BROWNE, William George, an eminent traveller, born at Great-Tower-Hill, London, July 25, 1768, was the son of a wine-merchant, descended from a good family in Cumberland. His constitution being weak, he was educated privately under Dr Whalley, the editor of Ben Jonson's works. At seventeen he was sent to Oriel College, Oxford; and he there went through an extensive course of classical reading. Having been left a moderate competence by his father, on leaving the university he applied himself entirely to literary pursuits. He embarked deeply in political questions, embracing with ardour the popular cause. He republished some political tracts, among which was part of Buchanan's De Jure Regni apud Scotos, and formed the plan of reprinting a regular series of such writings. But the fame of Bruce's travels, and of the first discoveries made by the African Association, determined him to become an explorer of Central Africa.
Accordingly, he left England at the close of 1791, and arrived at Alexandria in January 1792. He spent a few months in visiting Siwah, the supposed site of the temple of Jupiter Ammon; and employed the remainder of the year in examining the whole of Egypt. In the spring of 1793 he visited Suez and Sinai, and in May set out for Darfur. This was his most important journey, in which he acquired a great variety of original information. He endured much hardship, and was unable to effect his purpose of returning by Abyssinia. He did not reach Egypt till 1796; after which he spent a year in Syria, and did not arrive in London till September 1798. In 1800 he published his travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, from the year 1792 to 1798, in one volume 4to. The work was highly esteemed, and is classed by Major Rennell among the first performances of the kind; but, from the abruptness and dryness of the style, it never became very popular. In 1800 Mr Brown again left England, and spent three years in visiting Greece, some parts of Asia Minor, and Sicily. He had made some progress in preparing for the press an account of this journey, but gave up his intention, for some reason unknown, and spent some years in retirement, employed in oriental studies. Tired, however, of this inactivity, in 1812 he set out on a more extensive journey, proposing to penetrate to Samarcand, and survey the most interesting regions of Central Asia. He spent the winter in Smyrna; and in the spring of 1813 proceeded through Asia Minor and Armenia, made a short stay at Erzerum, and arrived on the first of June at Tabriz, where he met Sir Gore Ouseley. About the end of the summer of 1813 he left Tabriz for Tehran, intending to proceed thence into Tartary; but unhappily he never reached that destination. Near the banks of the Kizil-Ozan his party were attacked by banditti, and, according to the report of the survivors, Mr Browne was plundered and murdered. Suspicion attached to his companions, and even to the Persian government, but nothing occurred to confirm these surmises. Some bones, believed to be his, were afterwards found and interred near the grave of Thevenot, the celebrated French traveller.
Mr Browne was of a spare frame, rather above the middle size, of a grave and pensive cast of countenance, with an extraordinary predilection for the manners and character of the orientals: like them he was in general society silent and reserved; yet he possessed a friendly and generous disposition, and was distinguished by a strict regard to veracity.
His volume of travels in Africa has already been mentioned. Walpole, in the second volume of his Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey (4to, 1820), has published, from papers left by him, the account of his journey in 1802 through Asia Minor to Antioch and Cyprus; also Remarks written at Constantinople. No account is preserved of his last journey, except what is contained in a letter to Mr Smithson Tennant.