er, he had an unlucky belief that he was a poet.
From 1814 till 1819 he brought out yearly what he supposed to be a
poem. These productions, the _Paradise of Coquets_ and the rest, are
in the old-fashioned taste, and have long passed into oblivion.

The lectures, published posthumously, became a text-book for students,
and reached a nineteenth edition in 1851. Their faults, considered as
philosophical treatises, are palpable. They have the wordiness of
hasty composition, and the discursive rhetoric intended to catch the
attention of an indolent audience. Brown does not see that he is
insulting his hearers when he apologises for introducing logic into
lectures upon metaphysics, and indemnifies them by quotations from
Akenside and the _Essay on Man_. Brown, however, showed great
acuteness and originality. He made deviations, and took pains to mark
his deviations, from Reid, though he spoke more guardedly of his own
friend, Stewart. Stewart, who had strongly supported Brown's election,
was shocked when, on the publication of the lectures, he came to
discover that his colleague had been preaching heresy, and wrote with
obvious annoyance of Brown's hastiness and dangerous concessions to
the enemy.[468] Brown, however, impressed his contemporaries by his
ability. Sydney Smith is probably reporting the current judgment of
his own circle when he says[469] that in metaphysics Stewart was a
'humbug' compared with Brown. I certainly think that Stewart, whom I
should be sorry to call a humbug, shows less vigour and subtlety.
Brown, at any rate, impressed both the Mills, and his relation to them
is significant.

Brown's essay upon Causation indicates this relation. In this, indeed,
there is little, if any, divergence from Stewart, though he attacks
Reid with considerable asperity. He urges that Reid, while really
agreeing with Hume, affected to answer him under cover of merely
verbal distinctions.[470] The main point is simple. Hume had asserted
that all events seem to be 'entirely loose and separate,' or, in other
words, 'conjoined but never connected.' Yet he points out that, in
fact, when we have found two events to be 'conjoined,' we call one
cause and the other effect, and assume a 'necessary connection'
between them. He then asks, What is the origin of this belief, and
what, therefore, is the logical warrant for its validity? Brown
entirely accepts Hume's statement of the facts. The real meaning of
our statements is evaded b