1. English History 2. Divinity and Ecclesiastical History 3. Natural History, Philosophy, and the Sciences. 4. Foreign History, Voyages and Travels 5. Poetry, Drama, and Romances 6. Biography and Biographical Dictionaries 7. Dictionaries, Grammars, &c. 8. Miscellanies-Foreign and English 9. Law-General about 155 lots. To the books in the first two classes I have already referred. The works which might be classed under the heading, controversial theology, shew their collector to have had a decided Protestant bias, while the presence of the works of Swedenborg (in latin) prove that Mr. Brown was not unmindful of the religious movements of his time. Class 3 (Natural History, Philosophy, and the Sciences) include all the great authorities on mathematics, surgery, anatomy, medicine, philosophy, and natural history. Herein are found the works of Aldrovandus, the Italian naturalist; Hippocrates and Galen, the Greek physicians; Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher; Cheselden's Anatomy of Bones; Descartes' Principia Philosophiæ; and the Historia Animalium of Conrad Gesner. Foreign History, Voyages, and Travels form a full class. All the works which, at the time when this library was formed, were standard histories, are included in this catalogue. The histories of European countries are, of course, the most numerous, but histories of Japan and the West Indies-distant lands in the eighteenth centuryare also named. Poetry, the Drama, and Romances, do not form the strongest side of this library -- still the collection is a good one. The works of Shakespeare, Dante, Beaumont and Fletcher, Chaucer, Dryden, Bandello, Spencer, and many others, go to shew the wide sympathies of the collector. The next two classes are particularly full, viz., Biographical Dictionaries, and Grammars and Dictionaries of Languages. The Law section I won't attempt to criticise, but reference should be made to the collection of Law Reports and Parliamentary Reports. (The Journals and Debates in Parliament.) In Foreign Jurisprudence one thing is noticeable, the extraordinary number of books dealing with Roman and International Law. It is only within very recent years that the English Universities. have adequately recognised the importance of the study of Roman law. At the end of the eighteenth century the number of students of Roman law must have been very limited. Brown had ideas of his own, and gathered his books from all places, and it is a splendid testimony to the ability and learning of the man that the student of Roman law in Liverpool to-day will find that many of the best books on the subject are those which once formed part of this great collection. Looking at this collection, one cannot fail to notice its omissions as well as its contents. It was essentially the library of a worker, and consequently works of the imagination are remarkable by their absence. The Greek and Latin classics-as classics are unrepresented. Where the classic writers. sics—are deal with historical subjects, copies of their works are named in the catalogue; but there is not, for instance, a copy of Homer's works, neither in the original nor in a translation. The few translations of classics in the library which were not historical, were of the kind which the booksellers classify as Facetia. In the poetical section the absence of the writings of Pope is remarkable; while another eighteenth century author, a contemporary in factDr. Johnson-is only represented by his Dictionary. Many of the volumes in this collection are interesting from a bibliographical or a typographical point of view. Many had very curious old bindings-stamped and otherwise-but none of these points appear to have interested Mr. Brown, who bought the books for their texts. At the present time many of these books have a value to us locally, because of the marks of former ownership which they bear. Amongst the Law volumes which passed to the Athenæum library, at the sale of Brown's collection, were 14 folio volumes which formed part of the loot brought away from Holyrood palace by Sir William Norris, of Speke Hall, in the year 1543. The volumes were probably bought by Brown at the dispersal of the Speke Hall library, about 1777. The 1930 lots in the sale catalogue represent nearly 10,000 volumes, and as at least 4000 vols. were folios, the problem of storing them in any private house must have been a difficult one to solve. Brown moved from Paradise Street to Fenwick Street, then to Everton, Vauxhall, and finally to Edge Hill, where he died. There is no doubt but that the desire to find suitable accommodation for his books prompted these removals. Scholars of this type are not easily prompted to remove to new houses. The presence of duplicate copies in the catalogue indicates that Mr. Brown was not always able to find what his library did contain, while the fact that the names of many volumes were written on the bottom edges shews that the lack of proper shelf-room rendered it necessary to place them on their sides or front edges. Brooke says that " Mr. Brown was like many other very learned, deep-read, and talented men, eccentric in his manners, slovenly, almost "amounting to shabbiness, in his dress, and indif"ferent to public opinion." With that description in our minds it does not require a vivid imagination to picture this old scholar living and moving in the midst of an apparent chaos that would be enough to break the heart of an ordinary housemaid, I extract from Brooke's History of Liverpool the following instance of Brown's eccentric manner: He (Brown) was, many years ago, engaged in London on some important business for the Corporation, and with a beard of full growth, dirty, and tired, probably, with researches at the Tower, he entered a barber's shop in Holborn, and sat down to be shaved, having first put on a dressing-gown belonging to the barber, ornamented with spots like a leopard's skin. The shop commanded a view into Holborn, and after Mr. Brown's face had been well lathered, and one side only of it had been cleaned with the razor, he caught a glimpse of General Gascoyne, one of the members for Liverpool, passing along the street, and Mr. Brown, after pushing aside the astonished tonsor, rushed out of the shop into Holborn, half-shaved, with the morning gown of leopard's spots floating in the air, crying out as he ran, "General Gascoyne !'' "General Gascoyne!" whilst the populace made way for Mr. Brown as if he had been a lunatic. At the time of Mr. Brown's death a rather interesting obituary notice of him appeared in Gore's Liverpool Advertiser, and with the reading of that notice I will conclude my paper : THE LATE HENRY BROWN, ESQ. During the greater part of his life he practised as an attorney in this town, and by his well-earned reputation for acuteness, learning, integrity, and application, enjoyed a most extensive and lucrative business. In the memorable contest between the Liver 2 Reprinted in the Liverpool Mercury, Oct. 25, 1822 (p. 135). pool and London Corporations respecting the liability of the citizens of London to the payment of town's duties at this port, Mr. Brown was employed by our Corporation, and it was in no small degree owing to his laborious research and indefatigable industry on that occasion, that the rights of his native town were successfully established. The management of this important cause introduced him to the acquaintance of some of the most eminent lawyers of the day, among whom were Mr. Wood, now Baron Wood; Mr. Erskine, now Lord Erskine; and Mr. Law, afterwards Lord Ellenborough, the last of whom conceived so favourable an opinion of the character and talents of Mr. Brown that he presented him with a valuable book, as a token of his regard. For many years past Mr. B. had wholly withdrawn himself from the practice of the law; but the natural activity, or, to speak more correctly, the exuberant and irrepressible energy of his mind (for his intellectual spirit quite "o'er informed his tene"ment of clay ") would never suffer him to stagnate in repose, or to consider retirement as an excuse for idleness. It will scarcely be believed, that this legal veteran still continued to study that profession, by which he had honourably earned a large independence, with as much ardour and intensity as a youth, whose whole hopes of subsistence depend upon his industry. He spared no expense in enlarging his law library, by the addition of everything valuable, not merely in the reports and treatises of our own Municipal law, but also in the voluminous pandects and digests of the civil code. Law books, in short, were his occupation and delight, both at home and abroad. Many a time have we seen him sauntering along the lanes, attended by his little dog, poring over some musty volume of jurisprudence, or arguing aloud to himself some knotty point of law. As the powers of his understanding decayed he changed his course of reading, and feasted his imagination on romances and French novels; whereupon he used jocularly to say of himself, that he was imitating the great Cato, in studying a new language in his old age. Latterly, however, his studies have been confined to the Courier and the New Times, in the Athenæum, and the frequenters of that Newsroom will not soon forget the loud vociferations and the vehement gestures with which he used to enforce his phillipics against the Radicals, and to exult in his favourite Church and King principles. Mr. Brown, we grieve to say, was one of the last of the great originals of the old school in Liverpool. He was a humourist in the true sense of the word; one who indulged the bent of his whims and humours, in fearless disregard of the conventional forms of modern society. Yet this disposition never produced in him anything akin to selfishness; he was, on the contrary, kind, warm-hearted, and feelingly alive to all the |