are pointed as Brown points them, and may afford 

 some slight conception of the lavish way in which the 

 young man somewhat indiscriminately shakes down his 

 commas. That, really, is peculiar ! But better than 

 that, they fairly give to view the natural courtesy of the 

 young man. For, all through life, Brown was naturally 

 and essentially modest. As schoolboy, student, medical 

 practitioner, occasional lecturer, professor, he was always 

 characterised by a winning sobriety and propriety of 



