BROWNE, Isaac Hawkins, an English poet, was born in 1705 at Burton-upon-Trent, 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 gave 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 Animoe Immortalitate, in which, besides a judicious choice of matter and arrangement, there is thought to be a happy imitation of Lucretius and Virgil. The wide 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. He died, after a lingering illness, in 1760. In 1768 his son published an elegant edition of his poems, in large octavo.

BROWNE, J ames, LL.D., man of letters, for a number of 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 he 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 Hieroglyphe» 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. He died in 1841, from a stroke of apoplexy, brought on by his unremitting labours.

BROWNE, Peter, bishop of Cork and Ross, an able writer on theology, was born in Ireland some time after the Restoration. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1682, and after ten years’ residence obtained a fellowship. In 1699 he was made provost of the College, and in the same year published his Letter in answer to a Book entitled li Christianity not Mysterious,” which was recognized as the ablest reply yet written to Toland. It expounds in germ the whole of his later theory of analogy. In 1710 he was made bishop of Cork and Ross, which post he held till his death in 1735. In 1713 he had become somewhat notorious from his violent onslaught on the fashion of drinking healths, a polemic which he carried on in several pamphlets. His two most important works are the Procedure and Limits of the Human Understanding, 1728, an able though sometimes captious critique of Locke’s essay, and Things Divine and Supernatural conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Human, more briefly referred to as the Divine Analogy, 1733. The doctrine of analogy was intended as a reply to the deistical conclusions that had been drawn from Locke’s theory of knowledge. Browne holds that not only God’s essence, but his attributes are inexpressible by our ideas, and can only be conceived analogically. This view was vigorously assailed by Berkeley in his Aldphron (Dialogue IV.), and great part of the Divine Analogy is occupied with a defence against that criticism. The bishop emphasizes the distinction between metaphor and analogy; though the conceived attributes are not thought as they are in themselves, yet there is a reality corresponding in some way to our ideas of them. The doctrine of analogy is interesting, and has an interesting history in English theology. Its most logical expression may be found in the Bampton Lectures of the late Dean Mansel.

BROWNE, Sir Thomas, a distinguished English writer, was born in London on the 19th October, 1605. He was educated at Winchester School, and afterwards at Broadgate Hall (Pembroke College), Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in January 1626. He took the further degree of Μ. A. in 1629, studied medicine, and practised for some time in Oxfordshire. Between 1630 and 1633 he left England, travelled through Ireland, France, and Italy, and on his way home received the degree of M.D. at the university of Leyden. He returned to London in 1634, and two years later, after a short residence in Yorkshire, settled in practice at Norwich. In 1642 a copy of his Religio Medici was printed from one of his MSS. without his knowledge, and he was compelled to put forth a correct edition of the work, which appears to have been composed as early as 1634. Its success was very great, and the author at once became celebrated as a man of letters. In 1646 appeared his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, which added to his fame. In 1658, on the occasion of the discovery of some ancient urns in Norfolk, he wrote his Hydriotaphia or Umburial, to which was appended The Garden of Cyrus. These four works were all that he published, though several tracts, notably the Christian Morals and Antiquities of Norwich, were prepared for publication, and appeared after his death. In 1671 he received the honour of knighthood from Charles II. on his visit to Norwich; and in 1682 he died on his seventy-seventh birthday.

Browne is in every way a remarkable and peculiar writer. His writings are among the few specimens of purely literary work produced during a period of great political excitement and discord. England was passing through, its greatest convulsion; events of mighty moment were being transacted round him, and he remained placidly indifferent. While the grandest minds of his country were busied with the important affairs of state, he was revising his Religio Medici, and his book was published in the very year in which the civil war broke out. While England was torn with civil discord, and the liberty of her children was being bought with their blood, Browne serenely pursued his studies at Norwich, to all appearance as indifferent to contemporary events as if he had belonged to another planet. Just when there came a lull in the conflict, when the royal power was broken, and the air was filled with doubts, anxieties, and negotiations, Browne published his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. The death of the king, the expulsion of the parliament, the establishment of the protectorate, passed by him like a breath which he heeded not. But the unearthing of some sepulchral urns at once roused his attention, and furnished occasion for a train of most magnificent and majestic reflections on the short space of human life, on the signs and symbols of mortality. A mind like this is a psychological curiosity, and its peculiarities are faithfully reflected in the form and matter of his - works. In some respects, of course, he resembles his contemporaries; in his, as in all other writings of the 17th century, there is a plentiful display of erudition, copious citation of authorities, and lavish quotation from older writers. Some part also of the peculiarity of his style may be ascribed to the general tendency of the language at that period. It was a time of unusual richness of diction; great writers did not hesitate to coin words and phrases as occasion required them, and ample raw material was supplied by the great mass of literature, which had been but recently opened up, and which was then being assimilated. But Browne stands apart from his contemporaries by reason of the peculiar and unique cast of his mind. Deeply speculative, imbued with the Platonic mysticism which taught him to look upon this world as only the image, the shadow of an invisible system, he regarded the whole of experience but as food for contemplation. Nothing is too great or too small, too far removed or too near at hand for him; all finds a place in the universe of being, which he seems to regard almost from the position of an outsider. His general mood may be characterized as the metaphysical; not that he speculated systematically on the problems 'of existence, but because lie dwells repeatedly, and with evident delight, upon what transcends the little sphere of our life, and, like Shakespeare, is fond of meditating on the outward and visible signs of mortality, and on what lies beyond the grave.

Of Browne, however, as of our greatest writers, it is true that the style is the man. The form of his thought is as peculiar and remarkable as the matter; the two, indeed, react upon one another. It is a style altogether unique,— rich, with a lavish use of metaphor and analogy—majestic and swelling, and with a fine antique flavour about it. Much of its quaintness, no doubt, depends on the excessive employment of Latinized words, great part of which have never succeeded in making their way into the standard language; but the peculiarities of the vocabulary do not entirely exhaust those of the style. Of his four masterpieces the Religio Medici is that in which we are most in contact with the writer himself. The book was a puzzle to contemporaries, and is still hard to understand. It is the confession of faith of a mind keen and sceptical in some aspects, but on the whole deeply imbued with the sense of the mysteriousness of true religion, and willing to yield itself up without reserve to the requirements of faith. “I love/’ he says, “to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an 0, Altitudo !” The Vulgar Errors is a wonderful storehouse of out-of-the-way facts and scraps of erudition, exhibiting a singular mixture of credulity and shrewdness. The style is more direct and simple than in the other works. The Garden of Cyrus is a continued illustration of one quaint conceit. The whole universe is ransacked for examples of the Quincunx, and he discovers, as Coleridge says, “quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in everything !” But the whole strength of his genius and the wonderful charm of his style are to be sought in the Vmburial, the concluding chapter of which, for richness of imagery and majestic pomp of diction, can hardly be paralleled in the English language. For anything at all resembling it we must turn to the finest passages of Jeremy Taylor or of Milton’s prose writings.

The best edition of Sir T. Browne is that by Simon Wilkin, 4 vols., 1836,—3 vols. (Bohn), 1851, where full biographical and bibliographical information will be found. Prefixed to it is Johnson’s celebrated Life.

BROWNE, William, an English poet, descended of a good family, was born at Tavistock in Devonshire, in 1590. Having passed through the grammar school of his native place, he was sent to Exeter College, Oxford, and became tutor to Robert Dormer, afterwards earl of Carnarvon. After having received in 1624 the honorary degree of M.A., he was taken into the family of William, earl of Pembroke, and improved his fortune so much that he is said to have purchased an estate. Nothing seems to be known of his after life, and no date has ever been given for his death. All his work was done in his youth, the first part of Britannia's Pastorals having been published in 1613, The Shepherd's Pipe in 1614, and the second part of the Pastorals in 1616. He belongs to the school of Spenser, and his merits may be summed up briefly as extreme sweetness of verse, idyllic nature-painting, and richness of descriptive faculty. The Pastorals are about the finest specimens we have in earlier literature of luxuriant sensuous description of ordinary country life. They were highly popular in their time. (See Wood, Athen. Oxon.)

BROWNE, William George, an eminent traveller, was born at Great-Tower-Hill, London, July 25, 1768. At seventeen he was sent to Oriel College, Oxford. Having had a moderate competence left him by his father, on leaving the university he applied himself entirely to literary pursuits. 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 Darfûr. 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 this 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 Browne again left England, and spent three years in visiting Greece, some parts of Asia Minor, and Sicily. In 1812 he set out on amore extensive journey, proposing to penetrate to Samarkand, 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 Erzeroum, and arrived on the 1st of June at Tabriz, where he met Sir Gore Ouseley. About the end of the summer of 1813 he left Tabriz for Teheran, intending to proceed thence into Tartary; but unhappily he never reached that destination. Near the banks of the Kizil-Ouzen his party were attacked by banditti, and, according to the report of the survivors, 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. His volume of travels in Africa has already been mentioned. Robert Walpole published in the second volume of his Mémoire relating to European and Asiatic Turkey (4to, 1820), from papers left by Browne, the account of his journey in 1802 through Asia Minor to Antioch and Cyprus; also “Remarks written at Constantinople.”