The Scottish Philosophy [192]
and regarded as too artificial and sentimental by an older audience, but exactly suited the tastes of youths between sixteen and twenty. A
course so eminently popular among students had not, I rather think, been delivered in any previous age in the University of Edinburgh, and has not, in a later age, been surpassed in the fervor excited by Chalmers or Wilson. In the last age you would have met, in Edinburgh and all over Scotland, with ministers and lawyers who fell into raptures when they spoke of his lectures, and assured the younger generation that in comparison with him Wilson {323} was no philosopher, and Hamilton a stiff pedant. It should be added, that, when the students attending him were asked what they had got, not a few could answer only by exclamations of admiration, "How fine!" "How beautiful!" "How ingenious!" In those large classes in the Scottish colleges which are taught exclusively by written lectures, large numbers, including the dull, the idly inclined, and the pleasure-loving, are apt to pass through without receiving much benefit, -- unless, indeed, the professor be a very systematic examiner and laborious exacter of written exercises; and this, I rather think, Brown was not. As he left the impression on his students, that there was little wisdom in the past, and that his own system was perfect, he did not create a spirit of philosophic reading such as Hamilton evoked in select minds in a later age. But all felt the -- low of his spirit, had a fine literary taste awakened by his poetical bursts, had their acuteness sharpened by his fine analysis, went away with a high idea of the spirituality of the soul, and retained through life a lively recollection of his sketches of the operations of the human mind. This, I venture to affirm, is a more wholesome result than what was substituted for psychology in the succeeding age, -- discussions derived from Germany or demonstrated idealisms spun out by an exercise of human ingenuity.
His biographer tells us that, on his appointment to the chair, he had retired into the country in order that fresh air and exercise might strengthen him for his labors, and that, when the session opened, he had only the few lectures of the previous winters; but such was the fervor of his genius and the readiness of his pen, that he generally commenced the composition of a lecture after tea and had it ready for delivery next day by noon, and that nearly the whole of the lectures contained in the first three of the four-volumed edition were written the first year of his professorship, and the whole of the remaining next session. Nor does he appear to have rewritten any portion of them, or to have been disposed to review his judgments, or make up what was defective in his philosophic reading. He seems to have wasted his life in sending forth volume after volume of poetry, which is, doubtless, beautifully and artistically composed, after the model of the English poets of the eighteenth century, but its pictures are without individuality, and {324} they fail to call forth hearty feeling. Far more genuine poetical power comes out incidentally in some of the bursts in his philosophic lectures than in whole volumes of his elaborate versification.
The incidents of his remaining life are few, but are sufficient to bring out the lineaments of his character. His chief enjoyments lay in his study, in taking a quiet walk in some solitary place, where he would watch the smoke curling from a cottage chimney, or the dew illuminated with sunshine on the grass, and in the society of his family and a few friends. Never had a mother a more devoted son, or sisters a more affectionate brother. In his disposition there is great gentleness, with a tendency to sentimentality: -- thus, on the occasion of his last visit to his native place, he is thrown into a flood of sensibility, which, when it is related in future years to Chalmers, on his happening to be in the place, the sturdier Scotch divine was thrown into a fit of merriment. We perceive that he is fond of fame and sensitive
course so eminently popular among students had not, I rather think, been delivered in any previous age in the University of Edinburgh, and has not, in a later age, been surpassed in the fervor excited by Chalmers or Wilson. In the last age you would have met, in Edinburgh and all over Scotland, with ministers and lawyers who fell into raptures when they spoke of his lectures, and assured the younger generation that in comparison with him Wilson {323} was no philosopher, and Hamilton a stiff pedant. It should be added, that, when the students attending him were asked what they had got, not a few could answer only by exclamations of admiration, "How fine!" "How beautiful!" "How ingenious!" In those large classes in the Scottish colleges which are taught exclusively by written lectures, large numbers, including the dull, the idly inclined, and the pleasure-loving, are apt to pass through without receiving much benefit, -- unless, indeed, the professor be a very systematic examiner and laborious exacter of written exercises; and this, I rather think, Brown was not. As he left the impression on his students, that there was little wisdom in the past, and that his own system was perfect, he did not create a spirit of philosophic reading such as Hamilton evoked in select minds in a later age. But all felt the -- low of his spirit, had a fine literary taste awakened by his poetical bursts, had their acuteness sharpened by his fine analysis, went away with a high idea of the spirituality of the soul, and retained through life a lively recollection of his sketches of the operations of the human mind. This, I venture to affirm, is a more wholesome result than what was substituted for psychology in the succeeding age, -- discussions derived from Germany or demonstrated idealisms spun out by an exercise of human ingenuity.
His biographer tells us that, on his appointment to the chair, he had retired into the country in order that fresh air and exercise might strengthen him for his labors, and that, when the session opened, he had only the few lectures of the previous winters; but such was the fervor of his genius and the readiness of his pen, that he generally commenced the composition of a lecture after tea and had it ready for delivery next day by noon, and that nearly the whole of the lectures contained in the first three of the four-volumed edition were written the first year of his professorship, and the whole of the remaining next session. Nor does he appear to have rewritten any portion of them, or to have been disposed to review his judgments, or make up what was defective in his philosophic reading. He seems to have wasted his life in sending forth volume after volume of poetry, which is, doubtless, beautifully and artistically composed, after the model of the English poets of the eighteenth century, but its pictures are without individuality, and {324} they fail to call forth hearty feeling. Far more genuine poetical power comes out incidentally in some of the bursts in his philosophic lectures than in whole volumes of his elaborate versification.
The incidents of his remaining life are few, but are sufficient to bring out the lineaments of his character. His chief enjoyments lay in his study, in taking a quiet walk in some solitary place, where he would watch the smoke curling from a cottage chimney, or the dew illuminated with sunshine on the grass, and in the society of his family and a few friends. Never had a mother a more devoted son, or sisters a more affectionate brother. In his disposition there is great gentleness, with a tendency to sentimentality: -- thus, on the occasion of his last visit to his native place, he is thrown into a flood of sensibility, which, when it is related in future years to Chalmers, on his happening to be in the place, the sturdier Scotch divine was thrown into a fit of merriment. We perceive that he is fond of fame and sensitive