Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/32

 Though he was not led to take any active part in politics, he felt the liveliest interest in the great questions of the day, and his zeal for the diffusion of knowledge and of liberal opinion, was not greater than his indignation at every attempt to impede it. The most perfect toleration of all liberal opinions, and an unshackled liberty of the press, were the two subjects in which he seemed to take the most interest, and which he seemed to consider as most essential to national happiness and prosperity. In his judgment upon every political question, he was determined solely by its bearings upon the welfare of the human race; and he was very far from uniformly approving of the measures of the party to which he was generally understood to belong. Indeed, he often said, that liberty, in Scotland at least, suffered more from the Whigs than the Tories—in allusion to the departure he conceived to be sometimes made from professed principles with a view to present advantage.&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;He was intimately acquainted with the principles of almost all the fine arts, and in many of them showed that practice only was wanting to ensure perfection in his powers of execution. His acquaintance with languages was great: French, Italian, and German, he read with the same ease as English. He read also Spanish and Portuguese, though not so fluently.&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;Among the more prominent features of Dr Brown's character, may be enumerated the greatest gentleness, and kindness, and delicacy of mind, united with the noblest independence of spirit; a generous admiration of every thing affectionate or exalted in character; a manly contempt for every thing mean; a detestation for every thing that even bordered on tyranny and oppression; a truly British love of liberty, and the most ardent desire for the diffusion of knowledge, and happiness, and virtue, among mankind. In private life he was possessed of almost every quality which renders society delightful, and was indeed remarkable for nothing more than for the love of home and the happiness he shed around him there. It was ever his strongest wish to make every one who was with him happy; his exquisite delicacy of perception gave him a quick fore-feeling of whatever might be hurtful to any one; and his wit, his varied information, his classical taste, and, above all, his mild and gentlemanly manners, and his truly philosophic evenness of temper, diffused around him the purest and most refined enjoyment. Of almost universal knowledge, acquired by the most extensive reading, and by wide intercourse with the world, there was no topic of conversation to which he seemed a stranger.&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;In the philosophic love of truth, and in the patient investigation of it, Dr Brown may be pronounced as at least equal, andin subtility of intellect and powers of analysis, as superior to any metaphysician that ever existed. The predominating quality in his intellectual character was unquestionably his powei of analysing, the most necessary of all qualities to a metaphysician. It is impossible, indeed, to turn to any page in his writings that does not contain some feat of ingenuity. States of mind that had been looked upon for ages as reduced to the last degree of simplicity, and as belonging to those facts in our constitution which the most sceptical could not doubt, and the most subtile could not explain, he brought to the crucible, and evolved from their simpler elements. For the most complicated and puzzling questions that our mysterious and almost inscrutable nature presents, he found a quick and easy solution. The knot that thousands had left in despair, as too complicated for mortal hand to undo, and which others, more presumptuous, had cut in twain, he unloosed with unrivalled dexterity. The enigmas which a false philosophy had so long propounded, and which, because they were not solved, had made victims of many of the finest and most highly gifted men of our race, he at last succeeded in unriddling." Dr Brown's lectures were published after his death, in 4 volumes, 8vo, and have deservedly obtained a high reputation. An account of his life and writings has been published in one volume 8vo, by the late Rev. Dr. David Welsh.