it of great value at some future period, to any plodder given to such researches. By far the larger portion of it, however, was biblical hosts of commentaries; the best grammars, lexicons, and concordances; with seventy-two different editions of the New Testament, and more than a hundred copies of it altogether. There are also in it rare and costly editions of works: nine editions of Thomas a Kempis; first editions-editiones principes of many foreign and English classics. The great majority of these books are in the best order-his tasteful eye liked a fine binding and one in unison with the age or the character of the book. His library was deficient in the department of the Fathers for what reason we know not. In the enumeration, in his preface to "Galatians," of commentators on the Epistle consulted by him, he quotes Chrysostom, with an English title (Oxford, 1845), and makes no mention either of the Latin Jerome or the Greek Ecumenius and Theodoret. Of this immense collection of books he had a perfect mastery; a mastery in our experience unequalled, and as the redundancy of his notes to many of his volumes testifies. This tendency to a farrago of appended notes is peculiar to some men, and seems to grow with them. They tell first what they have to say, and then what all other men have said. We do not refer to such supplementary notes as are attached to Hare's "Mission of the Comforter," or to Magee's "Dissertation on the Atonement;" but to Dr Brown's "Law of Christ," or to " Parr Spital Sermon," which last, according to Sydney Smith, had "an immeasurable mass of notes about every learned thing, every learned man, and almost every unlearned man, since the beginning of the world." In Dr Brown's volume referred to, notes are found from all sources, from Hutten and Marvell, Cartwright and Chatham, Atterbury and Clarendon, Gower and Simon Browne, King James and Lord Melbourne, Sully and Adam Smith, Chillingworth and Usher, with crowds of others far too numerous to be specified.

But we refer to a more special mastery than this ability to gather notes, which may be done from a general knowledge of the contents of a book, and by means of an index-an instrument that often produces a specious and cheap array of erudition. Dr Brown seemed to know not only where each book was, but what was in it. His visitors were usually received in his library, and it was the resort of his evening parties. As the conversation wandered from point to point, or questions were started, or the opinions of other men were doubted or canvassed, he was in the habit of taking down volume after volume, to verify, illustrate, or diversify the topics of discourse. There might be on the part of some one a reference to John Newton ; and then he would lay hold of some forgotten volume, or bound

up series of magazines, and read of Newton's quaint and humorous conversations with an aged dame, who lived by keeping poultry, and who, though very poor, yet never lost faith in God, her provider, for she felt that He would not feed His chickens, and allow His children to starve. Or he would next, if the theme were started, read one after another of numerous English and Scottish rhymed versions of the Psalms, of which he had a unique collection, and compare their beauties and merits. Or a lady might doubt the propriety of her son's going to study in Germany; and he would open for her at once one of Tholuck's most beautiful passages on the Ascension. Or some young aspirant might speak of the rich and gorgeous style of the older English philosophy; and he would immediately bring Henry More, and recite one of his Platonic paragraphs in his own emphatic style. Or the reformers and their mutual relations might be spoken of; and then would he, with a smile which so well became him, turn to Luther's apologetic Latin preface to Melanchthon, for stealing and publishing his notes on Romans, and give it with great relish. Or he would show an original copy of the Areopagitica, with what he complacently believed to be John Howe's autograph upon it. Or he might hand round for admiration some copy of an Elzevir or Foulis classic, which he had recently picked up. Or he would take some book, and give you its pedigree, tell you to what collection it had belonged, and how much it fetched at Pinelli's, Macarthy's, Heber's, or the Duke of Sussex's sales, and how it had passed from one to another, till it reached himself. Or, in fine, if his favourite studies were asked about, and editions of the New Testament lovingly inquired after, he would open with delight the first edition of Erasmus, the earliest published in 1516; then Stephen's first, the O Mirifica, in 1546; then Beza's first, in 1565, based on the third of Stephens; then the first Elzevir, in 1624; and then the second Elzevir, which called itself, Textum ab omnibus receptum, out of which mendacious statement sprang the received text. No man in Scotland was better acquainted with authors and the various editions of their works. With books out of the way he had uncommon familiarity, and when occasion came he could employ them with astonishing success. It did one's heart good to see him kindle up in this antiquarian field, for its dust did not suffocate him, and the rarity of its lore did not unduly elate him.

Dr Brown had not studied German, and knew little of modern treatises written in that marvellously flexile and expressive tongue. But for many years, up till within the last forty years, the German literati mostly wrote in Latin, and Latin was as familiar to him as English. The recent German commentaries were therefore neglected by him, even for his last work, such as Philippi

and Umbreit on Romans, two of the best of their class. But with all the divines and critics of the period succeeding the Reformation he had an intimate acquaintance,-Witsius, Deyling, Vitringa, Lampe, Marck, Calovins, Calixtus, Carpzoff, Schultens, Turretine, the elder Michaelis, the authors contained in the immense tomes of the Critici Sacri, and the accompanying Thesauri of tracts and dissertations. He was the first in this country to give an account of the New Testament edited and annotated by Koppe and his coadjutors, Heinrichs and Pott,an account which, in the form of an extract from the "Christian Monitor," has been reprinted by Horne in the various editions of his "Introduction." This mass of books was stored and valued chiefly for its connection with Scripture. For its illustration did he become a scholar, and gather large and varied erudition. He had read much, and all his reading was at his command; critics and commentators were his daily tributaries. He had many rare books, many old books, many curious and costly books, but the Bible was his book. His delight was with all helps in his power to exhibit the mind of God as found in it, so that his literary labours were all professional, and all he wrote was on the Bible or about the Bible. Its life enlivened his own composition; and even other men's opinions, when reviewed, as must be often done, by the interpreter, appear on his pages, not as a collection of dry twigs without leaves, but rather like so many fruit-bearing branches engrafted into the trunk, and partaking" of the root and fatness." wonder is, that among so many books he did not get confused. But he had a very tenacious memory, and, we believe, he would say something of the history and contents of every volume in his vast collection. So quietly did he do the work of consultation, that nobody seems to have caught him at it, even at simultaneous consultation when he was writing his expositions. No one seems to have found him with piles of opened volumes about him. The floor of his study was at no time covered with such miscellaneous litter as often lies about in other literary workshops. He had no slovenly habits; neatness and elegance characterized his book-rooms, his clothes, his handwriting, and his manuscripts.

The

As the early Manichean notions of Augustine, though formally renounced by him, seem still to mould and modify some of his latest thoughts and images, so we have often thought that some of those commentators whom Dr Brown studied in his first love of Biblical Science, exercised an unfavourable influence over him. Those interpretations which are the least to be commended, are usually found in Koppe or his co-editors. We could instance, in the Exposition of Peter, his making of

Commentary on First Peter.

41

the phrase, "sufferings of Christ" (1 Peter i. 11), mean "sufferings of the people of God till Christ should come," a notion different from that of many who yet identify Christ and His people; and in the Commentary on Galatians his reluctance in some clauses to give to the word "Spirit" its high and distinctive personal sense of the Spirit of God. From the same school he seems to have learned also his habit of transposing clauses, in order, as he thought, the better to bring out the meaning, though he sternly condemned Lowth's perpetual emendations of the text as unscholarly and unwise; for, as Gesenius has observed, there is not one of the Bishop's pressing difficulties that a more thorough knowledge of Hebrew Grammar would not have enabled him to solve. Among scholars and exegets, Storr was his special favourite. The two had much in common. Both were untrammelled and patient critics, and both bowed to the supreme and final authority of Scripture, as a Divine and infallible record. The Scottish and German minds resembled each other in the characteristic production of broad and vigorous thought. Both had a singularly full and accurate knowledge of Scripture, especially of illustrative words and clauses, their memory being stored like a volume of marginal references; but both so misled. occasionally by the application of parallels as to content themselves with a verbal connection and analysis, as if one were to trace a river, not by the sight of its water, but by the verdure and willows on its banks.

The exegetical studies begun by Dr Brown in the calm retreat of Biggar were long cultivated by him, ere he thought of publication. Many years passed by, nay, he had been fourteen years a professor, before he sent any learned work to press. But from 1848 to 1857 eleven octavo volumes were issued by him in rapid succession, besides some minor tractates; and all this when he was beyond the grand climacteric. His delight in publishing was equal to what it had been in studying. He did not live, however, to fulfil his task; and there remains among his papers a commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, a work which he sentenced "to sleep till he slept." To pass a critical and discriminative judgment on all these volumes, would carry us beyond due bounds. A few remarks, therefore, must suffice. The "Expository Discourses on the First Epistle of Peter" was the first-fruits of the coming harvest. The Epistle had for sixteen years occupied his attention in a variety of ways, while he was expounding it to his people, and it has probably on that account a great fulness of illustration. He had been preceded by Leighton, whom he used so often to call the "good Archbishop" in his course of pulpit lectures, that he did not need to name him. Leighton was a man of refined and spiritual taste and insight, with

no little of that holy tact which supplies the want of erudition. Passages occur in him of great depth and penetration, in which the beauty of the thoughts breathes itself into the style-thoughts not unlike those of Anselm and Augustine in their serene unction and ardent piety. Besides hosts of writers of the class with which he was most familiar, Steiger had also gone before Dr Brown; but his work, like many juvenile performances, is ambitious and discursive. Dr Brown's lectures have many excellencies. They are elaborate and thorough, while they are popular in form. The meaning has been anxiously sought for, and is clearly given out without the parade of learning or the technicalities of exegesis. The spirit of the inspired writer is often vividly caught and reproduced-that bold and chivalrous spirit that stamped its image on every sentiment and action. He loved the Apostle's constitutional ardour, chastened in his age by the memory of his failings. He sympathized with that sanguine spirit which, though sometimes in error as to judgment, always obeyed its first promptings without fear or reserve. He gladly followed him in his numerous allusions to the Old Testament; for, as the Apostle of the Circumcision, he unconsciously clothed his conceptions in the diction and imagery of his nation's oracles. He was not disturbed by the absence of lengthened demonstration in the Epistle, or by its apparent want of aim,—the marks of an unlettered mind; and he admired the rapid interchange of doctrine with direct and desultory precept and warning, springing out of the old and open-faced honesty of the Galilean fisherman. The commentary is marked by its sound and consecutive arguments; and if there are not many great passages standing out in relief, there is nothing flat or feeble. Though there are no heights in it, a tone of spiritual elevation pervades it. The author says, "If he has been able in any good measure to realize his own idea, grammatical and logical interpretation have been combined, and the exposition will be found at once exegetical, doctrinal, and practical." But while, from their didactic and practical nature, these volumes do not give a fair specimen of Dr Brown's critical abilities, they show his marvellous power of putting erudite statement in a plain and unlearned form, and teach us that an expositor needs not be always showing his learning while he is bringing out its results, and that Scottish lecturing, entering so deeply into the subject, and not merely skipping over the surface of the water and only now and then wetting the wing, is the most solid and instructive form of ministerial teaching. It is but right to add what is so touchingly said in the preface: "The author would probably never have thought of offering these illustrations to the world, had not a number of much respected members of his congrega