BROWN, Isaac Hawkins, an ingenious English poet, was born at Burton-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire, on the 21st January 1705-6, of which place his father was the minister.
He received his grammatical instruction first at Lichfield, and then at Westminster; whence, at sixteen years of age, he was removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, of which his father had been fellow. He remained there till he had taken a master of arts degree, and about 1727 settled himself in Lincoln's-inn, where he seems to have devoted more of his time to the muses than to the law. Soon after his arrival there he wrote a poem on Design and Beauty, which he addressed to Mr Highmore the painter, for whom he had a great friendship. Several other poetical pieces were written here, and particularly his Pipe of Tobacco. This piece is in imitation of Cibber, Ambrose Phillips, Thomson, Young, Pope, and Swift, who were then all living, and is reckoned one of the most pleasing and popular of his performances. In 1744 he married the daughter of Dr Trimnell, archdeacon of Leicester. He was chosen twice to serve in parliament, first in 1744, and afterwards in 1748; both times for the borough of Wenlock in Shropshire, near which place he possessed a considerable estate, which came from his maternal grandfather, Isaac Hawkins, Esq. In 1754 he published what has been deemed his capital work, De Animi Immortalitate, in two books; in which, besides a most judicious choice of matter and arrangement, he is thought to have shown himself not a servile but happy imitator of Lucretius and Virgil. The universal applause and popularity of this poem produced several English translations of it in a very short time; the best of which is that by Soame Jenyns, Esq. printed in his Miscellanies. Mr Brown intended to have added a third part, but went no farther than to leave a fragment. This excellent person died, after a lingering illness, in 1760, aged fifty-five. In 1768 Hawkins Brown, Esq. obliged the public with an elegant edition of his father's poems, in large octavo; to which is prefixed a print of the author, from a painting of Mr Highmore, engraved by Ravenet.