BROWN, Dr John, a clergyman of the church of England, and an ingenious writer, was born at Rothbury in Northumberland in November 1715. His father, John Brown, was a native of Scotland, being descended of the Browns of Colstown, near Haddington; and at the time of his son's birth he was curate to Dr Tomlinson, 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 among 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 in obscurity; and nothing further 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 Osbaldston, who was the only person that continued to be his friend through life; the peculiarities of his temper, or some other cause, having produced quarrels with every one else. When Dr Osbaldston was advanced to the see of Carlisle, he appointed Mr Brown 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 entitled Honour, inscribed to Lord Viscount Lonsdale. Our author's next poetical production was his Essay on Satire, 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 Essay on the Characteristics of Lord Shaftesbury, 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 Horlesley 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, although, 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 Athelstane, represented at Drury-Lane theatre. This was also well re-
ceived 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 well-known Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times. 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 as well as 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. 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 periodical critics, whom he had gone out of his way to abuse, treated him with uncommon severity; and such a multitude of antagonists rose against him, and 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 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.
In 1760 he published an Additional Dialogue of the Dead, between Pericles and Aristides; 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 entitled Remarks on some Observations on Dr Brown's Dissertation on Poetry and Music. In 1764 he published, in octavo, The History of the Rise and Progress of Poetry through its several Species; which is no more than the substance of the dissertation above mentioned. The same year Dr Brown published a volume of sermons, dedicated to his patron Dr Osbaldeston, 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 1766, before the guardians of the asylum for deserted female orphans. His last publication was in 1766, being a Letter to the Rev. Dr Lowth, occasioned by his late Letter to the right reverend 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 he was prevented from executing it by his unhappy death. He put a period to his life on the 23d of September 1766, in the fifty-first year of his age, by cutting the jugular vein with a razor. Such was the 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.