Front matter (continued 15)

The life of this artist has been well written by his grandson, Ford M. Hueffer, in a handsomely illustrated volume entitled Ford Madox Brown (London, 1896). This volume contains some extracts from Brown's diary, extending in the whole from 1847 to 1865; and other lengthier extracts appear in two books edited by William M. Rossetti—Ruskin, Rossetti, Pre-Raphaelitism (1899), and Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters (1899). See also the Preferences in Art, &c., by Harry Quilter (1892), and a pamphlet, Ford Madox Brown (1901), by Helen Rossetti (Angeli), applicable to a collection of his works exhibited in the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

(W. M. R.)

BROWN, FRANCIS (1849- ), American Semitic scholar, was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the 26th of December 1849, the son of Samuel Gilman Brown (1813-1885), president of Hamilton College from 1867 to 1881, and the grandson of Francis Brown (1784-1820), whose removal from the presidency of Dartmouth College and later restoration were incidental to the famous "Dartmouth College case." The younger Francis graduated from Dartmouth in 1870 and from the Union Theological Seminary in 1877, and then studied in Berlin. In 1879 he became instructor in biblical philology at the Union Theological Seminary, in 1881 an associate professor of the same subject, and in 1890 professor of Hebrew and cognate languages.^[1] Dr Brown's published works have won him honorary degrees from the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, as well as from Dartmouth and Yale; they are, with the exception of The Christian Point of View (1902; with Profs. A. C. McGiffert and G. W. Knox), almost purely linguistic and lexical, and include Assyriology: its Use and Abuse in Old Testament Study (1885), and the important revision of Gesenius, undertaken with S. R. Driver and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1891-1905).

BROWN, SIR GEORGE (1790-1865), British soldier, was born and educated in Elgin, Scotland. He obtained a commission in the 43rd (now 1st Bn. Oxfordshire) Light Infantry in 1806, was promoted lieutenant a few months later, and saw active service for the first time in the Mediterranean and at Copenhagen, 1806 and 1807. The 43rd was one of the earliest arrivals in Spain when the Peninsular War broke out, and Brown was with his regiment at Vimeiro, and in the Corunna retreat. Later in 1809 the famous Light Division was formed, and with Craufurd he was present at all the actions of 1810-1811, being severely wounded at Talavera; he was then promoted captain and attended the Staff College at Great Marlow until (late in 1812) he returned to the Peninsula as a captain in the 85th. With this regiment he served under Major-General Lord Aylmer at the Nivelle and Nive, his conduct winning for him the rank of major. The 85th was next employed under General Robert Ross in America, and Brown, who received a severe wound at the action of Bladensburg, was promoted to a lieut.-colonelcy. At the age of twenty-five, with a brilliant war record, he received an appointment at the Horse Guards, and remained in London for over twenty-five years in various staff positions. He was made a colonel and K.H. in 1831, and by 1852 had arrived at the rank of lieut.-general and the dignity of K.C.B. At this time he was adjutant-general, but on the appointment of Lord Hardinge to the post of commander-in-chief, Brown left the Horse Guards. In 1854, on the despatch of a British force to the East, Sir George Brown was appointed to command the Light Division. This he led in action, and administered in camp, on Peninsular principles, and, whilst preserving the strictest discipline to a degree which came in for criticism, he made himself beloved by his men. At Alma he had a horse shot under him. At Inkerman he was wounded whilst leading the French Zouaves into action. In the following year, when an expedition against Kertch and the Russian communications was decided upon, Brown went in command of the British contingent. He was invalided home on the day of Lord Raglan's death. From March 1860 to March 1865 he was commander-in-chief in Ireland. At the time of his death in 1865 he was general and G.C.B., colonel of the 32nd Regiment and colonel-in-chief of the Rifle Brigade.

BROWN, GEORGE (1818-1880), Canadian journalist and statesman, was born in Edinburgh on the 29th of November 1818, and was educated in his native city. With his father, Peter Brown (d. 1863), he emigrated to New York in 1838; and in 1843 they removed to Toronto, and began the publication of The Banner, a politico-religious paper in support of the newly formed Free Church of Scotland. In 1844 he began, independently of his father, the issue of the Toronto Globe. This paper, at first weekly, became in 1853 a daily, and through the ability and energy of Brown, came to possess an almost tyrannical influence over the political opinion of Ontario. In 1851 he entered the Canadian parliament as member for Kent county. Though giving at first a modified support to the Reform government, he soon broke with it and became leader of the Radical or "Clear Grit" party. His attacks upon the Roman Catholic church and on the supposed domination in parliament of the French Canadian section made him very unpopular in Lower Canada, but in Upper Canada his power was great. Largely owing to his attacks, the Clergy Reserves were secularized in 1854. He championed the complete laicization of the schools in Ontario, but unsuccessfully, the Roman Catholic church maintaining its right to separate schools. He also fought for the representation by population of the two provinces in parliament, the Act of Union (1841) having granted an equal number of representatives to each. This principle of "Rep. by Pop." was conceded by the British North America Act (1867). In 1858 Brown became premier of "The Short Administration," which was defeated and compelled to resign after an existence of two days.

He was one of the earliest advocates of a federation of the British colonies in North America, and in 1864, to accomplish this end, entered into a coalition with his bitter personal and political opponent, Mr (afterwards Sir) John A. Macdonald. Largely owing to Brown's efforts, Federation was carried through the House, but on the 21st of December 1865 he resigned from the Coalition government, though continuing to support its Federation policy, and in 1867 he was defeated in South Ontario and never again sat in the House. In great measure owing to his energy, and in spite of much concealed opposition from the French-Canadians, the North-West Territories were purchased by the new Dominion. In December 1873 he was called to the Canadian senate, and in 1874 was appointed by the imperial government joint plenipotentiary with Sir Edward Thornton to negotiate a reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States. The negotiations were successful, but the draft treaty failed to pass the United States Senate. Soon afterwards Brown refused the lieutenant-governorship of Ontario, and on two subsequent occasions the offer of knighthood, devoting himself to the Globe and to a model farm at Bow Park near Brantford. On the 25th of March 1880 he was shot by a discharged employé, and died on the 9th of May.

His candour, enthusiasm and open tolerance of the opinions of others made him many warm friends and many fierce enemies. He was at his best in his generous protests against all privileges, social, political and religious, and in the self-sacrificing patriotism which enabled him to fling aside his personal prejudices, and so to make Federation possible.

See J. C. Dent, Canadian Portrait Gallery (Toronto, 1800). The official Life, by the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, is decidedly partisan. A life by John Lewis is included in the Makers of Canada series (Toronto).

(W. L. G.)

BROWN, HENRY KIRKE (1814-1886), American sculptor, was born in Leyden, Massachusetts, on the 24th of February 1814. He began to paint portraits while quite a boy, studied painting in Boston under Chester Harding, learned a little about modelling, and in 1836-1839 spent his summers working as a railroad engineer to earn enough to enable him to study further. He spent four years (1842-1846) in Italy; but returning to New York he remained distinctively American, and was never dominated, as were so many of the early American sculptors, by Italian influence. He died on the 10th of July 1886 at Newburgh, New York. His equestrian statues are excellent, notably that of General Winfield Scott (1874) in Washington, D.C., and one of George Washington (1856) in Union Square, New York City, which was the second equestrian statue made in the United States, following by three years that of Andrew Jackson in Washington by Clark Mills (1815-1883). Brown was one of the first in America to cast his own bronzes. Among his other works are: Abraham Lincoln (Union Square, New York City); Nathanael Greene, George Clinton, Philip Kearny, and Richard Stockton (all in the National Statuary Hall, Capitol, Washington, D.C.); De Witt Clinton and "The Angel of the Resurrection," both in Greenwood cemetery, New York City; and an "Aboriginal Hunter."

His nephew and pupil, Henry Kirke Bush-Brown (b. 1857), also became prominent among American sculptors, his "Buffalo Hunt," equestrian statues of Generals Meade and Reynolds at Gettysburg, and "Justinian" in the New York appellate court-house, being his chief works.

BROWN, JACOB (1775-1828), American soldier, was born of Quaker ancestry, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, on the 9th of May 1775. From 1796 to 1798 he was engaged in surveying public lands in Ohio; in 1798 he settled in New York City, and during the period (1798-1800) when war with France seemed imminent he acted as military secretary to Alexander Hamilton, then inspector-general of the United States army. Subsequently he purchased a large tract of land in Jefferson county, New York, where he founded the town of Brownville. There he served as county judge, and attained the rank (1810) of brigadier-general in the state militia. On the outbreak of the second war with Great Britain (1812) he was placed in command of the New York state frontier from Oswego to Lake St Francis (near Cornwall, Ontario) and repelled the British attacks on Ogdensburg (October 4, 1812) and Sackett's Harbor (May 29, 1813). In July 1813 he was commissioned brigadier-general in the regular army, and in January 1814 he was promoted major-general and succeeded General James Wilkinson in command of the forces at Niagara. Early in the summer of 1814 he undertook offensive operations, and his forces occupied Fort Erie, and, on the 5th of July, at Chippawa, Ontario, defeated the British under General Phineas Riall (c. 1769-1851). On the 25th of July, with General Winfield Scott, he fought a hotly contested, but indecisive, battle with the British under General Gordon Drummond (1771-1854) at Lundy's Lane, where he was twice wounded. After the war he remained in the army, of which he was the commanding general from March 1821 until his death at Washington, D.C., on the 24th of February 1828.

BROWN, JOHN (1715-1766), British divine and author, was born at Rothbury, Northumberland, on the 5th of November 1715. His father, a descendant of the Browns of Coalston, near Haddington, became vicar of Wigton in that year. Young Brown was educated at St John's College, Cambridge; and after graduating at the head of the list of wranglers in 1735, he took holy orders, and was appointed minor canon and lecturer at Carlisle. In 1745 he distinguished himself in the defence of Carlisle as a volunteer, and in 1747 was appointed chaplain to Dr Osbaldiston, on his admission to the bishopric of Carlisle. His poem, entitled "Honour" (1743), was followed by the "Essay on Satire." This gained for him the friendship of William Warburton, who introduced him to Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, near Bath. In 1751 Brown dedicated to Allen his Essay on the Characteristics of Lord Shaftesbury, containing an able defence of the utilitarian philosophy, praised later by John Stuart Mill (Westminster Review, vol. xxix. p. 477). In 1756 he was promoted by the earl of Hardwicke to the living of Great Horkesley in Essex, and in the following year he took the degree of D.D. at Cambridge. He was the author of two plays, Barbarossa (1754) and Athelstane (1756); Garrick played in both, and the first was a success. The most popular of his works was the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (2 vols., 1757-1758), a bitter satire which pleased a public depressed by the ill-success in the conduct of the war, and ready to welcome an attack on luxury and kindred evils. Other works are the Additional Dialogue of the Dead between Pericles and Cosmo ... (1760), in vindication of Chatham's policy; and the Dissertation on the Rise, Union and Power, &c., of Poetry and Music (1763). He was consulted in connexion with a scheme of education which Catherine II. of Russia desired to introduce into her dominions. A memorandum on the subject by Dr Brown led to an offer on her part to entertain him at St Petersburg as her adviser on the subject. He had bought a postchaise and various other things for the journey, when he was persuaded to relinquish the design on account of his gout. He had been subject to fits of melancholy, and, influenced perhaps by disappointment, he committed suicide on the 23rd of September 1766.

There is a detailed account of John Brown by Andrew Kippis in Biographia Britannica (1780), containing the text of the negotiations for his journey to Russia, and of a long letter in which he outlines the principles of the scheme he would have proposed. See also T. Davies, Memoirs of ... David Garrick (1780), chap. xix.

BROWN, JOHN (1722-1787), Scottish divine, was born at Carpow, in Perthshire. He was almost entirely self-educated, having acquired a knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew while employed as a shepherd. His early career was varied, and he was in succession a packman, a soldier in the Edinburgh garrison in 1745, and a school-master. He was, from 1750 till his death, minister of the Burgher branch of the Secession church (see United Presbyterian Church) in Haddington. From 1786 he was professor of divinity for his denomination, and was mainly responsible for the training of its ministry. He gained a just reputation for learning and piety. The best of his many works are his Self-Interpreting Bible and Dictionary of the Bible, works that were long very popular. The former was translated into Welsh. He also wrote an Explication of the Westminster Confession, and a number of biographical and historical sketches.

BROWN, JOHN (1735-1788), Scottish physician, was born in 1735 at Lintlaws or at Preston, Berwickshire. After attending the parish school at Duns, he went to Edinburgh and entered the divinity classes at the university, supporting himself by private tuition. In 1759 he seems to have discontinued his theological studies, and to have begun the study of medicine. He soon attracted the notice of William Cullen, who engaged him as private tutor to his family, and treated him in some respects as an assistant professor. In time, however, he quarrelled with Cullen, as with the professors of the university in general, and from about 1778 his public lectures contained vigorous attacks on all preceding systems of medicine and Cullen's in particular. In 1780 he published his Elementa Medicinae, expounding his own, or as it was then called the Brunonian, theory of medicine, which for a time had a great vogue. In 1786 he set out for London in the vain hope of bettering his fortunes, and died there of apoplexy on the 17th of October 1788.

An edition of his works, with notice of his life by his son, William Cullen Brown, appeared in 1804.

BROWN, JOHN (1784-1858), Scottish divine, grandson of the last-named, was born at Whitburn, Linlithgowshire, on the 12th of July 1784. He studied at Glasgow university, and afterwards at the divinity hall of the "Burgher" branch of the "Secession" church at Selkirk, under the celebrated George Lawson. In 1806 he was ordained minister of the Burgher congregation at Biggar, Lanarkshire, where he laboured for sixteen years. While there he had an interesting controversy with Robert Owen the socialist. Transferred in 1822 to the charge of Rose Street church, Edinburgh, he at once took a high rank as a preacher. In 1829 he succeeded James Hall at Broughton Place church, Edinburgh. In 1835 he was appointed one of the professors in the theological hall of the Secession church, and, great as was his ability as a preacher and pastor, it was probably in this sphere that he rendered his most valuable service. He had been the first in Scotland to use in the pulpit the exegetical method of exposition of Scripture, and as a professor he illustrated the method and extended its use. To him chiefly is due the abandonment of the principle of interpretation according to the "analogy of faith," which practically subordinated the Bible to the creed. Brown's exegesis was marked by rare critical sagacity, exact and extensive scholarship, unswerving honesty, and a clear, logical style; and his expository works have thus a permanent value. He had a considerable share in the Apocrypha controversy, and he was throughout life a vigorous and consistent upholder of anti-state-church or "voluntary" views. His two sermons on The Law of Christ respecting civil obedience, especially in the payment of tribute, called forth by a local grievance from which he had personally suffered, were afterwards published with extensive additions and notes, and are still regarded as an admirable statement and defence of the voluntary principle. The part he took in the discussion on the Atonement, which agitated all the Scottish churches, led to a formal charge of heresy against him by those who held the doctrine of a limited atonement. In 1845, after a protracted trial, he was acquitted by the synod. From that time he enjoyed the thorough confidence of his denomination (after 1847 merged in "the United Presbyterian church"), of which in his later years he was generally regarded as the leading representative. He died on the 13th of October 1858. His chief works were: Expository Discourses on First Peter (1848); Exposition of the Discourses and Sayings of our Lord (1850); Exposition of our Lord's Intercessory Prayer (1850); The Resurrection of Life (1851); Expository Discourses on Galatians (1853); and Analytical Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (1857).

See Memoir of John Brown, D.D., by John Cairns (1860).

BROWN, JOHN (1800-1859), American abolitionist, leader of the famous attack upon Harper's Ferry, in 1859, was born on the 9th of May 1800, at Torrington, Connecticut. He is said to have been descended from Peter Brown, who went to America in the Mayflower, and he was the grandson of Captain John Brown, who served in the War of Independence. He was taken by his father, Owen Brown, to Hudson, Ohio, in 1805. At the age of eighteen he began to prepare himself for the Congregational ministry, but soon changed his mind and turned his attention to land surveying. He engaged successively in the tanning business, in sheep-raising, and in the wool trade, but met with little success and in 1842, at Akron, Ohio, became bankrupt. In 1849, after having lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, he removed to North Elba, N.Y., where he engaged in farming on part of the land which was being given in small tracts, by its owner Gerrit Smith, to negro settlers. Long before this he had conceived a strong hatred for the institution of slavery, and had determined to do what he could to bring about its destruction. In 1854 five of his sons removed to Kansas, where the violent conflict was beginning between the "free-state" and the pro-slavery settlers, and in the following year Brown, leaving the rest of his family at North Elba, joined them, settling near Osawatomie and immediately becoming a conspicuous figure in the border warfare. His name became particularly well known in connexion with the so-called "Pottawatomie massacre," the killing in cold blood, on the 25th of May 1856, by men under his orders, of five pro-slavery settlers in retaliation for the murder a short time previously of five "free-state" settlers. He also on the 2nd of June, at the head of about thirty men, captured Captain H. C. Pate and twenty-two pro-slavery men at Black Jack, and on the 30th of August 1856, with a small body of supporters, vigorously resisted an attack of a superior pro-slavery force upon Osawatomie. Brown then visited the Eastern states for the purpose of raising money to be used in the Kansas struggle and of arousing the people against slavery. After spending a short time in Kansas, in 1858-1859 he proceeded to carry out a long-cherished scheme for facilitating the escape of fugitive slaves by establishing in the mountains of Virginia a stronghold in which such fugitives could take refuge and defend themselves against their pursuers. At Chatham, Canada, with eleven white and thirty-five negro associates, he adopted a "Provisional Constitution and Ordinance for the People of the United States." Brown was elected commander-in-chief, and from among this group a secretary of state, a secretary of war, a secretary of the treasury, and members of Congress were chosen. Later, with only twenty-two men supplied with arms furnished by the Massachusetts-Kansas committee, and with funds contributed (in ignorance of Brown's plans) by his intimate associates, Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns, T. W. Higginson, and F. B. Sanborn, all of Boston, and Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, New York, he removed to a farm near Harper's Ferry, the site of a Federal arsenal, which he intended to capture as a preliminary to the carrying out of the main part of his plan. On the night of the 16th of October 1859, with only eighteen men, five of whom were negroes, he made the attack, easily capturing the arsenal and taking about sixty of the leading citizens prisoners to be used as hostages. On the following morning Brown and his followers were vigorously attacked, and on the 18th—a small force of United States marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee having arrived—were overpowered, Brown being seriously wounded after he had surrendered. Of the twenty-two men who had participated in the raid, ten were killed, seven were taken prisoners, and five escaped. On the other side five were killed and nine wounded. Brown was committed to the Charlestown, Virginia (now West Virginia), gaol on the 19th of October; on the 27th his trial began; on the 31st he was convicted of "treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and other rebels, and murder in the first degree"; and on the 2nd of December he was hanged at Charlestown. His fellow-prisoners were likewise hanged soon afterwards. Brown was buried at North Elba, New York. The attack upon Harper's Ferry created widespread excitement, particularly in the Southern states; and among the abolitionists in the North Brown was looked upon as a martyr to their cause. Shortly after his death a famous popular song became widely current in the North, beginning:—

Intensely religious in his nature, Brown possessed something of the gloomy fanaticism of his Puritan ancestors. The secret of his whole career lies in his emphatic conviction, to use the words of Wendell Phillips, that he had "letters of marque from God"; that he had a divine commission to destroy slavery by violent means. He scouted the "milk and water principles" of the milder abolitionists, advocated vigorous resistance to the slave power, and expressed his ideas by actions rather than by words. It now seems that this policy aided very little in making Kansas a free state, and that the attack on Harper's Ferry, while creating much feeling at the moment, had very little effect on the subsequent course of events. It is safe to assume that secession and civil war would have followed the election of Lincoln if there had been no such raid into Virginia.

Brown was twice married and was the father of twenty children, eight of whom died in early childhood. His sons aided him in all his undertakings, two of them being killed at Harper's Ferry; and Owen Brown, who died in 1889, was long the only survivor of the attack.

See the life (1910) by O. G. Villard, and F. B. Sanborn's Life and Letters of John Brown (Boston, 1885); R. J. Hinton's John Brown and His Men (New York, 1894); James Redpath's Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston, 1860); Von Hoist's essay, John Brown (Boston, 1889); and J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (New York, 1890-1906).

BROWN, JOHN (1810-1882), Scottish physician and author, son of John Brown (1784-1858), was born at Biggar, Scotland, on the 22nd of September 1810. He graduated as M.D. at the university of Edinburgh in 1833, and practised as a physician in that city. His reputation, however, is based on the two volumes of essays, Horae Subsecivae (i.e. "leisure hours") (1858, 1861), John Leech and other Papers (1882), Rab and His Friends (1859), and Marjorie Fleming: a Sketch (1863). The first volume of Horae Subsecivae deals chiefly with the equipment and duties of a physician, the second with subjects outside his profession. He was emphatic in his belief that an author should publish nothing "unless he has something to say, and has done his best to say it aright." Acting on this principle, he published little himself, and only after subjecting it to the severest criticism. His work is invariably characterized by humour and tenderness. He suffered during the latter years of his life from pronounced attacks of melancholy, and died on the 11th of May 1882.

See also E. T. M^cLaren, Dr John Brown and his Sister Isabella (4th ed., 1890); and Letters of Dr John Brown, edited by his son and D. W. Forrest, with biography by E. T. M^cLaren (1907).

BROWN, SIR JOHN (1816-1896), English armour plate manufacturer, was born at Sheffield on the 6th of December 1816, the son of a slater. He was apprenticed when fourteen years old to a Sheffield firm who manufactured files and table cutlery. Impressed with Brown's ability, the senior partner offered him the control of the business (Earl Horton and Co.) and advanced some of the necessary capital. Brown invented in 1848 the conical steel spring buffer for railway wagons, and in 1860, after seeing the French ship "La Gloire" armoured with hammered plate, he determined to attempt the production of armour for the British navy by a rolling process. The experiment was successful, and led to admiralty orders for armour plate sufficient to protect about three-quarters of the navy. In 1856 Brown had started the Atlas Works in Sheffield, which soon produced, beside armour plates and railway buffers, ordnance forgings, steel rails, railway carriage axles and tires. The works covered thirty acres and employed eventually more than four thousand workmen. Besides supplying iron to the Sheffield steel trade, Brown himself successfully developed the Bessemer process. In 1864, after his business had been converted into a limited company, he retired. He died at Bromley, Kent, on the 27th of December 1896. Among the honours conferred upon him was a knighthood in 1867, the office of mayor of Sheffield in 1862 and 1863, and that of Master Cutler in 1865 and 1866.

BROWN, JOHN GEORGE (1831- ), American painter, was born in Durham, England, on the 11th of November 1831. He studied at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in the Edinburgh Academy, and after removing to New York City in 1853, at the schools of the National Academy of Design of which he afterwards became a member. In 1866 he became one of the charter members of the Water-Colour Society, of which he was president from 1887 to 1904. He generally confined himself to representations of street child life, bootblacks, newsboys, &c. ; his "Passing Show" (Paris, Salon, 1877) and "Street Boys at Play" (Paris Exhibition, 1900) are good examples of his popular talent.

BROWN, ROBERT (1773-1858), British botanist, was born on the 21st of December 1773 at Montrose, and was educated at the grammar school of his native town, where he had as contemporaries Joseph Hume and James Mill. In 1787 he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen, but two years afterwards removed to Edinburgh University, where his taste for botany attracted the attention of John Walker (1731-1803), then professor of natural history in the university. In 1795 he obtained a commission in the Forfarshire regiment of Fencible Infantry as "ensign and assistant surgeon," and served in the north of Ireland. In 1798 he made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks, by whom in 1801 he was offered the post of naturalist to the expedition fitted out under Captain Matthew Flinders for the survey of the then almost unknown coasts of Australia. Ferdinand Bauer, afterwards familiarly associated with Brown in his botanical discoveries, was draughtsman; William Westall was landscape painter; and among the midshipmen was one afterwards destined to rise into fame as Sir John Franklin. In 1805 the expedition returned to England, having obtained, among other acquisitions, nearly 4000 species of plants, many of which were new. Brown was almost immediately appointed librarian of the Linnean Society. In this position, though one of no great emolument, he had abundant opportunities of pursuing his studies; but it was not until 1810 that he published the first volume of his great work, in Latin, the Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, which did much to further the general adoption of A.L. de Jussieu's natural system of plant classification. Its merits were immediately recognized, and it gave its author an international reputation among botanists. It is rare in its original edition, the author having suppressed it, hurt at the Edinburgh Review having fallen foul of its Latinity. With the exception of a supplement published in 1830, no more of the work appeared. In 1810 Brown became librarian to Sir Joseph Banks, who on his death in 1820 bequeathed to him the use and enjoyment of his library and collections for life. In 1827 an arrangement was made by which these were transferred to the British Museum, with Brown's consent and in accordance with Sir Joseph's will. Brown then became keeper of this new botanical department, an office which he held until his death. Soon after Banks's decease he resigned the librarianship of the Linnean Society, and from 1849 to 1853 he served as its president. He received many honours. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1811, he received its Copley medal in 1839, for his "discoveries on the subject of vegetable impregnation," and in 1833 he was elected one of the five foreign associates of the Institute of France. Among his other distinctions was membership of the order "pour le Mérite" of Prussia. In the Academia Caesarea Naturae Curiosorum he sat under the cognomen of Ray. He died on the 10th of June 1858, in the house in Soho Square, London, bequeathed to him by Sir Joseph Banks. His works, which embrace not only systematic botany, but also plant anatomy and physiology, are distinguished by their thoroughness and conscientious accuracy, and display powers at once of minute detail and of broad generalization. The continual movements observed by the microscope among minute particles suspended in a liquid were noticed by him in 1827, and hence are known as "Brownian movements."

In 1825-1834 his works up to that date were collected and published in four divisions by Nees von Esenbeck, in German, under the title of Vermischte botanische Schriften (Leipzig and Nuremberg). In 1866 the Ray Society reprinted, under the editorship of his friend and successor in the keepership of the Botanical Department of the British Museum, J.J. Bennet, his complete writings, the Prodromus alone excepted. In these Miscellaneous Works (2 vols., with atlas of plates) the history of his discoveries can be best followed.

BROWN, SAMUEL MORISON (1817-1856), Scottish chemist, poet and essayist, born at Haddington on the 23rd of February 1817, was the fourth son of Samuel Brown, the founder of itinerating libraries, and grandson of John Brown, author of the Self-Interpreting Bible. In 1832 he entered the university of Edinburgh, where, after studying in Berlin and St Petersburg, he graduated as M.D. in 1839. About 1840 he was engaged in experiments by which he sought to prove that "carbon in certain states of combination is susceptible of conversion into silicon," and his failure to establish this proposition had much to do with his want of success as a candidate for the chair of chemistry at Edinburgh in 1843. He held the doctrine that the chemical elements are compounds of equal and similar atoms, and might therefore possibly be all derived from one generic atom. In 1850 he published a tragedy, Galileo Galilei, and two volumes of his Lectures on the Atomic Theory and Essays Scientific and Literary appeared in 1858, with a preface by his kinsman Dr John Brown, the author of Horae Subsecivae. He died at Edinburgh on the 20th of September 1856.

BROWN, THOMAS (1663-1704), English satirist, of "facetious memory" as Addison designates him, was the son of a farmer at Shifnal, in Shropshire, and was born in 1663. He was entered in 1678 at Christ Church, Oxford, where he is said to have escaped expulsion by the famous lines beginning, "I do not love thee, Dr Fell." He was for three years schoolmaster at Kingston-on-Thames, and afterwards settled in London. Under the pseudonym of Dudly Tomkinson he wrote a satire on Dryden, The Reasons of Mr Bays changing his Religion: considered in a Dialogue between Crites, Eugenius and Mr Bays, with two other parts having separate titles (1688-1690, republished with additions in 1691). He was the author of a great variety of poems, letters, dialogues and lampoons, full of humour and erudition, but coarse and scurrilous. His writings have a certain value for the knowledge they display of low life in London. He died on the 16th of June 1704, and was buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey.

His collected works were published in 1707-1708. The second volume contains a collection of Letters from the Dead to the Living, some of which are translated from the French. His Comical Romance done into English (1772, the Roman Comique of Scarron) was reprinted in 1892.

BROWN, THOMAS (1778-1820), Scottish philosopher, was born at Kirkmabreck, Kirkcudbright, where his father was parish clergyman. He was a boy of a refined nature, a wide reader and an eager student. Educated at several schools in London, he went to Edinburgh University in 1792, where he attended Dugald Stewart's moral philosophy class. His attendance was desultory, and he does not appear to have completed his arts course. After studying law for a time he took up medicine; his graduation thesis De Somno was well received. But his great strength lay in metaphysical analysis, as was shown in his answer to the objections raised against the appointment of Sir John Leslie to the mathematical professorship (1805). Leslie, a follower of Hume, was attacked by the clerical party as a sceptic and an infidel, and Brown took the opportunity to defend Hume's doctrine of causality as in no way inimical to religion. His defence, at first only a pamphlet, became in its third edition a lengthy treatise entitled Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, and is a fine specimen of Brown's analytical faculty. In 1806 he became a medical practitioner in partnership with James Gregory, but, though successful in his profession, preferred literature and philosophy. After twice failing in the attempt to gain a professorship in the university, he was invited, during an illness of Dugald Stewart in the session of 1808-1809, to act as his substitute, and during the following session he undertook a great part of Stewart's work. The students received him with enthusiasm, due partly to his splendid rhetoric and partly to the novelty and ingenuity of his views. In 1810 he was appointed as colleague to Stewart, a position which he held for the rest of his life. He wrote his lectures at high pressure, and devoted much time to the editing and publication of the numerous poems which he had written at various times during his life. He was also engaged in preparing an abstract of his lectures as a handbook for his class. His health, never strong, gave way under the strain of his work. He was advised to take a voyage to London, where he died on the 2nd of April 1820.

His friend and biographer, David Welsh (1793-1845), superintended the publication of his text-book, the Physiology of the Human Mind, and his Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind was published by his successors, John Stewart and the Rev. E. Milroy. The latter was received with great enthusiasm both in England (where it reached its 19th edition) and in America; but recent criticism has lessened its popularity and it is now almost forgotten.

Brown's philosophy occupies an intermediate place between the earlier Scottish school and the later analytical or associational psychology. To the latter Brown really belonged, but he had preserved certain doctrines of the older school which were out of harmony with his fundamental view. He still retained a small quantum of intuitive beliefs, and did not appear to see that the very existence of these could not be explained by his theory of mental action. This intermediate or wavering position accounts for the comparative neglect into which his works have now fallen. They did much to excite thinking, and advanced many problems by more than one step, but they did not furnish a coherent system, and the doctrines which were then new have since been worked out with greater consistency and clearness.

Brown wrote a criticism of Darwin's Zoonomia (1798), and was one of the first contributors to the Edinburgh Review, in the second number of which he published a criticism of the Kantian philosophy, based entirely on Villers's French account of it. Among his poems, which are modelled on Pope and Akenside and rather commonplace, may be mentioned: Paradise of Coquettes (1814); Wanderer in Norway (1815); Warfiend (1816); Bower of Spring (1817); Agnes (1818); Emily (1819); a collected edition in 4 vols. appeared in 1820.

For a severe criticism of Brown's philosophy, see Sir W. Hamilton's Discussions and Lectures on Metaphysics; and for a high estimate of his merits, see J. S. Mill's Examination of Hamilton. See also D. Welsh's Account of the Life and Writings, &c. (1825); M^cCosh's Scottish Philosophy, pp. 317-337. The only German writer who seems to have known anything of Brown is Beneke, who found in him anticipations of some of his own doctrines. See Die neue Psychologie, pp. 320-330.

BROWN, THOMAS EDWARD (1830-1897), British poet, scholar and divine, was born on the 5th of May 1830, at Douglas, Isle of Man. His father, the Rev. Robert Brown, held the living of St Matthew's—a homely church in a poor district. His mother came of Scottish parentage, though born in the island. Thomas, the sixth of ten children, was but two years old when the family removed to Kirk Braddan vicarage, a short distance from Douglas, where his father (a scholar of no university, but so fastidious about composition that he would have some sentences of an English classic read to him before answering an invitation) took share with the parish schoolmaster in tutoring the clever boy until, at the age of fifteen, he was entered at King William's College. Here his abilities soon declared themselves, and hence he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where his position (as a servitor) cost him much humiliation, which he remembered to the end of his life. He won a double first, however, and was elected a fellow of Oriel in April 1854, Dean Gaisford having refused to promote him to a senior studentship of his own college, on the ground that no servitor had ever before attained to that honour. Although at that time an Oriel fellowship conferred a deserved distinction, Brown never took kindly to the life, but, after a few terms of private pupils, returned to the Isle of Man as vice-principal of his old school. He had been ordained deacon, but did not proceed to priest's orders for many years. In 1857 he married his cousin, Miss Stowell, daughter of Dr Stowell of Ramsey, and soon afterwards left the island once more to become headmaster of the Crypt school, Gloucester —a position which in no long time he found intolerable. From Gloucester he was summoned by the Rev. John Percival (afterwards bishop of Hereford), who had recently been appointed to the struggling young foundation of Clifton College, which he soon raised to be one of the great public schools. Percival wanted a master for the modern side, and made an appointment to meet Brown at Oxford; "and there," he writes, "as chance would have it, I met him standing at the corner of St Mary's Entry, in a somewhat Johnsonian attitude, four-square, his hands deep in his pockets to keep himself still, and looking decidedly volcanic. We very soon came to terms, and I left him there under promise to come to Clifton as my colleague at the beginning of the following term." At Clifton Brown remained from September 1863 to July 1892, when he retired—to the great regret of boys and masters alike, who had long since come to regard "T.E.B.'s" genius, and even his eccentricities, with a peculiar pride—to spend the rest of his days upon the island he had worshipped from childhood and often celebrated in song. His poem "Betsy Lee" appeared in Macmillan's Magazine (April and May 1873), and was published separately in the same year. It was included in Fo'c's'le Yarns (1881), which reached a second edition in 1889. This volume included at least three other notable poems—"Tommy Big-eyes," "Christmas Rose," and "Captain Tom and Captain Hugh." It was followed by The Doctor and other Poems (1887), The Manx Witch and other Poems (1889), and Old John and other Poems—a volume mainly lyrical (1893). Since his death all these and a few additional lyrics and fragments have been published in one volume by Messrs Macmillan under the title of The Collected Poems of T.E. Brown (1900). His familiar letters (edited in two volumes by an old friend, Mr S.T. Irwin, in 1900) bear witness to the zest he carried back to his native country, although his thoughts often reverted to Clifton. In October 1897 he returned to the school on a visit. He was the guest of one of the house-masters, and on Friday evening, 29th October, he gave an address to the boys of the house. He had spoken for some minutes with his usual vivacity, when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger. He died in less than two hours. Brown's more important poems are narrative, and written in the Manx dialect, with a free use of pauses, and sometimes with daring irregularity of rhythm. A rugged tenderness is their most characteristic note; but the emotion, while almost equally explosive in mirth and in tears, remains an educated emotion, disciplined by a scholar's sense of language. They breathe the fervour of an island patriotism (humorously aware of its limits) and of a simple natural piety. In his lyrics he is happiest when yoking one or the other of these emotions to serve a philosophy of life, often audacious, but always genial.

(A. T. Q.-C.)

BROWN, SIR WILLIAM, Bart. (1784-1864), British merchant and banker, founder of the banking-house of Brown, Shipley & Co., was born at Ballymena, Ireland, on the 30th of May 1784, the son of an Irish linen-merchant. At the age of sixteen he accompanied his father and brothers to Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., whither it had been decided to transfer the family business, but in 1809 left America for Liverpool. Here he established a branch of the firm, which had now begun to deal largely in raw cotton as well as linen and soon afterwards developed into one of general merchants and finally bankers. Brown became one of the leaders in Liverpool commerce, and in 1832 took a principal share in the reform of the system of dock-management then in vogue at that port. The great financial crisis of 1837 seriously threatened the ruin of the firm, but on Brown's urgent representations as to the multiplicity of interests involved the Bank of England agreed to advance him £2,000,000 to tide matters over. Actually Brown only found it necessary to apply for £1,000,000, which he repaid within six months. His business, both mercantile and banking, continued to increase, and in 1844 he was in possession of a sixth of the trade between Great Britain and the United States. "There is hardly," declared Richard Cobden at this period, "a wind that blows, or a tide that flows in the Mersey, that does not bring a ship freighted with cotton or some other costly commodity for Mr Brown's house." In 1856 the friction between the British and American governments due to the enlistment by British consuls of recruits for the Crimean War was largely allayed by the action of Brown, who in an interview with Lord Palmerston, then prime-minister, explained the objections taken in America. From 1846 to 1859 he was Liberal M.P. for South Lancashire. In 1860 he presented Liverpool with a public library and museum, and in 1863 was made a baronet. He died at Liverpool in 1864.

BROWN, WILLIAM LAURENCE (1755-1830), Scottish divine, was born on the 7th of January 1755 at Utrecht, where his father was minister of the English church. The father, having been appointed professor of ecclesiastical history at St Andrews, returned to Scotland in 1757, and his son went to the grammar school of that city, and then to the university. After passing through the divinity classes, he went in 1774 to the university of Utrecht, where he studied theology and civil law. In 1777 he was appointed to the English church in Utrecht, and about 1788 to the professorship of moral philosophy and ecclesiastical history in the university, to which was soon added the professorship of the law of nature. The war which followed the French Revolution finally drove Brown in January 1795 to London, where he was cordially welcomed. In 1795 the magistrates of Aberdeen appointed him to the chair of divinity, and soon after he was made principal of Marischal College. In the year 1800 he was appointed chaplain in ordinary to the king, and in 1804 dean of the chapel royal, and of the order of the Thistle. He died on the 11th of May 1830. His most widely-known works were an Essay on the Natural Equality of Men (1793), which gained the Teyler Society's prize; a treatise On the Existence of the Supreme Creator (1816), to which was awarded the first Burnet prize of £1250; and A Comparative View of Christianity, and of the other Forms of Religion with regard to their Moral Tendency (2 vols., 1826).

BROWN BESS, a name given in the British army to the flintlock musket with which the infantry were formerly armed. The term is applied generally to the weapon of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and became obsolete on the introduction of the rifle. The first part of the name derives from the colour of the wooden stock, for the name is found much earlier than the introduction of "browning" the barrel of muskets; "Bess" may be either a humorous feminine equivalent of the "brown-bill," the old weapon of the British infantry, or a corruption of the "buss," i.e. box, in "blunderbuss."

BROWNE, EDWARD HAROLD (1811-1891), English bishop, was born at Aylesbury and educated at Eton and Cambridge. He was ordained in 1836, and two years later was elected senior tutor of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. From 1843 to 1849 he was vice-principal of St David's College, Lampeter, and in 1854 was appointed Norrisian professor of divinity at Cambridge. His best-known book is the Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles (vol. i., Cambridge, 1850; vol. ii., London, 1853), which remained for many years a standard work on the subject. In 1864 he was consecrated bishop of Ely, and proceeded to reorganize his diocese. He maintained that the deposition of Bishop Colenso endangered the independence of bishops. Nevertheless, he was opposed to Colenso's criticism of the Bible, and replied to it in The Pentateuch and the Elohistic Psalms (1863), written from a conservative standpoint. In 1869 he was one of the consecrating prelates when Temple became bishop of Exeter, and endeavoured to remove the prejudice against his appointment by showing that Temple was not responsible for the views of other writers in the famous Essays and Reviews (1860). He was bishop of Winchester from 1873 till 1890, when ill-health compelled him to resign.

BROWNE, HABLÔT KNIGHT (1815-1882), English artist, famous as "Phiz," the illustrator of the best-known books by Charles Dickens, Charles Lever and Harrison Ainsworth in their original editions. His talents in other directions of art were of a very ordinary kind. As an interpreter and illustrator of Dickens's characters, "Phiz," as he always signed his drawings, was in some respects the equal of his rivals Cruikshank and Leech, while, in his own way, he excelled them both. Of Huguenot extraction, he was born in Lambeth on the 11th of June 1815. His father died early and left the family badly off. Browne was apprenticed to Finden, the eminent engraver on steel, in whose studio he obtained his only artistic education. To engraving, however, he was entirely unsuited, and having in 1833 secured an important prize from the Society of Arts for a drawing of "John Gilpin," he abandoned engraving in the following year and took to other artistic work, with the ultimate object of becoming a painter. In the spring of 1836 he met Charles Dickens. It was at the moment when the serial publication of Pickwick was in danger from the want of a capable interpreter for the illustrations. Dickens knew Browne slightly as the illustrator of his little pamphlet Sunday under Three Heads, and probably this slight knowledge of his work stood the draughtsman in good stead. In the original edition of Pickwick, issued in shilling monthly parts from early in 1836 until the end of 1837, the first seven plates were drawn by Robert Seymour, a clever illustrator who committed suicide in April 1836. The next two plates were by R.W. Buss, an otherwise successful portrait-painter and lecturer, but they were so poor that a change was imperative. Browne and W.M. Thackeray called independently at the publishers' office with specimens of their powers for Dickens's inspection. The novelist preferred Browne. Browne's first two etched plates for Pickwick were signed "Nemo," but the third was signed "Phiz," a pseudonym which was retained in future. When asked to explain why he chose this name he answered that the change from "Nemo" to "Phiz" was made "to harmonize better with Dickens's Boz." Possibly Browne adopted it to conceal his identity, hoping one day to become famous as a painter. It is to be noted, however, that "Phiz" is usually attached to his better work and H.K.B. to his less successful drawings. "Phiz" undoubtedly created Sam Weller, so far as his well-known figure is concerned, as Seymour had created Pickwick. Dickens and "Phiz" were personally good friends in early days, and in 1838 travelled together to Yorkshire to see the schools of which Nicholas Nickleby became the hero; afterwards they made several journeys of this nature in company to facilitate the illustrator's work. The other Dickens characters which "Phiz" realized most successfully are perhaps Squeers, Micawber, Guppy, Major Bagstock, Mrs Gamp, Tom Pinch and, above all, David Copperfield. Of the books by Dickens which "Phiz" illustrated the best are David Copperfield, Pickwick, Dombey and Son, Martin Chuzzlewit and Bleak House. Browne made several drawings for Punch in early days and also towards the end of his life; his chief work in this direction being the clever design for the wrapper which was used for eighteen months from January 1842. He also contributed to Punch's Pocket Books. In addition to his work for Dickens, "Phiz" illustrated over twenty of Lever's novels (the most successful being Harry Lorrequer, Charles O'Malley, Jack Hinton and the Knight of Gwynne). He also illustrated Harrison Ainsworth's and Frank Smedley's novels. Mervyn Clitheroe by Ainsworth is one of the most admirable of the artist's Works. Browne was in continual employment by publishers until 1867, when he had a stroke of paralysis. Although he recovered slightly and made many illustrations on wood, they were by comparison inferior productions which the draughtsman's admirers would willingly ignore. In 1878 he was awarded an annuity by the Royal Academy. He gradually became worse in health, until he died on the 8th of July 1882.

Most of Browne's work was etched on steel plates because these yielded a far larger edition than copper. Browne was annoyed at some of his etchings being transferred to stone by the publishers and printed as lithographic reproductions. Partly with the view to prevent this treatment of his work he employed a machine to rule a series of lines over the plate in order to obtain what appeared to be a tint; when manipulated with acid this tint gave an effect somewhat resembling mezzotint, which at that time it was found practically impossible to transfer to stone. The illustrations executed by Browne are particularly noteworthy because they realized exactly what the reader most desired to see represented. So skilful was he in drawing and composition that no part of the story was avoided by reason of the elaborateness of the subject. Whatever was the best incident for illustration was always the one selected.

See D. Croal Thomson, Hablôt Knight Browne, "Phiz": Life and Letters (London, 1884); John Forster, Life of Charles Dickens (London, 1871-1874); F.G. Kitton, "Phiz": A Memoir (London, 1882); Charles Dickens and his Illustrators (London, 1899); M.H. Spielmann, The History of Punch (London, 1895).

(D. C. T.)

BROWNE, ISAAC HAWKINS (1705-1760), English poet, was born on the 21st of January 1705 at Burton-upon-Trent, of which place his father was vicar. He was educated at Lichfield, at Westminster school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. After taking his M.A. degree he removed to Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar, but never practised. He was the author of "Design and Beauty," a poem addressed to his friend Joseph Highmore the painter; and of "The Pipe of Tobacco" which parodied Cibber, Ambrose Philips, Thomson, Young, Pope and Swift, who were then all living. He was elected to Parliament through private interest in 1744 and again in 1747 for the borough of Wenlock in Shropshire. In 1754 he published his chief work, De Animi Immortalitate, a Latin poem much admired by the scholars of his time. The best of the many translations of these verses is by Soame Jenyns. Browne is said by Johnson to have been "one of the first wits of this country." He was a brilliant talker in private life, especially when his tongue was loosed by wine; but he made no mark in public life. He died in London on the 14th of February 1760.

Two editions of his Poems on Various Subjects, Latin and English, were published in 1767 by his son Isaac Hawkins Browne (1745-1818), the author of two volumes of essays on religion and morals. One of these was printed for private circulation, and is said to have contained a memoir. A full account by Andrew Kippis in Biographia Britannica (1780) includes large extracts from his poems.

BROWNE, JAMES (1703-1841), Scottish man of letters, was born at Whitefield, Perthshire, in 1793. He was educated at Edinburgh and at the university of St Andrews, where he studied for the church. He wrote a "Sketch of the History of Edinburgh," for Ewbank's Picturesque Views of that city, 1823-1825. In 1826 he became a member of the Faculty of Advocates, and obtained the degree of LL.D. from King's College, Aberdeen. His works include a Critical Examination of Macculloch's Work on the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1826), Aperçu sur les Hiêroglyphes d'Égypte (Paris, 1827), a Vindication of the Scottish Bar from the Attacks of Mr Broughton, and History of the Highlands and Highland Clans (1834-1836). He was appointed editor of the Caledonian Mercury in 1827; and two years later he became sub-editor of the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which he contributed a large number of articles. He died in April 1841.

BROWNE, SIR JAMES (1839-1896), Anglo-Indian engineer and administrator, was the son of Robert Browne of Falkirk in Scotland. He was educated at the military college, Addiscombe, and received a commission in the Bengal engineers in 1857. He served in the expedition against the Mahsud Waziris in 1860, being mentioned in despatches, and in 1863 in the Umbeyla campaign, when he was three times mentioned. In January 1875 he became superintendent of works for the building of the Indus bridge. In 1877 he was promoted lieutenant-colonel, and in 1878-1879 accompanied Sir Donald Stewart as political officer during the Afghan War. He took part in several engagements, was mentioned in despatches, and received the C.B. In 1881 he became colonel, and in 1882 commanded the Indian engineer contingent sent to Egypt, being present at the battle of Tell-el-Kebir. For his services in Egypt he received the 3rd class of the Osmanieh Order and the khedive's star. In 1884 he was appointed engineer in chief of the Sind-Pishin railway. In 1888 he was made a K.C.S.I, and in 1889 quarter-master-general for India. In 1892 he was appointed agent to the governor-general in Baluchistan, in succession to Sir Robert Sandeman, his intimate experience of the Baluchis, gained during his railway work, having specially fitted him for this post. He died suddenly on the 13th of June 1896. Sir James Browne was a man of splendid courage and physique, and many tales are told of the personal prowess which, together with his sympathetic knowledge of the natives, made him a popular hero among the frontier tribesmen.

See General McLeod Innes, The Life and Times of Sir James Browne (1905).

BROWNE, MAXIMILIAN ULYSSES, Count von, Baron de Camus and Mountany (1705-1757), Austrian field marshal, was born at Basel on the 23rd of October 1705. His father (Ulysses Freiherr v. Browne, d. 1731) was an Irish exile of 1690, who entered the imperial service and in 1716 was made a count of the Empire (Reichsgraf) by the emperor Charles VI. His uncle Georg, Reichsgraf von Browne (1698-1792), was a distinguished soldier, who rose to the rank of field marshal in the Russian army, and was made Reichsgraf by the emperor Joseph II. in 1779. The powerful influence which he commanded, through his father and his wife (née Countess Marie Philippine v. Martinitz), advanced the young officer through the subordinate grades so rapidly that at the age of twenty-nine he was colonel of an infantry regiment. But he justified his early promotion in the field, and in the Italian campaign of 1734 he greatly distinguished himself. In the Tirolese fighting of 1735, and in the unfortunate Turkish war, he won further distinction as a general officer. He was a lieutenant field marshal in command of the Silesian garrisons when in 1740 Frederick II. and the Prussian army overran the province. His careful employment of such resources as he possessed materially hindered the king in his conquest and gave time for Austria to collect a field army (see Austrian Succession, War of the). He was present at Mollwitz, where he received a severe wound. His vehement opposition to all half-hearted measures brought him frequently into conflict with his superiors, but contributed materially to the unusual energy displayed by the Austrian armies in 1742 and 1743. In the following campaigns Browne exhibited the same qualities of generalship and the same impatience of control. In 1745 he served under Count Traun, and was promoted to the rank of Feldzeugmeister. In 1746 he was present in the Italian campaign and the battles of Piacenza and Rottofredo. Browne himself with the advanced guard forced his way across the Apennines and entered Genoa. He was thereafter placed in command of the army intended for the invasion of France, and early in 1747 of all the imperial forces in Italy. At the end of the war Browne was engaged in the negotiations which led to the convention of Nice (January 21st, 1749). He became commander-in-chief in Bohemia in 1751, and field marshal two years later. He was still in Bohemia when the Seven Years' War opened with Frederick's invasion of Saxony (1756). Browne's army, advancing to the relief of Pirna (see Seven Years' War), was met, and, after a hard struggle, defeated by the king at Lobositz, but he drew off in excellent order, and soon made another attempt with a picked force to reach Pirna, by wild mountain tracks. The field marshal never spared himself, bivouacking in the snow with his men, and Carlyle records that private soldiers made rough shelters over him as he slept. He actually reached the Elbe at Schandau, but as the Saxons were unable to break out Browne retired, having succeeded, however, in delaying the development of Frederick's operations for a whole campaign. In the campaign of 1757 he voluntarily served under Prince Charles of Lorraine (q.v.) who was made commander-in-chief, and on the 6th of May in that year, while leading a bayonet charge at the battle of Prague, Browne, like Schwerin on the same day, met his death. He was carried mortally wounded into Prague, and there died on the 26th of June, his last days embittered by the knowledge that he was unjustly held responsible for the failure of the campaign. His name has been borne, since 1888, by the 36th Austrian infantry.

See Zuverlässige Lebensbeschreibung U.M. Reichsgrafen, v. B. K.-K. Gen.-Feldmarschall (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1757); Baron O'Cahill, Gesch. der grossten Herrfuhrer (Rastadt, 1785, v. ii. pp. 264-316).

BROWNE, PETER (?1665-1735), Irish divine and bishop of Cork and Ross, was born in Co. Dublin, not long 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 "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 1733. In 1713 he had become somewhat notorious from his vigorous pamphleteering attack on the fashion of drinking healths, especially "to the glorious and immortal memory." His two most important works are the Procedure, Extent, 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 as leading to atheism by Berkeley in his Alciphron (Dialogue iv.), and a 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. His analogical arguments resemble those found in the Bampton Lectures of Dean Mansel. Browne was a man of abstemious habits, charitable disposition, and impressive eloquence. He died on the 27th of August 1735.

BROWNE, ROBERT (1550-1633), a leader among the early Separatist Puritans (hence sometimes called Brownists), was born about 1550 at Tolethorpe, near Stamford. He was of an ancient family, several members of which had been distinguished as merchants, county magnates and local benefactors. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, "commencing B.A." in 1572. For some years he was a schoolmaster, but in what place is uncertain. In 1579, on a brother's application and without his own consent, he was licensed to preach, and actually preached for some six months in Cambridge, where he gained considerable popularity; but impugning the episcopal order of the Established Church, he had his licence revoked early in the following year. He then went, on the invitation of Robert Harrison, "Maister in the Hospitall," to Norwich, where he soon gathered a numerous congregation, the members of which became associated in a religious "covenant," to the refusing of "all ungodlie communion with wicked persons." He seems also to have preached in various parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, especially at Bury St Edmunds, and vigorously denounced the form of government existing in the Church, which at this time he held incompatible with true "preaching of the word." Dr Freake, bishop of Norwich, caused him to be imprisoned early in 1581, but he was ere long released through the influence of his remote kinsman, the Lord Treasurer Burghley. Before the end of 1581, however, he incurred two more imprisonments, and, apparently in January 1582, migrated with his whole company to Middelburg in Zealand. There they organized a church on what they conceived to be the New Testament model, but the community broke up within two years owing to internal dissensions.

Meanwhile, Browne issued two most important works, A Treatise of Reformation without Tarying for Anie, in which he asserts the inalienable right of the church to effect necessary reforms without the authorization or permission of the civil magistrate; and A Booke which sheweth the life and manners of all True Christians, in which he enunciates the theory of Congregational independency (see Congregationalism). These, with a third tract (A Treatise upon the 23. of Matthew, see C. Burrage, as below, pp. 21-25), making together a thin quarto, were published at Middelburg in 1582. The following year two men were hanged at Bury St Edmunds for circulating them. In January 1584^[1] Browne and some of his company came to Edinburgh, after visiting Dundee and St Andrews. He remained some months in Scotland, endeavouring to commend his ecclesiastical theories, but had no success. He then returned to Stamford, in which town or neighbourhood he seems to have resided chiefly for the next two years, his residence being broken by visits to London and probably to the continent (early in 1585), and by at least one imprisonment (summer, 1585). His attitude to the lawfulness of occasional attendance at services in parish churches seems to have been changing about this time; on the 7th of October 1585 he was induced to make a qualified submission to the established order. The story that this result was brought about by excommunication, actual or threatened, is very doubtful, and rests on late and questionable authority. A further submission prepared the way for his appointment, in November 1586, to the mastership of St Olave's grammar school, Southwark, which he held for more than two years. During part of this time he was much engaged in controversy, on the one hand with Stephen Bredwell, an uncompromising advocate of the established order, and on the other with some of those who more or less occupied his own earlier position, and now looked upon him as a renegade. In particular he several times replied to Barrowe and Greenwood; one of his replies, entitled A Reproofe of certaine schismatical persons and their doctrine touching the hearing and preaching of the word of God (1587-1588), has recently been recovered, and sheds a flood of light upon the development of Browne's later views (see Burrage, pp. 45-62, for this whole period).

Before the 20th of June 1589 his mastership of St Olave's seems to have terminated, and after being rector of Little Casterton (in the gift of his eldest brother) for a month or two, he finally, in September 1591, accepted episcopal ordination and the rectory of Achurch-cum-Thorpe Waterville, in Northamptonshire. There he ministered for forty-two years, with one lengthy interval, 1617-1626, which is only partly accounted for (see Burrage, pp. 68-71). There is reason to believe that he never entirely abandoned his early ideal, but latterly thought it possible to maintain a spiritual fellowship within the framework of the Established Church. The closing years of his life seem to have been clouded, due partly to separation among his own flock, and partly to growing irritability in himself, a lonely and disappointed man. When over eighty years old he had a dispute with the parish constable about a rate, blows were struck, and before a magistrate he behaved so stubbornly that he was sent to Northampton gaol, where he died in October 1633. He was buried in St Giles's churchyard, Northampton. In spite of his later attitude of compromise with expediency, which he felt forced on him by external conditions too strong to defy or ignore, Robert Browne remains a pioneer in ecclesiastical theory in England, the first formulator of an ideal which subsequently became known as Congregationalism (q.v.). He rediscovered certain forgotten aspects of primitive church life, and did not shrink from suffering for the sake of what he held to be the truth. In addition to the works above-mentioned, Browne wrote several controversial and apologetic treatises, of which some remained in MS. until quite recently, and some are still missing.

See H.M. Dexter, The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years (1880); C. Burrage, The True Story of Robert Browne (Oxford, 1906); Congregational Historical Society's Transactions, passim (1901-1906).

BROWNE, SIR THOMAS (1605-1682), English author and physician, was born in London, on the 19th of October 1605. He was admitted as a scholar of Winchester school in 1616, and matriculated at Broadgates Hall (Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1623, where he graduated B.A. in January 1626. He took the further degree of M.A. in 1629, studied medicine, and practised for some time in Oxfordshire. Between 1630 and 1633 he left England, travelled in Ireland, France and Italy, and on his way home received the degree of M.D. at the university of Leiden. He returned to London in 1634, and, after a short residence at Shipden Hall, near Halifax, settled in practice at Norwich in 1637. He married in 1641 Dorothy Mileham. Their eldest son, Edward, became president of the Royal College of Physicians, and glimpses of their happy family life are obtainable in the fragmentary correspondence contained in Simon Wilkin's edition. In 1642 a copy of his Religio Medici, which he describes as "a private exercise directed to myself," was printed from one of his MSS. without his knowledge, and reviewed by Sir Kenelm Digby in Observations ... (1643). The interest aroused by this edition compelled Browne to put forth a correct version (1643) of the work, in which letters between Digby and Browne were included. The book was probably written as early as 1635, for he describes himself as still under thirty. In 1646 he published Pseudodoxia Epidemica; Enquiries into very many commonly received Tenents and commonly presumed Truths (1646), and in 1658 Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall; or, a discourse of the sepulchrall urnes lately found in Norfolk. Together with the Garden of Cyrus, or the quincunciall, lozenge, or net-work plantations of the ancients, artificially, naturally, and mystically considered. With Sundry observations (1658). These four works were all that he published, though several tracts, notably the Christian Morals^[1] intended as a continuation of Religio Medici, were prepared for publication, and appeared posthumously. In 1671 he received the honour of knighthood from Charles II. on his visit to Norwich. He began a correspondence with John Evelyn in 1658. Very few of the letters are extant, but the diarist has left an account of a visit to Browne (Diary, 17th of October 1671). He died in 1682 on his seventy-seventh birthday, and was buried at St Peter's, Mancroft, Norwich. His coffin was accidentally broken in 1840, and his skull is preserved in the museum of the Norwich hospital.

Browne's writings are among the few specimens of purely literary work produced during a period of great political excitement and discord. He remained to all appearance placidly indifferent to the struggle going on around him. His first book appeared in the year of the outbreak of the Civil War; Pseudodoxia Epidemica in the critical year of 1646; and Hydriotaphia, the reflections on the shortness of human life inspired by the unearthing of some funeral urns, on the eve of the Restoration. A mind as aloof as his is a psychological curiosity, and its peculiarities are faithfully reflected in the form and matter of his works. His display of erudition, his copious citations from authorities, his constant use of metaphor and analogy, and his elaborate diction, are common qualities of the writers of the 17th century, but Browne stands apart from his contemporaries by reason of the peculiar cast of his mind. Imbued with the Platonic mysticism which taught him to look on this world as only the image, the shadow of an invisible system, he regarded the whole of experience as only food for contemplation. Nothing is too great or too small for him; all finds a place in the universe of being, which he seems to regard almost from the position of an outsider. He did not speculate systematically on the problems of existence, but he meditates repeatedly on the outward and visible signs of mortality, and on what lies beyond death. Of Browne, as of the 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 on one another. Much of the quaintness of his style, no doubt, depends on the excessive employment of latinized words, many of which have failed to justify their existence; but the peculiarities of his vocabulary do not explain the unique character of his writing, which is appreciated to-day as much as ever.

The Religio Medici was a puzzle to his contemporaries, and it is still hard to reconcile its contradictions. A Latin translation appeared at Leiden in 1644, and it was widely read on the continent, being translated subsequently into Dutch, French and German. In Paris it was issued in the belief that Browne was really a Roman Catholic, but in Rome the authorities thought otherwise, and the book was placed on the Index Expurgatorius. It is the confession of a mind keen and sceptical in some aspects, and credulous in others. Browne professes to be absolutely free from heretical opinions, but asserts the right to be guided by his own reason in cases where no precise guidance is given either by Scripture or by Church teaching. "I love," he says, "to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an O, Altitudo!" The Pseudodoxia Epidemica, written in a more direct and simple style than is usual with Browne, is a wonderful storehouse of out-of-the-way facts and scraps of erudition, exhibiting a singular mixture of credulity and shrewdness. Sir Thomas evidently takes delight in discussing the wildest fables. That he himself was by no means free from superstition is proved by the fact that the condemnation of two unfortunate women, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, for witchcraft at Norwich in 1664 was aided by his professional evidence. 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 Urnburial, 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.

In 1684 appeared a collection of Certain Miscellany Tracts (ed. Tenison), and in 1712 Posthumous Works of the learned Sir Thomas Browne. The first collected edition of Browne's works appeared in 1686. It is said to have been edited by Dr, afterwards Archbishop Tenison. Sir Thomas Browne's Works, including his Life and Correspondence, were carefully edited by Simon Wilkin in 1835-1836. Among modern reprints may be mentioned Dr W.A. Greenhill's editions in the "Golden Treasury" series of the Religio Medici, Letter to a friend and Christian Morals (1881), with an admirable bibliographical note on the complicated subject of the numerous editions of the Religio Medici; of the Hydriotaphia and the Garden of Cyrus (1896), completed by Mr E.H. Marshall; a complete edition for the English Library, edited by Mr Charles Sayle (1904, &c.). Browne's interest in bird-lore is noted by Evelyn, and some Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk were collected from his MSS. in the Sloane Collection, and edited by Thomas Southwell in 1902.

BROWNE, WILLIAM (1591-1643), English pastoral poet, was born at Tavistock, Devonshire, in 1591, of a branch of the family of Browne of Betchworth Castle, Surrey. He received his early education at the grammar school of his native town, and is said to have proceeded to Oxford about 1603. After a short residence at Clifford's Inn he entered the Inner Temple in 1611. His elegy on the death of Henry, prince of Wales, and the first book of Britannia's Pastorals appeared in 1613; the Shepherd's Pipe, which contained some eclogues by other poets, in 1614. The second book of the pastorals (1616) is dedicated to William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, whose seat at Wilton was Browne's home for some time. In 1624 he returned to Oxford as tutor to Robert Dormer, afterwards earl of Carnarvon, matriculating at Exeter College in April and receiving his M.A. degree in November of the same year. Nearly all Browne's poetic work dates from his early manhood, before his marriage in 1628 with Timothy, daughter of Sir Thomas Eversham of Horsham, Essex. In the fourth eclogue of George Wither's Shepherd's Hunting, written as early as 1613-1614, Philarete (Wither) asks Willy (Browne) why he is silent, and the reply is that some "my music do contemne." The times were unfavourable to his tranquil talent, and the second half of his life was spent in retirement. He died some time before 1645, when letters of administration were granted to his widow, and he may have been the William Browne whose burial is recorded in the Tavistock registers under the date of the 27th of March 1643.

Browne was the pupil and friend of Michael Drayton, who associates "my Browne" in the "Epistle to Henry Reynolds" with the two Beaumonts as "my dear companions whom I freely chose, My bosom friends." But directly indebted as Browne is for the form of his poems, for the slight story and the rather wearisome allegory, to Spenser, Sidney, Drayton and especially to Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, his poetry is no mere copy of any of these models. His Arcadia is localized in his native Devonshire. He was untiring in his praises of "Tavy's voiceful stream (to whom I owe more strains than from my pipe can ever flow)." He knew local history and traditions, and he celebrates the gallant sailors who "by their power made the Devonian shore Mock the proud Tagus." (Brit. Past. bk. ii., song 3). It is for his truthful, affectionate pictures of his country life and its surroundings that the stories of Marina and Celandine, Doridon and the rest are still read. A copy of Browne's pastorals with annotations in Milton's handwriting is preserved in the Huth library, and there are many points of likeness between Lycidas and the elegy on Philarete (Thomas Manwood) in the fourth eclogue of the Shepherd's Pipe. Keats was a student of Browne, and Herrick's fairy fantasies are thought to owe something to the third book of the pastorals.

The first two books of Britannia's Pastorals were re-issued in 1625. The third, though it had no doubt circulated in the author's lifetime, remained unknown until Beriah Botfield discovered a copy of it in the library of Salisbury cathedral, bound up with the 1613 and 1616 editions of the first and second books. This MS. was edited for the Percy Society by T.C. Croker in 1852. A collected edition of Browne's works was published in 1772 by John Davies. It is not known whether The Inner Temple Masque on the story of Ulysses and Circe, which was written for performance on the 13th of January 1615, was ever actually represented. A series of sonnets to Caelia, some epistles, elegies and epitaphs, with some other miscellaneous poems, complete the list of Browne's works. These have been collected from various sources, the most important being Lansdowne MS. 777 (British Museum), and they were printed for the first time by Sir S.E. Brydges in 1815. Excellent modern complete editions of Browne and Mr W.C. Hazlitt's (1868-1869) for the Roxburghe library, and a more compact one (1894) by Mr Gordon Goodwin, with an introduction by Mr A.H. Bullen, for the "Muse's Library." For an elaborate analysis of Browne's obligations to earlier pastoral writers see F.W. Moorman, "William Browne" (Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Culturgeschichte der Germanischen Völker Strassburg, 1897). A translation of Marin le Roy de Gomberville's Polexandre, by William Browne (1647), may be a posthumous work of the poet's.

BROWNE, WILLIAM GEORGE (1768-1813), English traveller, was born at Great Tower Hill, London, on the 25th of July 1768. At seventeen he was sent to Oriel College, Oxford. Having had a moderate competence left him by his father, on quitting the university he applied himself entirely to literary pursuits. But the fame of James Bruce's travels, and of the first discoveries made by the African Association, determined him to become an explorer of Central Africa. He went first to Egypt, arriving at Alexandria in January 1792. He spent some time in visiting the oasis of Siwa or Jupiter Ammon, and employed the remainder of the year in studying Arabic and in examining the ruins of ancient Egypt. In the spring of 1793 he visited Sinai, and in May set out for Darfur, joining the great caravan which every year went by the desert route from Egypt to that country. This was his most important journey, in which he acquired a great variety of original information. He was forcibly detained by the sultan of Darfur and endured much hardship, being unable to effect his purpose of returning by Abyssinia. He was, however, allowed to return to Egypt with the caravan in 1796; after this he spent a year in Syria, and did not arrive in London till September 1798. In 1799 he published his Travels in Africa, Egypt and Syria, from the year 1792 to 1798. The work was full of valuable information; but, from the abruptness and dryness of the style, it never became popular. In 1800 Browne again left England, and spent three years in visiting Greece, some parts of Asia Minor and Sicily. In 1812 he once more set out for the East, 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 travelled through Asia Minor and Armenia, made a short stay at Erzerum, and arrived on the 1st of June at Tabriz. About the end of the summer of 1813 he left Tabriz for Teheran, intending to proceed thence into Tartary, but was shortly afterwards murdered. Some bones, believed to be his, were afterwards found and interred near the grave of Jean de Thevenot, the French traveller.

Robert Walpole published, in the second volume of his Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey (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 (1802).

BROWNHILLS, an urban district in the Lichfield parliamentary division of Staffordshire, England, 6 m. W. of Lichfield, on branch lines of the London & North-Western and Midland railways, and near the Essington Canal. Pop. (1891) 11,820; (1901) 15,252. There are extensive coal-mines in the district, forming part of the Cannock Chase deposit. The town lies on the Roman Watling Street, and remains of earthworks are seen at Knave's Castle, on the Street, and at Castle Old Fort, 2 m. S.E. Ogley Hay, the parish of which partly covers Brownhills, is a large adjoining village; there are also Great Wyrley and Norton-under-Cannock or Norton Canes to the N.W. and N., with collieries, and at Church Bridge are brick, tile, and edge-tool works. Wyrley Grove is a picturesque mansion of the 17th century.

BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT (1806-1861), English poet, wife of the poet Robert Browning, was born probably at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, for this was the home of her father and mother for some time after their marriage in 1805. Her baptismal register gives the date of her birth as the 6th of March 1806, and that of her christening as the 10th of February 1808. The long misunderstanding as to her age, whereby she was supposed to have been born three years later, was shared by her contemporaries and even for a time by her husband. She was the daughter and eldest child of Edward Barrett Moulton, who added the surname of Barrett on the death of his maternal grandfather, whose estates in Jamaica he inherited. His wife was Mary Graham-Clarke, daughter of J. Graham-Clarke of Fenham Hall, Newcastle-on-Tyne. She died when her illustrious daughter was twenty-two years old. Elizabeth's childhood was passed in the country, chiefly at Hope End, a house bought by her father in the beautiful country in sight of the Malvern Hills. "They seem to me," she wrote, "my native hills; for though I was born in the county of Durham, I was an infant when I went first into their neighbourhood, and lived there until I had passed twenty by several years." Her country poems, such as "The Lost Bower," "Hector in the Garden," and "The Deserted Garden," refer to the woods and gardens of Hope End. Elizabeth Barrett was much the companion of her father, who pleased himself with printing fifty copies of what she calls her "great epic of eleven or twelve years old, in four books"—The Battle of Marathon (sent to the printer in 1819). She owns this to have been "a curious production for a child," but disclaims for it anything more than "an imitative faculty." The love of Pope's Homer, she adds, led her to the study of Greek, and of Latin as a help to Greek, "and the influence of all those tendencies is manifest so long afterwards as in my Essay on Mind [Essay on Mind and other Poems, 1826], a didactic poem written when I was seventeen or eighteen, and long repented of." She was a keen student, and it is told of her that when her health failed she had her Greek books bound so as to look like novels, for fear her doctor should forbid her continuous study. At this time began her friendship with the blind scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd, with whom she read Greek authors, and especially the Greek Christian Fathers and Poets. To him she addressed later three of her sonnets, and he was one of her chief friends until his death in 1848. In 1832 Mr Barrett sold his house of Hope End, and brought his family to Sidmouth, Devon, for some three years. There Elizabeth made a translation of the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, published with some original poems (1833). After that time London became the home of the Barretts until the children married and the father died. The temporary dwelling was at 74 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, and in 1838 the lease was taken of the final house, 50 Wimpole Street.

It is in the middle of the year 1836 that Elizabeth Barrett's active literary life began. She then made the acquaintance of R.H. Horne, afterwards famous for a time as the author of Orion, but perhaps best remembered as her correspondent (Letters to R.H. Horne, 2 vols. 1877), and this acquaintance led to the appearance of rather frequent poems by Miss Barrett in the New Monthly Magazine, edited by Bulwer (Lord Lytton), and in other magazines or annuals. But the publication of The Seraphim and other Poems (1838) was a graver step. "My present attempt," she writes in this year, "is actually, and will be considered by others, more a trial of strength than either of my preceding ones." There was at that date a lull in the production of conspicuous books of poetry. Wordsworth had ceased, Browning and Tennyson had hardly begun to write their best. Miss Barrett's volume was well reviewed, but not popular, and no second edition was required; of the poems afterwards famous it contained three, "Cowper's Grave," "My Doves," and "The Sea-Mew," the first impassioned and the other two very quiet, which a fine taste must rank high among all her works. The Quarterly Review (September 1840), in an article on "Modern English Poetesses," criticizes The Seraphim with Prometheus, and treats the former with respect, but does not lift the author out of the quite unequal company of Mrs Norton, "V," and other contemporary women. In the previous year Elizabeth had made the memorable acquaintance of Wordsworth. "No," she writes, "I was not at all disappointed in Wordsworth, although perhaps I should not have singled him from the multitude as a great man. There is a reserve even in his countenance; ... his eyes have more meekness than brilliancy; and in his slow, even articulation there is rather the solemnity and calmness of truth itself than the animation and energy of those who seek for it ... He was very kind, and sate near me and talked to me as long as he was in the room, and recited a translation by Cary of a sonnet of Dante's—and altogether it was a dream." With Landor, at the same date, a meeting took place that had long results. At this time, too, began another of Elizabeth's valued friendships—that with Miss Mitford, author of Our Village and other works less well remembered. Mr John Kenyon also became at about this time a dear and intimate friend. He was a distant cousin of the Barretts, had published some verse, and was a warm and generous friend to men of letters. From the date of the birth of their child (1849) he gave the Brownings a hundred pounds a year, and when he died in 1856 he bequeathed to them eleven thousand pounds. To him a great number of Elizabeth's letters are addressed, and to him in later years was Aurora Leigh dedicated. Elizabeth Barrett began also in London an acquaintance with Harriet Martineau.

Full of the interest of friendship and literature, the residence in London was unfavourable to Elizabeth's health. In early girlhood she had a spinal affection, and her lungs became delicate. She broke a blood-vessel in the beginning of the Barretts' life in town, and was thereafter an invalid—by no means entirely confined to her room, but often imprisoned there, and generally a recluse, until her marriage. Her state was so threatening that in 1838 it was found necessary to remove her to Torquay, where she spent three years, accompanied by her brother Edward, the dearest of her eight brothers, the only one, she said many years later, who ever comprehended her, and for a time by her father and sisters. During this time of physical suffering she underwent the greatest grief of her life by the drowning of her beloved brother, who with two friends went sailing in a small boat and was lost in Babbacombe Bay. Rumours of the foundering reached the unhappy sister, who was assured of the worst after three days, when the bodies were found. The accident of Edward Barrett's meeting with his death through her residence at Torquay, and the minor accident of her having parted from him on the day of his death, as she said, "with pettish words," increased her anguish of heart to horror. A few days before she had written, "There are so many mercies close around me that God's being seems proved to me, demonstrated to me, by His manifested love." When the blow came, its heavy weight and closeness to her heart convinced her, she wrote, through an awful experience of suffering, of divine action. But many years later the mention of her brother's death was intolerable to her. At the time she only did not die. She had to remain for nearly a year day and night within hearing of the sea, of which the sound seemed to her the moan of a dying man.

There is here an interval of silence in the correspondence which busied her secluded life at all ages; but with an impulse of self-protection she went to work as soon as her strength sufficed. One of her tasks was a part taken in the Chaucer Modernized (1841), a work suggested by Wordsworth, to which he, Leigh Hunt, Horne and others contributed. In 1841 she returned to Wimpole Street, and in that and the following year she was at work on two series of articles on the Greek Christian poets and on the English poets, written for the Athenaeum under the editorship of Mr C.W. Dilke. In work she found some interest and even some delight: "Once I wished not to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up in me again from under the crushing foot of heavy grief. Be it all as God wills."

It is in 1842 that we notice the name of Robert Browning in her letters: "Mr Horne the poet and Mr Browning the poet were not behind in approbation," she says in regard to her work on the poets. "Mr Browning is said to be learned in Greek, especially the dramatists." In this year also she declares her love for Tennyson. To Kenyon she writes, "I ought to be thanking you for your great kindness about this divine Tennyson." In 1842, moreover, she had the pleasure of a letter from Wordsworth, who had twice asked Kenyon for permission to visit her. The visit was not permitted on account of Miss Barrett's ill-health. Now Haydon sent her his unfinished painting of the great poet musing upon Helvellyn; she wrote her sonnet on the portrait, and Haydon sent it to Rydal Mount. Wordsworth's commendation is rather cool. In August 1843 "The Cry of the Children" appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, and during the year she was associated with her friend Horne in a critical work, The New Spirit of the Age, rather by advice than by direct contribution. Her two volumes of poems (1844) appeared, six years after her former book, under the title of Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett. The warmest praises that greeted the new poems were H.F. Chorley's in the Athenaeum, John Forster's in the Examiner, and those conveyed in Blackwood, the Dublin Review, the New Quarterly and the Atlas. Letters came from Carlyle and others. Both he and Miss Martineau selected as their favourite poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," a violent piece of work. In the beginning of the following year came the letter from a stranger that was to be so momentous to both. "I had a letter from Browning the poet last night," she writes to her old friend Mrs Martin, "which threw me into ecstasies—Browning, the author of Paracelsus, the king of the mystics." She is flattered, though not to "ecstasies," at about the same time by a letter from E.A. Poe, and by the dedication to her, as "the noblest of her sex," of his own work. "What is to be said, I wonder, when a man calls you the 'noblest of your sex'? 'Sir, you are the most discerning of yours.'" America was at least as quick as England to appreciate her poetry; among other messages thence came in the spring letters from Lowell and from Mrs Sigourney. "She says that the sound of my poetry is stirring the 'deep green forests of the New World'; which sounds pleasantly, does it not?" It is in the same year that the letters first speak of the hope of a journey to Italy. The winters in London, with the imprisonment which—according to the medical practice of that day—they entailed, were lowering Elizabeth's strength of resistance against disease. She longed for the change of light, scene, manners and language, and the longing became a hope, until her father's prohibition put an end to it, and doomed her, as she and others thought, to death, without any perceptible reason for the denial of so reasonable a desire.