I/N regard to the younger years of Thomas Brown, it is enough to mention, that he was born at Kirkmabreck, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in January, 1778; that his father, who was minister of that place, died soon after, when the family removed to Edinburgh; that he there received the rudiments {318} of his education from his mother, that, in his seventh year, he went to London, under the protection of a maternal uncle, and attended successively schools at Camberwell, Chiswick, and Kensington, down to the time of the death of his uncle, in 1792, when he returned to Edinburgh, to reside with his mother and sisters, and begin his collegiate course in the university.He is described as a precocious child, and we can believe it.He was precocious all his life, and in every thing.We have to regret that he did not take sufficient pains to secure that the flower which blossomed so beautifully should be followed by corresponding fruit.We can credit his biographer, when he tells us that he learned the alphabet at a single lesson;but I suspect that there must have been the prompting of some theological friend preceding the reply which he gave, when he was only between four and five, to an inquiring lady, that he was seeking out the differences in the narratives of the evangelists.At school he was distinguished by the gentleness of his nature and the delicacy of his feelings; by the quickness of his parts, and particularly by the readiness of his memory; by his skill in recitation, and his love of miscellaneous reading, especially of works of imagination.Nor is it to be forgotten that he also gave promise of his genius for poetry, by verses which one of his masters got published, perhaps unfortunately for the youth, in a magazine.He read with a pencil in his hand, with which he made marks; and, in the end, he had no pleasure in reading a book which was not his own.He began his collegiate course in Edinburgh by the study of logic under Finlayson; and having, in the summer of I 793, paid a visit to Liverpool, Currie, the biographer of Burns, introduced him to the first volume of Stewart's "Elements." The following winter he attended Stewart's course of lectures, and had the courage to wait on the professor, so renowned for his academic dignity, and read to him observations on one of his theories.Mr.Stewart listened patiently, and then read to the youth a letter which he had received from M.Prevost of Geneva, containing the very same objections.This was followed by an invitation to the house of the professor, who, how ever, declined on this, as he did on all other occasions, to enter into controversy.It is but justice to Stewart to say, that he continued to take a paternal interest in the progress of his {319} pupil, till the revolt of Brown against the whole school of Reid cooled their friendship, and loosened the bonds which connected them.In 1796 he is studying law, which, however, he soon abandoned for medicine, and attended the medical classes from 1798 till 1803.At college, he received instructions from such eminent professors as Stewart, Robison, Playfair, and Black, and was stimulated by intercourse with college friends, such as Erskine, Brougham, Reddie, Leyden, Horner, Jeffrey, and Sidney Smith, -- all precocious and ambitious like himself, and who, in the "Academy of Sciences," debated on topics far beyond their years and their knowledge.
It was when Brown was at college, that Erasmus Darwin's "Zoonomia" was published.The work is filled with premature theories as to life and mind, and proceeds on the method, as Brown calls it, of " hypothetical reasoning," -- a method, Imay remark, carried still further, but with a more carefully observed body of facts to support it, by his illustrious grandson, Charles Darwin.Brown read it at the age of eighteen, was irritated by its materialistic tendency, and scribbles notes upon it; these ripen into a volume by the time he is nineteen, and were published by the time he was twenty, -- " Observations on the Zoonomia of Erasmus Darwin, M.D." Brown was an excellent physiologist for his day; but both the original work and the reply proceed on principles now regarded as antiquated.But Brown's criticism is a remarkable example of intellectual precocity.In the midst of physiological discussions, most of the metaphysical ideas which he developed in future years are to be found here in the bud.He considers the phenomena of the mind as mental states, speaks of them as "feelings," delights to trace them in their succession, and so dwells much on suggestion, and approaches towards the theory of general notions, and the theory of causation, expounded in his subsequent works.It should be added, that the book committed him prematurely to principles which he was indisposed to review in his riper years.It appears from a letter to Darwin, that, at the age of nineteen, he had a theory of mind which he is systematizing.
