A Latin line beneath his name
May lift along the laureate’s fame,
As on a crutch, and make it go
For half an age, for all to know
That there was one, in our time,
Who thought mere folly not a crime;
And, though he scorn’d to be a scorner
And offer Brown to Poets Corner,
Imagined it a fit proceeding
To give his life—let who will sneer at
It—“Palmam qui meruit ferat.”

Mr. John Sykes, bookseller, Johnson’s-head, Newcastle, in the “Local Records, or Historical Register of Remarkable Events,” which, in 1824, he compiled into a very interesting octavo volume, inserts the death, with some account of the “life, character, and behaviour,” of the self-celebrated poet-laureate of Durham, whose [portrait] adorns this page. He has not been registered here under the day of his decease according to Mr. Syke’s obit, but it is not fitting as regards this work, that Brown should die for ever, and therefore, from a gentleman who knew him, the reader will please to accept the following

Memoir of James Brown.

For the Every-Day Book.

This curious personage was well known for a long series of years to the inhabitants of Northumberland and Durham, and we believe few men have figured on the stage of the world more remarkable for their peculiarities and eccentricities.

Of the early part of James Brown’s life little is known that can be depended upon, but the compiler of the present article has heard him assert that he was born at Berwick-on-Tweed; if this be the case it is probable he left that town at a very early age, as in his speech none of the provincialisms of the lower order of inhabitants of Berwick could be observed, and had he resided there for any length of time, he must have imperceptibly imbibed the vulgar dialect. Certain, however, it is, that when a young man he resided in that “fashionable” part of Newcastle-upon-Tyne called “the Side,” where he kept a rag-shop, and was in the habit of attending the fairs in the neighbourhood with clothes ready-made for sale. During his residence in Newcastle his first wife died; of this person he always spoke in terms of affection, and was known long after her death, to shed tears on her being alluded to. In all probability it was owing to his loss of her that his mind became disturbed, and from an industrious tradesman he became a fanatic. A few years after her decease he married a Miss Richardson, of Durham, a respectable though a very eccentric character, and who survived him a year. This lady being possessed of a theatre, and some other little property in Durham, he removed to that city to reside.

When Brown first devoted himself to the muses is uncertain, but about thirty-three years ago, he lived in Newcastle, styled himself the poet-laureate of that place, and published a poem explanatory of a chapter in the Apocalypse, which was “adorned” with a hideous engraving of a beast with ten horns. Of this plate he always spoke in terms of rapture. We have heard that it was designed by the bard; but as Mr. B., though a poet, never laid any claim to the character of an artist, it is our belief that he had no hand in its manufacture, but that it was the work of some of those waggish friends who deceived him by their tricks, and rendered his life a pleasure. Their ingenious fictions prevented his dwelling on scenes by which his existence might have been embittered, and it is but justice to his numerous hoaxers to assert, that without their pecuniary assistance he would have often been in want of common necessaries. Though credulous he was honest; though poor he was possessed of many virtues; and while they laughed at the fancies of the visionary, they respected the man. Brown once indulged a gentleman in Durham with a sight of the drawing above alluded to, and on a loud laugh at what the poet esteemed the very perfection of terrific sublimity, Brown told him “he was no christian, or he would not deride a scriptural drawing which the angel Gabriel had approved!”

Brown’s poesy was chiefly of a serious nature, (at least it was intended to be so,) levity and satire were not his forte. Like Dante, his imagination was gloomy—he delighted to describe the torments of hell—the rattling of the chains, and the screams of the damned; the mount of Sisyphus was his Parnassus, the Styx was his Helicon, and the pale forms that flit by Lethe’s billows, the muses that inspired his lay. His poems consisted chiefly of visions, prophecies, and rhapsodies, suggested by some part of the sacred volume of the contents of which he had an astonishing recollection. When he was at the advanced age of ninety-two it was almost impossible to quote any passage of scripture to him without his remembering the book, chapter, and frequently the verse from whence it was taken. Of his poetry (though in his favourite city he has left many imitators) we cannot say any thing in praise; it had “neither rhyme nor reason,” it was such as a madman would inscribe on the walls of his cell. His song, like that of the witches in Thalaba, was “an unintelligible song” to all but the writer, on whose mind in reading it, to use the words of one of the sweetest of our modern poets, “meaning flashed like strong inspiration.” The only two lines in his works that have any thing like meaning in them are—

“When men let Satan rule their heart
They do act the devil’s part.”

Our author’s last, and as he esteemed it, his best work—his monumentum ære perennius, was a pamphlet published in Newcastle in 1820, by Preston and Heaton, at the reasonable price of one shilling; for, unlike his brother bards, Mr. Brown never published in an expensive form. He was convinced that merit would not lie hid though concealed in a pamphlet, but like Terence’s beauty, diu latere non potest, and that nonsense, though printed in quarto with the types of a Davison, would be still unnoticed and neglected. On his once being shown the quarto edition of the “White Doe,” and told that he ought to publish in a similar manner, his answer was that “none but the devil’s poets needed fine clothes!” The pamphlet above alluded to was entitled “Poems on Military Battles, Naval Victories, and other important subjects, the most extraordinary ever penned, a Thunderbolt shot from a Lion’s Bow at Satan’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Devil and the Kingdom of this World reserving themselves in darkness for the great and terrible Day of the Lord, as Jude, the servant of God, declareth: By James Brown, P. L.” This singular work was decorated with a whole length portrait of the author treading on the “devil’s books,” and blowing a trumpet to alarm sinners; it was, as we have heard him say, the work of a junior pupil of the ingenious Mr. Bewick.