BROWNE, Isaac Hawkins, an ingenious English poet, born in 1705 at Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, of which place his father was 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. After taking his master's degree, he removed to Lincoln's Inn, where he applied closely to the study of the law. Not long after the commencement of his professional studies, he wrote a poem on Design and Beauty, which he addressed to his friend Highmore the painter. Here also he wrote his most popular poem, entitled The Pipe of Tobacco, in which he has given imitations of Cibber, Ambrose Philips, Thomson, Young, Pope, and Swift, who were then all living. In 1744 he married the daughter of Dr Trimnell, archdeacon of Leicester. He was elected in 1744 and again in 1748 to serve in parliament for the borough of Wenlock in Shropshire, near which place he possessed a considerable estate, left to him by his maternal grandfather. In 1754 he published his poem De Animis Immortalitate, in which, besides a judicious choice of matter and arrangement, he is thought to have shown himself a happy imitator of Lucretius and Virgil. The universal popularity of this poem produced several English translations of it; the best of which is given by Soame Jenyns, in his Miscellanies. The author intended to have added a third book, but of this he had left only a fragment. This amiable and gifted writer died, after a lingering illness, in 1760. In 1768 his son published an elegant edition of his father's poems, in large octavo.