JOHN BROWN.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 9, 15 November 1883, Page 3

JOHN BROWN.

Says the “ Yoeman ” :—" The Queen is evidently disgusting her subjects with her idolatry of John Brown. The honors she insists on paying to her faithful servant, are hardly infe« riorto what she rendered appropriately to her departed husband. Faithful and attached servants are entitled to respect and affection without worship. We doubt not that John Brown was all that could be desired as a private secretary and manager of the royal household. Sovereigns are not always fortunate in securing even faithful servants, and when they do meet with them they should value them more highly than lesser people are accus* tomed to do ; but there is an excess of memorial honors in the case of John Brown which the nation is beginning to resent. That the Queen has 1 given Mr Tennyson a commission to write some beatiful verses about John Brown,’ is rather degrading to the Laureate. We have heard of Grub street hacks, but they certainly never did anything more degrading to the ars poetica than writing verses about a Highland gillie whose merits were chiefly discernable below stairs. Poor Tennyson! To what depths he has fallen. Then Mr Theodore Martin—who may be styled the Court biographer —is to be commissioned to write John Brown’s life. Now here is a task for the Latin classic and the biographer of the ‘ Father of Kings to be,’ worthy of his position in the world of letters! John Brown’s memory can easily be made ridiculous, being loaded with honors it cannot bear. The name too, is just now suggesting a contrast not in favor of the Queen’s servant. The Great Republic has wakened up to the fact that it had a really great man in one John Brown, whose ‘ soul keeps marching on,’ and who will shortly’ have a national tribute to his memory worthy of the man and the cause in which he fell. And the contrast is rather a painful one. The Queen’s servant ought to be decently forgotten. The prominent fact in the poor fellow’s life is that on one occasion he expressed his opinion in favor of Lord Beaconsfield and against Mr Gladstone. Of course no one who knows anything about the matter supposes the Queen entertained any other feeling for John Brown than the respect and friendship justly due to one who had proved himself a faithful servant. It is a part of her nature to deify the dead friend, and hence these honours ‘ thick as autumnal leaves in Vallambrosa.’ ”