His habit of appreciativeness is seen, on the small scale, even in such a matter as his appropriation and use of pithy phrases and anecdotes picked up miscellaneously. “‘Pray, Mr. Opie, may I ask what you mix your colours with?’ said a brisk dilettante student to the great painter. ‘With brains, sir,’ was the gruff reply.” Having met this story in some Life of the painter Opie, Dr. John Brown had fastened on it, or it had adhered to him; and not only did he hang one whole paper on it, entitled _With Brains, Sir_, but he made it do duty again and again in other papers. At times when Dr. Chalmers happened to be talked to about some person not already known to him, and was told that the person was a man of ability, “Yes, but has he _wecht_, Sir, has he _wecht_?” was his common question in reply; and, as Dr. John Brown had also perceived that it is not mere cleverness that is effective in the world, and that _weight_ is the main thing, he was never tired of bringing in Dr. Chalmers’s phrase to enforce that meaning. When Dr. John wanted to praise anything of the literary kind as being of the most robust intellectual quality, not food for babes but very “strong meat” indeed, he would say “This is lions’ marrow.” As he was not a man to conceal his obligations, even for a phrase, we learn from him incidentally that he had taken the metaphor originally from this passage in one of the pieces of the English poet Prior:— “That great Achilles might employ The strength designed to ruin Troy, He dined on lions’ marrow, spread On toasts of ammunition bread.” Dr. John had a repertory of such individual phrases and aphorisms, picked up from books or conversation, which he liked to use as flavouring particles for his own text. He dealt largely also in extracts and quotations of greater length. Any bit that struck him as fine in a new book of verses, any scrap of old Scottish ballad not generally known, any interesting little poem by a friend of his own that he had seen in manuscript, or any similar thing communicated to him as not having seen the light before, was apt to be pounced upon, stamped with his _imprimatur_, and turned into service in his own papers, as motto, relevant illustration, or pleasant addition. His fondness for quotation from his favourite prose authors has already been mentioned. In fact, some of his papers are little more than patches of quotations connected by admiring comments. In such cases it is as if he said to his readers, “How nice this is, how capital! don’t you agree with me?” Sometimes you may not quite agree with him, or you may wish that he had thrown fewer quotations at you, and had said more on the subject out of his own head; but you always recognise his appreciativeness.