Note 67 — Chapter III

This tract of Dr. Browne’s, entitled “Thoughts on Civil Liberty, Licentiousness, and Faction,” hardly deserves notice except from the success of the author’s other works, of which it has all the faults and none of the merits. Its failure was complete. The author committed suicide in the following year, being then only in his 51st year. His fame rests entirely on his tragedies, which are still favourites with the public; but his treatises display an ingenuity and extent of information, and occasionally a power of expression, at least equally commendable; and it is to be regretted that those qualities were so wasted on ephemeral publications, and directed by a mind always verging on insanity. A long and very dull life of Dr. Browne is to be found in the Biographia Britannica.—E.