Von Martins on the Life and Writings of Robert Brown. 329 



praiseworthy lie praised in plain words ; but to admire medio- 

 crityj to gather a band of hangers-on about him^ he shrank from 

 as a treason to the truth and worth of a votary of science. 

 Truly, if all naturalists were endowed with the same moral force, 

 the path of science would be smoother and less tortuous. 



Kobert Brown reverenced every created thing; he had deep 

 sympathy with all suffering, in whatever stage of creation it 

 occurred. He doubted whether man is justified in inflicting 

 physical pain in that sphere where it is the greatest evil, even 

 for the sake of truth. The liigher privilege of man, he thought, 

 was rather to mitigate the pains of body and mind. He pos- 

 sessed the moral courage energetically to succour his suffering 

 fellows. He has been known to carry help and comfort to the 

 beds of the sick and dying, for months together, even under great 

 hardships. To friends in difficulty he proved himself the most 

 considerate counsellor and helper, capable of any sacrifice. 



In this kind of self-devotion lay his greatest strength, llobert 

 Brown was no man of business or energetic office-bearer ; he 

 had neither taste nor skill for administrative work ; even from 

 the business of correspondence he, like the great mineralogist, 

 Abraham Werner, shrank into an indolence wliich he himself 

 sometimes ridiculed and sometimes lamented. His field was 

 that kind of observation which Herschel has called ^passive.' 

 To examine the object as deeply and completely as possible — to 

 study, reflect, and contemplate, in the most complete abstraction 

 from the every-day world — in this he recognized his destination. 

 He was unmarried — the last of his family — and so he sat whole 

 nights in his arm-chair, reading and thinking. In this seclusion 

 he took the most lively interest in every movement of science 

 and literature. No important publication, either in French or 

 English literature, was neglected by him. Frequent was the 

 surprise excited by the fineness and penetration of his judgment 

 on subjects scarcely imagined to be accessible to him. In his 

 remarkably powerful memory were stored up thousands of anec- 

 dotes. In regard to the history of English literature, he might 

 have been termed a living edition of D'lsraeli^s ' Curiosities of 

 Literature.^ He talked on most subjects — rarely, however, on 

 politics, never on religion. He was a great narrator, with a fund 

 of engaging humour ; and he could listen, which he did with 

 half-closed eyes, in quiet sympathetic enjoyment. 



It has been thought strange that a man of such extraordinary 

 scientific importance, to whom was offered the homage of the 

 whole world (he was one of the eight Associates of the French 

 Institute, received the honorary diploma of a Doctor of Laws 

 from the University of Oxford in 1832, and, at Humboldt^s 

 suggestion, received the Order of Merit from King Frederick 



