



Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





                           _HORAE SUBSECIVAE._


    "_A lady, resident in Devonshire, going into one of her parlors,
    discovered a young ass, who had found his way into the room, and
    carefully closed the door upon himself. He had evidently not
    been long in this situation before he had nibbled a part of
    Cicero's Orations, and eaten nearly all the index of a folio
    edition of Seneca in Latin, a large part of a volume of La
    Bruyere's Maxims in French, and several pages of Cecilia. He
    had done no other mischief whatever, and not a vestige remained
    of the leaves that he had devoured._"--PIERCE EGAN.

    "_The treatment of the illustrious dead by the quick, often
    reminds me of the gravedigger in Hamlet, and the skull of poor
    defunct Yorick._"--W. H. B.

    "_Multi ad sapientiam pervenire potuissent, nisi se jam
    pervenisse putassent._"

    "_There's nothing so amusing as human nature, but then you must
    have some one to laugh with._"




                              SPARE HOURS



                          BY JOHN BROWN, M. D.



    If thou be a severe sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow
    thee to be a competent judge.--IZAAK WALTON



                                 BOSTON
                           TICKNOR AND FIELDS
                                  1864



       Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by
                          TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
          In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the
                       District of Massachusetts



                         RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
               STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON




NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.


The author of "Rab and his Friends" scarcely needs an introduction to
American readers. By this time many have learned to agree with a writer
in the "North British Review" that "Rab" is, all things considered, the
most perfect prose narrative since Lamb's "Rosamond Gray."

A new world of doctors, clergymen, shepherds, and carriers is revealed
in the writings of this cheerful Edinburgh scholar, who always brings
genuine human feeling, strong sense, and fine genius to the composition
of his papers. Dogs he loves with an enthusiasm to be found nowhere else
in canine literature. He knows intimately all a cur means when he winks
his eye or wags his tail, so that the whole barking race,--terrier,
mastiff, spaniel, and the rest,--finds in him an affectionate and
interested friend. His genial motto seems to run thus--"I cannot
understand that morality which excludes animals from human sympathy, or
releases man from the debt and obligation he owes to them."

With the author's consent we have rejected from his two series of "Horae
Subsecivae" the articles on strictly professional subjects, and have
collected into this volume the rest of his admirable papers in that
work. The title, "Spare Hours," is also adopted with the author's
sanction.

Dr. Brown is an eminent practising physician in Edinburgh, with small
leisure for literary composition, but no one has stronger claims to be
ranked among the purest and best writers of our day.

_BOSTON, December 1861._




CONTENTS.


  RAB AND HIS FRIENDS
  "WITH BRAINS, SIR"
  THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN
  HER LAST HALF-CROWN
  OUR DOGS
  QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN
  PRESENCE OF MIND AND HAPPY GUESSING
  MY FATHER'S MEMOIR
  MYSTIFICATIONS
  "OH, I'M WAT, WAT!"
  ARTHUR H. HALLAM
  EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES
  VAUGHAN'S POEMS
  DR. CHALMERS
  DR. GEORGE WILSON
  ST. PAUL'S THORN IN THE FLESH
  THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES
  NOTES ON ART




AUTHOR'S PREFACE.


In that delightful and provoking book, "THE DOCTOR, &c.," Southey says:
"'Prefaces,' said Charles Blount, Gent., 'Prefaces,' according to this
flippant, ill-opinioned, and unhappy man, 'ever were, and still are, but
of two sorts, let the mode and fashions vary as they please,--let the
long peruke succeed the godly cropt hair; the cravat, the ruff;
presbytery, popery; and popery, presbytery again,--yet still the author
keeps to his old and wonted method of prefacing; when at the beginning
of his book he enters, either with a halter round his neck, submitting
himself to his readers' mercy whether he shall be hanged or no, or else,
in a huffing manner, he appears with the halter in his hand, and
threatens to hang his reader, if he gives him not his good word. This,
with the excitement of friends to his undertaking, and some few
apologies for the want of time, books, and the like, are the constant
and usual shams of all scribblers, ancient and modern.' This was not
true then," says Southey, "nor is it now." I differ from Southey, in
thinking there is some truth in both ways of wearing the halter. For
though it be neither manly nor honest to affect a voluntary humility
(which is after all, a sneaking vanity, and would soon show itself if
taken at its word), any more than it is well-bred, or seemly to put on
(for it generally is put on) the "huffing manner," both such being truly
"shams,"--there is general truth in Mr. Blount's flippancies.

Every man should know and lament (to himself) his own
shortcomings--should mourn over and mend, as he best can