BROWN

BROWN (Dr John), a clergyman of the church of England, and an ingenious writer, was born at Rothbury.

bury in Northumberland in November 1715. His father John Brown, was a native of Scotland, of the Browns of Colstoun near Haddington; and at the time of his son's birth was curate to Dr Thomlinson rector of Rothbury. He was afterwards collated to the vicarage of Wigton in Cumberland; to which place he carried his son, who received the first part of his education there. Thence he was removed in 1732 to the university of Cambridge, and entered of St John's college, under the tuition of Dr Tunstall. After taking the degree of bachelor of arts with great reputation (being amongst the list of wranglers, and his name at the head of the list), he returned to Wigton, and received both deacon's and priest's orders from Sir George Fleming bishop of Carlisle. Here he was appointed by the dean and chapter a minor canon and lecturer of the cathedral church. For some years he lived here in obscurity; and nothing farther is known concerning him, than that in 1739 he went to Cambridge to take his degree of master of arts. In 1745 he distinguished himself as a volunteer in the king's service, and behaved with great intrepidity at the siege of Carlisle. After the defeat of the rebels, when several of them were tried at the assizes held at Carlisle in the summer of 1746, he preached at the cathedral church of that city two excellent discourses, on the mutual connection between religious truth and civil freedom; and between superstition, tyranny, irreligion, and licentiousness.

Mr Brown's attachment to the royal cause and to the Whig party procured him the friendship of Dr O'baldeston, who was the only person that continued to be his friend through life; the peculiarities of Mr Brown's temper, or some other cause, having produced quarrels with every one else. When Dr O'baldeston was advanced to the see of Carlisle, he appointed Mr Brown to be one of his chaplains.

It was probably in the early part of his life, and during his residence at Carlisle, that Mr Brown wrote his poem intitled Honour, inscribed to the lord viscount Londsdale. Our author's next poetical production was his Essay on Satire; and which was of considerable advantage to him both in point of fame and fortune. It was addressed to Dr Warburton; to whom it was so acceptable, that he took Mr Brown into his friendship, and introduced him to Ralph Allen, Esq; of Prior Park, near Bath, who behaved to him with great generosity, and at whose house he resided for some time.

In 1751 Mr Brown published his "Essays on the Characteristics of Lord Shaftesbury, &c." dedicated to Ralph Allen, Esq. This was received with a high degree of applause, though several persons attempted to answer it. In 1754 our author was promoted by the earl of Hardwicke to the living of Great Horsecley in Essex.

In 1755, our author took the degree of doctor of divinity at Cambridge. This year he published his tragedy of Barbarossa; which, under the management of Mr Garrick, was acted with considerable applause; but when it came to be published, it was exposed to a variety of strictures and censures. This tragedy introduced our author to the acquaintance of that eminent actor; by whose favour he had a second tragedy, named Attilian, represented

at Drury-Lane play-house. This was also well received by the public; but did not become so popular as Barbarossa, nor did it preserve so long the possession of the stage.

In 1757 appeared his famous "Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times." The reception which this work met with from the public was very flattering to his vanity; no fewer than seven editions of it having been printed in little more than a year. The chief design of this performance was to show, that a vain, luxurious, and selfish effeminacy in the higher ranks of life marked the character of the age; and to point out the effects and sources of this effeminacy. Several antagonists appeared, some of whom were neither destitute of learning nor ingenuity; though Dr Brown himself asserted that Mr Wallace, a clergyman of Edinburgh, was the only candid and decent adversary that appeared against him. The testimony given by M. de Voltaire to the effect which the Estimate had on the conduct of the nation, is very honourable to Dr Brown. "When Marshal Richelieu, in 1756, (says that celebrated writer), laid siege to Port Mahon, the capital of Minorca, the British sent out admiral Byng with a strong naval force, to drive the French fleet off the island, and raise the siege. At this time there appeared a book, entitled An Estimate of the Manners of the Times; of which there was no less than five editions printed off in London in the space of three months. In this treatise the author proves that the English nation was entirely degenerated;—that it was near its ruin;—that its inhabitants were no longer so robust and hardy as in former times;—and that its soldiers had lost their courage. This work roused the sensibility of the English nation, and produced the following consequences. They attacked, almost at one and the same time all the sea coasts of France, and her possessions in Asia, Africa, and America." In 1758, our author published the second volume of his Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times; containing additional remarks on the ruling manners and principles, and on the public effects of those manners and principles. The design of this volume was, to retract such mistakes as he thought he had committed; to prove such points as were affirmed and not proved; to illustrate those particulars which were hinted, but not explained; to reply to such capital objections as had been made to his general system by preceding writers on the same subject; and to display the consequences which might be fairly deduced from his principles, and through a designed brevity were omitted in the first volume. But it unfortunately happened that the Doctor's self-opinion, which gave so much offence in his first volume, broke out in the second with still greater violence. The consequence of this was, that he exposed himself to general censure and dislike; and the prejudices against him occasioned the real excellencies of the work to be very much overlooked. The periodical critics, whom he had gone needlessly out of his way to abuse, treated him with uncommon severity; and such a multitude of antagonists rose against him, so many objections were urged upon him, by friends as well as enemies, that he seems to have been deeply impressed, and to have retired for a while into the country. From the country it was

Brown. that he wrote, in a series of letters to a noble friend, "An Explanatory Defence of the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times; being an appendix to that work, occasioned by the clamours lately raised against it among certain ranks of men."

But while Dr Brown thus distinguished himself as a political writer, he was advanced to no higher dignity in the church: nay, on some disguise, it is supposed, he resigned his living in Essex: however, in recompence, Dr Obaideston procured him the rectory of St Nicholas in Newcastle on Tyne. He would probably have received further favours from this prelate, had not the latter died soon after his promotion to the see of London.

In 1760 our author published an Additional Dialogue of the Dead, between Pericles and Arillides; being a sequel to a dialogue of lord Lyttleton's between Pericles and Cosmo. One design of this additional dialogue was to vindicate the measures of Mr Pitt, against whose administration lord Lyttleton had been supposed to have thrown out some hints. Our author's next publication, in 1763, was "The cure of Saul," a sacred ode; which was followed in the same year by "A Dissertation on the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions of Poetry and Music." This is one of the most pleasing of Dr Brown's performances, and abounds with a variety of critical discussions. A number of strictures on this piece were published; and the Doctor defended himself in a treatise intitled Remarks on some Observations on Dr Brown's Dissertations on Poetry and Music. In 1764 our author published, in octavo, "The History of the Rise and Progress of Poetry through its several Species;" which is no more than the substance given in the dissertation abovementioned. The same year Dr Brown published a volume of sermons, dedicated to his patron Dr Obaideston bishop of London; but most, if not all, of these, had been separately published, excepting the first three, which were on the subject of education. In the beginning of the year 1765, the Doctor again returned to politics, and published "Thoughts on Civil Liberty, Licentiousness, and Faction." At the conclusion of this work the author prescribed a code of education, upon which Dr Priestley made remarks at the end of his "Essay on the Course of a liberal Education for civil and active Life." The same year he published a sermon "On the Female Character and Education," preached on the 16th of May 1765, before the guardians of the asylum for deserted female orphans. His last publication was in 1766, "A Letter to the Rev. Dr Lowth, occasioned by his late Letter to the Right Rev. Author of the Divine Legation of Moses." This was occasioned by Dr Lowth's having clearly, though indirectly, pointed at Dr Brown as one of the extravagant adulators and defenders of bishop Warburton. Besides these works, Dr Brown published a poem on Liberty, and two or three anonymous pamphlets. At the end of several of his latter writings, he advertised his design of publishing "Christian Principles of Legislation," but was prevented from executing it by his death; though the work appears to have been completed.

We come now to the concluding events of our author's life; concerning which the following is the most authentic intelligence that can be procured. Whilst

Dr Dumaresq resided in Russia in the year 1765, to which he had been invited the preceding year to give his advice and assistance for the establishment and regulation of several schools which her Imperial majesty intended to erect, he received a letter from a lady of distinguished character in England, recommending to him Dr Brown as a proper correspondent on this occasion. Dr Dumaresq then wrote a letter to Dr Brown, telling him the occasion of his application, and the difficulties that occurred. He had imagined that nothing more would be wanted of him than what concerned classical learning, and a general foundation for the sciences; as that had been the common introduction to every kind of useful knowledge in the western parts of Europe. But on his arrival he found that a much more extensive scheme was required; and such as extended not only to learning properly so called, but also to matters military and naval, civil and commercial. But having stated his difficulties in executing this plan to Dr Brown, the latter propbosed a scheme still more extensive; and which was no less than a general plan of civilization throughout the whole Russian empire. In this plan, however, though it showed very enlarged ideas and great strength of mind, there were several defects which rendered it, as Dr Brown himself was afterwards convinced, impracticable. He had laid greater stress upon the support, energy, and efficacy of absolute power in princes when exerted in a good cause, than experience would warrant; and he was ready to imagine that the bulk of the Russian nation, just emerging out of barbarism, was like a tabula rasa, upon which any characters might be written. At last the Doctor's letter was laid before the empress, who was so pleased with it that she immediately invited him to Russia. He accepted the invitation, and procured his Majesty's leave to go; 1000l. were ordered for his expence, and he actually received 200l. But when he was on the point of setting out, an attack of the gout and rheumatism, to which he had been all his lifetime subject, so impaired his health, that his friends dissuaded, and at last succeeded in preventing him from going. The money was returned, excepting 97l. 6s. which had been expended in necessaries for the intended journey. But though he thus declined the journey, a long letter which he afterwards wrote to the empress, and which does honour to his abilities, shows that he had not abandoned his intention of being serviceable. The affair, however, taking in all its circumstances, did no doubt greatly agitate his mind; and his being obliged at length to give up the journey, must have been no small disappointment to a man of his sanguine expectations. This disappointment concurring with the general state of his health, and perhaps the recollection of some other failures that had happened, was followed by a dejection of spirits; in consequence of which he put an end to his life on the 23d of September 1766, in the 51st year of his age. On the morning of that day his servant came into his bed-chamber, and asked him what sort of a night he had had? to which he replied, "A pretty good one." The servant having quitted the bedside for a few minutes, heard a noise in the Doctor's throat, which he imagined to be owing to some obstruction occasioned by phlegm. Going to assist his master, he found him speechless, and bleeding profuse-

ly, having cut the jugular vein with a razor; and this he had done so effectually, that death speedily ensued. Such was the unhappy end of this ingenious writer; but the manner of it, when some previous circumstances of his life are understood, will cast no stain on his character. He had a tendency to insanity in his constitution; and, from his early life, had been subject at times to some disorder in his brain, at least to melancholy in its excess. Mrs Gilpin of Carlisle, soon after Dr Brown's decease, wrote in the following terms in a letter to a friend. "His disemper was a frenzy, to which he had by fits been long subject; to my own knowledge, above 30 years. Had it not been for Mr Farish frequently, and once for myself, the same event would have happened to him long ago. It was no premeditated purpose to him; for he abhorred the thought of self-murder; and in bitterness of soul expressed his fears to me, that one time or another some ready mischief might present itself to him, at a time when he was wholly deprived of his reason."