THE WORLD OF. BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18331, 14 March 1925, Page 13

THE WORLD OF. BOOKS.

HALF HOURS IN A LIBRARY.

lancii&LY warrant »o* "tm »»■■■.">

By A. H. Gsna-iNG.

CTV.—ON SOME LITERARY DOCTORS.

It is a complaint common to New Zealnnd that the University Medical Course is so exclusively technical as to exclude almost entirely the purely cultural side of education; vrith tiio result that the doctors of this generation will not compare with their famous forbears in their love for literature. On the other hand I number among my acquaintances medical men who are prodigious bookmen, and others with aspirations towards authorship, this showing that the race of literary doctors is not entirely extinct. Recently I listened to a sermon on "The Great Physician/' inspired doubtless bv the prevalence of infantile paralysis ; while the minister was preaching my thoughts went wandering—an unfortunate habit of mine when in church —and out of it all came the idea to make enquiry into the lives and characteristics of some of the literary doctors of past times.

I am the proud possessor of a three-volume edition of. "The Works of Sir Thomas Browne," the famous physician of Norwich, and author of the "lleligio Medici" and numerous other writings. Among literary doctors he stands preeminent. "His style," says Walter Pater, in a fine "Appreciation," "is certainly an unequal one. lb has the monumental aim which charmed, and perhaps influenced, Johnson—a dignity that can be attained only in such mental calm as follows long and learned pondering on the high subjects Browne loves to deal with. It has its garrulity, its various levels of painstaking, its mannerism, pleasant of its kind, or tolerable, together with much, to us intolerable, but of which ho was capable on a lazy summer afternoon down at Norwich. And all is so oddly mixed, showing, in its entire ignorance of self, how much he, and the sort of literature he represents, really stood in need of technique, of a formed taste in literature, of a literary architecHure."

Sir Thomas Browne was born in London on October 19th, IGOS. the year of the Gunrxwder Plot, and for hint "Cromwell is a usurper, the death of Charles an abominable murder." His father, a London merchant, bequeathed to him sufficient means to cover the expense of education at Winchester and Oxford, followed by visits to Ireland France and Italy. At the age of twentv-eiglit he became Doctor ol Medicine at Leyden, and three years later, in 1636, he set up as physiciSn at Norwich, where he remained until his death at the age of .77. Ho married Dorothy Mileham. a Norfolk lady,' who was 'beautiful, attractive and affectionate, and by whom he- had ten nhildren. In an essay on the character of Sir Thomas Browne as a writer, Wililam Hazlitt has a passage which, while it illuminates Browne, nevertheless brilliantly reflects upon. Haalitt himself: —

Sir Thomas Biowne seemed to be ">f opinion that the only business of life, was to think, and that the proper object of speculation was by darkening knowledge to breed more speculation, and "find no end in wandering mazes lost." He chose the incomprehensible and impracticable as almost the" only subject fit for a lofty and lasting contemplation, or for the. exercise of a solid faith. He cried out for an abaltitudo beyond the heights of revelation, and posed himself with apocryphal mysteries, as the pastime of his leienre hours. He pushes a question to the utmost verge of conjecture, that he may repose on the certainty of doubt; and ho removes an object to the greatest distance. from him, thivt he may take a. high and_ abstracted int»rest in it, consider it in its relation to the sum of things, not tohnnaelf, and bewilder his -understanding in the universality of its nature and the inscrut»blenoßs of its origin. . Ha » the sublime of indifference; a passion for the abstruse and imaginary. He turns the world round ta hiTliOTSMnent, as if it.waa a jWdb of paste-board.

Readers desirous of enjoying Hazhtt in his most trenchant mood may be recommended to this essay. He picks oltsome of Browne's P|*«»^ 8 > viz that he often composed a comedy In his Seen, and that he had a hand n the exertion of some old women for witchcraft. "In a word," continues Hazlitt, "his mind seemed to converse chiefly with the intelligible forms, the spectral apparitions j* thing*' he delighted m the preternatural and visionary, and he only existed at the circumference of ma nature. He had the most intense consciousness of contradictions and nonentities, and he decks them out in the wide and pedantry of words as if they were the attire of his proper person: the categories hang about his neck like the gold chain Si knighthood, and he •walks gowned' in the intricate folds and swelling drapery of daik sayings and impenetrable riddles. In illustration of his criticism Hazlitt quotes a "gorgeous passage" from Browne e "Urn Burial; or. Hydnotaphia," of

as information about the originals of the Musketeers and Milady, and the story in memoirs of the secret police, from which Dumas got the plot for "Monte Cristo."

which I may only transcribe a conpte of paragraphs:—

In Tain do individu*!s hope iot immo?' tality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon; Men hare been deceived even in their flatteries above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the Dog-Star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find that they are but like the earth; durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof besido comets and 1 new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales. And the spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton's favour would make clear conviction.

There is nothing immortal but immortality; whatever 'hath no beginning may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent beine, and within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself and the highest strain of omnipotence to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from the nower of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly slory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, Who can only destroy our Bouls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our b:dies or names, hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is bo much of chance, that the boldest expectants havo found unhappy frustration, and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape m oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid l in ashes and pompous in the grave, solemnising Nativities and £>eaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature.

Hazlitt quotes a description of Sir Thomas Browne's stylo "said to be writen in a blank leaf of his works by Mr Coleridge." The passage opens: "Sir Thomas Browne"—it is curious that both Hazlitt and Coleridge eliminate the final "e" in the name —"is among my first favourites. Rich in various knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits; contemplative, imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and hyperlatinistic: thus, I ■'might, without admixture of falsehood, doscribe T. Browne; and my description would have this fault only, that it would be equally, or almost equally, applicable to half-a-dozen other writers, from the beginning of tho reign of Elizabeth to the end of the reign of Charles the Second. He is indeed all tide; and what ho has more than all his, and peculiar to himself. 1 seem to convey to my own mind in some measure by saying, that he is a quiet and sublime enthusiast, with a strong tinge of the fantast: tho humorist constantly mingling with and flashing across the philosopher, as the dartery' colours in shot silk play upon tho main dye. In short he has brains in his head, which is all tho more interesting for a. little twist in the brains." A notable feature of Sir Thomas Browne's character, reflected in iiis writings, is pointed out by Pater: —

For Browne, in spite of his profession of boisterous doubt, lias no real difficulties, and his religion, certainly, nothing of tho character of a concession. He holds that there has never existed an atheist. Not that he is credulous; but that his religion is only the correlative of himself, his peculiar character and education, a reliarion of manifold association. For him, the wonders of religion, its supernatural events or agenoics, are almost natural facts or processes. . ..Certainly Browne has not, like Pascal, made the "great resolution," by the apprehension that it is just in the contrast of the moral world to the world with which science deals that religion finds iie proper basis. It is from tie honteleasnoss of the world which science analyses so victoriously, its dark unspirituality, wherein the soul he is conscious of seems such a stranger, that Pascal "turns again to his rest," in the conception of a world of wholly reasonable and moral agencies. For Browne, on the contrary, the light is foil, design everywhere obvious, its conclusion eaßy to draw, all small arid great things marked clearly with tie signature of the "Word." Tho adhesion, the difficult adhesion, of men such as Pascal, is an immense contribution to religions controversy; the concession again/ of a man like Addison, of great significance there. But in the adhesion of Browne, in spite of,'his crusade against "vulgar errors," there is no-real significance. The "Roligio Medici" is a contribution, not to faith but to piety; a refinement'and a correction such as piety often stands in need of; a help, not so much to religious belief in a world of doubt, as..to the. maintenance of the religious mood amid the interests of a secular calling.

From Sir Thomas Browne, whose life has been carefully sketched by Sir Edmund Gosse in the "English Men -of Letters" series; it is a sharp transition to»Dr. John Brown, author of the "Horace Subsecivae," and particularly of "Bab and His Friends." . Dr. John Brown, who used to boast that he was the fifth John Brown of his family in direct succession, was born at the Secession Manse, Biggar, on September 22nd, 1810. .He was the second child, but the eldest son of. his parents. Save to students of Scottish ecclesiastical his. Tory the significance of being born and brought up in a " Secession Manse" may not fully appear; it may be helpful, therefore, to intersperse an explanatory paragraph:—

The "Secession Churoh": was . a branch of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. It arose in 1733 by the Seoesaion of four ministers and "the greater part of their congregations from the Church of Scotland. The. Secession waa a protest against the "moderate" or rationalistic Theology prevalent at the time. The movement was greatly aided' by the opposition in many parts.of Scotland to the tyrannical use of the new law of Church Patronage. In 1847 the Secession Church united with the "Relief Synod," a similar and smaller body of Seceders; dating from 1761 to form the United .Presbyterian Church, with more than five hundred congregations. .' ■ _. , In 1900 the United' Presbyterian Church (then numbering 895 congregations)^united with the great: majority of.the Free Church of Scotland to form the United Free Church of Scotland.

This B trict Presbyterian upbringing is reflected in all Dr. John Brown's writings. As a boy he had ,the run of his father's library, and a Presbyterian minister's books in those days, included more than theoloy, embrancing much of the best in general literature. He. learned early to love Wordsworth and other poets, and since he did not go to school until he was twelve years of age, his mind had a chance to develop naturally. When his father removed to Edinburgh,. John. Brown attended the High School, when, despite his neglect of what is known as "primary" education, he was able to hold his own with other boys of his age. On leaving the High School he entered Edinburgh University, and decided without hesitation on the medical course, and was apprenticed to the famous 'Professor Syme. It was the fashion in those, days—a fashion which has now entirely ceased—to "apprentice" all young students to a practising physician or surgeon. Minto House Hospital, into which "Rab walked with that great and easy saunter of his" had been .fitted up by Professor Syme as a Surgical Hospital, and it was in his capacity there as "clerk" that John Brown received "James the Howgate Carrier, when he lifted down Ailie, his wife" at its gate. Minto House has long since been pulled down to make room for Chambers street, but the name will linger fragrantly in the memory of lovers of "Bab and His Friends." The gratitude which Dr. John Brown, felt for the training received under Professor Syme was expressed in his preface to the first edition nf "Horae Subsecivae":—

I had to apologise for bringing ia "Sub and his Friends." I did eo remembering well the good I got then as a man and a doctor. It let me see deep down into the depths of, our common nature, and feel the sting and gentle touch that we all need, and never forget, which' makes the whole world kin; and it gave me an

opportunity cf introducing, in * wa y whic . u he cannot dislike, for he know it is true, my old master and friend. Professor Syme. whose indenture I f f 30 ** 3 ™}. t° possess, and whose first wheels I in thinking my apprentice fee thirty years ago. I remember as if it were yesterday, his giving mo the dnve across the west shoulder of <*£»****• Hill. On starting, he said: John, we II do one thing at a time, and there will he no talk " I sat silent and reccing, and ™n remember the very clouds of that day »* * fc «* . M *S£?° view; Dunmvat and B«« ~ conchant at the ffate of the Hi the blue Grampi-ns. pecus, crowa ing down into the plain.

That prefaee is worth reading if only for its abundant, literary allusions. He dilates on the danger which attends "all of us nowadays, to be for ever joking," and says: "Mr Punch to whom we take off our hats, grateful for his innocent and honest fun, especially in his John Leech, leads the way; and our two great novelists, Thackeray and Dickens, wc find especially, are in the deepest and highest sense, humourists—the best, nav, indeed the almost only good thing in the latter, being his broad and wild fun; Swiveller, and the Dodger, and Sam Weller and Miggs, arc more impressive far to my taste than the melodramatic, utterly unreal Dombc'y, or his strumous and hysterical son, or than all the later dreary trash of 'Bleak House,' etc." He cites Charles Lamb as example of the evil which results to the rest of mans nature from the predominant power and cultivation of the ludicrous, a. danger enlarged upon by Sydney Smith in his "Sketches of Lectures on Moral Philosophy." Dr. Brown says of Lamb: "He started in life with all the endowments of a great, ample, and serious nature, and he, greatly from the awful shadow that haunted his life, ended in being chiefly the incomparable joker and humourist, but always and to the end, a being of 'large discourse.' "

I had hoped to say something of another literary doctor—Oliver Wendell Holnies, of immortal memory, but must leave for another occasion the author of "The Wonderful One Horse Shay," thus giving me opportunity to discuss the question whether the "Breakfast Table" books are read and appreciated to-day as they were fifty ov sixty years since. Swinburne's lines to Dr. John Brown, with its closing reference to "Rab" and "Marjorie," bring this excursion into literary doetordbm to a natural end:—

Beyond the north wind lay the land of old, Where men dwelt blithe and blameless,

clothed and fed WiTh joy's bright raiment, and with lore a

sweet bread— . , The whitest ftocli of earth's maternal fold. Nona thoro might wear about his brows

enrolled . , A light of 10-elier fame than rings your head Whoso Jovesome love of clniaren and tha

All men give thanVs for: I far off behold A dear, dead hand that links vb, and a lifrbt The blithest anC bemgnc3t of the night, The night of death's* eweet sleep, wherein

ma y be . ~ • l ■ 1.1 A star to show Tour spirit m present sight Some hat>pier island in the sea, Where Rab may lick the hand of Mkrjonc,