Edward, eldest son of Sir Thomas Browne, was physician to Charles II, and president of the Royal College of Physicians of London. He was born in 1644; and studied at Cambridge, and afterwards at Merton College, Oxford. He published a brief account of his travels in Hungary, Servia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Friuli; and likewise an account of several journeys through a great part of Germany. Browne also contributed some translations to an edition of Plutarch's Lives. He was acquainted with Hebrew, was a good Greek scholar, and no man of his age wrote better Latin, High Dutch, Italian, French, and other modern languages, were as familiar to him as his mother tongue. Charles II said of him, "that he was as learned as any of the college, and as well bred as any at court." He died in 1708.

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 Gibber, Ambrose Philips, Thomson, Young, Pope, and Swift, who were then all living. In 1744 he married the daughter of Dr Trimmell, 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.

James, LL.D., a learned and indefatigable man of letters, and for many years sub-editor of the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, was born at Coupar Angus in 1793. He was educated at Edinburgh, and afterwards removed to St Andrews, where he studied for the church. He wrote "The History of Edinburgh" for Ewbank's Picturesque Views of that city, 2 vols. 1823-25; in 1826, became a member of the faculty of advocates, and obtained the degree of LL.D. from King's College, Aberdeen; and in this same year he published a "Critical Examination of Macculloch's work on the Highlands and Islands of Scotland." In 1827 he published at Paris his Aperçu sur les Hieroglyphes d'Egypte; and in the following year there appeared his "Vindication of the Scottish Bar from the attacks of Mr Brougham." He was now appointed editor of the Caledonian Mercury; and two years later he became sub-editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which he contributed a large number of valuable articles. He also published in 1838 a "History of the Highlands and Highland Clans," 4 vols. 8vo, of which various editions have since appeared. His mental activity was remarkable, and frequently urged him to exertions beyond his strength. His unremitting labours at last brought on a stroke of apoplexy, which terminated his existence in 1841.

Sir Thomas, an eminent physician and celebrated writer, descended of an ancient family in Cheshire, was born at London, October 19, 1605. After studying at Winchester School, and at Pembroke College, Oxford, he travelled through France and Italy; and returning through Holland, he took his degree of M.D. at Leyden. He began to practise at Shipden-hall near Halifax; but removed in 1636 to Norwich, where he was extensively employed in his profession. In the following year he was incorporated as a doctor of medicine at Oxford; and in 1641 he mar- Browne, a lady of a good family in Norfolk. His famous work, entitled *Religio Medici*, first appeared in 1642. It was translated into Latin, and immediately procured for the author a European reputation. It was afterwards translated into almost every language in Europe. This singular work has been censured by some as inclining to infidelity, and even to atheism; while others, with better judgment, have applauded its religious tendency, as well as the ability and learning of the author. His well-known Treatise on Vulgar Errors, entitled *Pseudodoxia Epidemica*, was first published in 1646, and was received with equal applause. He also wrote a work called *Hydriotaphia, or a Discourse of Sepulchral Urns found in Norfolk*, which appeared in 1658.

Browne's reputation as a physician, also, was very high. In 1664 he was elected an honorary member of the Royal College of Physicians; and in 1671 he was knighted at Norwich by Charles II. He died at Norwich, on the anniversary of his birthday, in 1682, and left a considerable number of MSS., which were published under the title of "The Posthumous Works of the learned Sir Thomas Browne, Knt., M.D."

Browne's style has been characterized as vigorous but rugged, learned but pedantic. "It is not on the praises of others," Dr Johnson remarks, "but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity, of which he will not easily be deprived while learning shall have any reverence among men; for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill, and scarce any kind of knowledge, sacred or profane, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success. His exuberance of knowledge and plenitude of ideas sometimes obstruct the tendency of his reasoning and the clearness of his decisions; on whatever subject he employed his mind, there started up immediately so many images before him, that he lost one by grasping another. His memory supplied him with so many illustrations, parallel or dependent notions, that he was always starting into collateral considerations; but the spirit and vigour of his pursuit always gives delight; and the reader follows him without reluctance through his mazes, in themselves flowery and pleasing, and ending at the point originally in view."

Browne's entire works were published at London in 1836, by Simon Wilkins, in 4 vols. 8vo.

Sir William, an eminent but very eccentric physician and multifarious writer, born in Norfolk in 1692. He settled originally at Lynn in Norfolk, where he published a translation of Dr Gregory's *Catoptrice et Dioptrice Sphaericae Elementa*; to which he added some papers on the Foci of Specula, &c. Having acquired a competence by his profession, he removed to Queen's Square, London, where he resided till his death. A great number of lively essays, both in prose and verse, the production of his pen, were printed and circulated among his friends. The active part taken by Sir William in the contest with the licentiates, 1768, occasioned his being introduced by Foote in his *Devil upon Two Sticks*. Upon Foote's exact representation of him, with his identical wig and coat, tall figure, and glass stiffly applied to his eye, Brown sent him a card complimenting him on having so happily represented him; but as he had forgotten his muff, he sent him his own. This good-natured man used to frequent the annual ball at the ladies' boarding-school, Queen Square, being fond of the company of sprightly young people. A dignitary of the church, finding, on one of these occasions, this upright figure stationed there, told him he believed he was Hermippus redivivus, who lived *ambulans puellarum*. He survived his wife ten years, and died in 1774, at the age of eighty-two. By his will, which was written in Greek, Latin, and English, he made a provision for awarding three gold medals as yearly prizes to three undergraduates of Cambridge, for the best Greek and Latin poems, in imitation of Sappho, Horace, and Martial.

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 Samarcan, 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.