Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1705-1760)
BROWNE, ISAAC HAWKINS, the elder (1705–1760), poet, was born on 21 Jan. 1705 at Burton-on-Trent, of which parish his father — a man of private fortune and the holder of other ecclesiastical preferments—was vicar. Receiving his first education at Lichfield, he passed to Westminster School, and thence in 1721 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a scholarship and took the degree of M.A. About 1727 he began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn, but though called to the bar he did not seriously prosecute the practice of his profession. Through the influence of the Forester family he was twice returned (1744, 1747) to the House of Commons for the borough of} Wenlock, Shropshire, near to which was his own estate. He was during his parliamentary career (1744-54) a supporter of Pelham’s Whig ministry. Before this time he had written a poem of some length on 'Design and Beauty,' addressed to Highmore the painter, and among his other productions ‘A Pipe of Tobacco,’ an ode in imitation of Pope, Swift, Thomson, and other poets then living, had gained a considerable measure of popularity. His principal work, published in 1754, was a Latin poem on the immortality of the soul—‘De Animi Immortalitate’—which received high commendation from the scholars of his time. Of this there have been several English translations, the best known of which is by Soame Jenyns. After a lingering illness he died in London on 14 Feb. 1760. An edition of his poems was published by his son [see Browne, Isaac Hawkins, the younger] in 1768. Browne had little aptitude for professional or public life, but he was a man of lively talents and varied accomplishments. The humour of some of his lighter pieces has not wholly evaporated, and the gaiety of his genius is vouched by contemporaries of much wider celebrity. Warburton, praising the poem on the soul, adds that it ‘gives me the more pleasure as it seems to be a mark of the author getting serious’ (Nichols, Illustr. of Lit. ii. 33). Mrs. Piozzi reports Dr. Johnson as saying of Browne that he was ‘of all conversers the most delightful with whom I ever was in company; his talk was at once so elegant, so apparently artless, so pure and so pleasing, it seemed a perpetual stream of sentiment, enlivened by gaiety and sparkling with images’ (Mrs. Prozzi, Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, 1786). And fifteen years after Browne’s death Johnson is found thus illustrating the proposition that a man’s powers are not to be judged by his capacity for public speech: ‘Isaac Hawkins Browne, one of the first wits of this country, got into Parliament and never opened his mouth’ (Boswell, Johnson, 5 April 1775). In the ‘Tour to the Hebrides,' two years earlier, Boswell writes (5 Sept. 1773): ‘After supper Dr. Johnson told us that Isaac Hawkins Browne drank freely for thirty years, and that he wrote his poem “De Animi Immortalitate” in some of the last of these years. I listened to this with the eagerness of one who, conscious of being himself fond of wine, is glad to hear that a man of so much genius and good thinking as Browne had the same propensity.’ This story is confirmed to some extent by Bishop Newton, who speaks of Browne’s 'failings,' and draws a parallel between him and Addison: ‘They were both excellent companions, but neither of them could open well without having a glass of wine, and then the vein flowed to admiration.’ According to the same authority, Browne died of consumption (Life of Thomas Newton, D.D., Bishop of Bristol. Written by himself, 1782).
[Biog. Brit. (Kippis), ii. 647; Return of Members; authorities quotexl in the text.]