Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/94

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

BEOOKSBANK


BEOWN


prize and the Vice-Chancellor s prize for English verse. Entering the ministry of the Church of England, and accepting a curacy in Marylebone (London), Brooke won such repute for eloquence and literary scholarship that in 1872 he was appointed Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the Queen. He seceded from the Church in 1880, and devoted himself to letters. He remained a Theist, but he did not, as is often said, join the Unitarians, and he rejected that title (Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, by L. P. Jacks, 1917, p. 496). Mr. Jacks candidly says : " When he left the Church he did not pass from the fold of one denomination into that of another " (p. 320). D. Mar. 18, 1916.

BROOKSBANK, William, writer. B. Dec. 6, 1801. In 1824 he contributed to Carlile s Lion, and he later wrote for the Eeasoner and the National Reformer. He published also A Sketch of the Religions of the Earth (1856) and a number of pam phlets. A friend of J. Watson, he helped materially in the early propaganda of Eationalism in England.

B ROSSES, President Charles de,

French historian. B. June 17, 1709. Ed. Jesuit College, Dijon. De Brosses became a Counsellor to the Parlement at the early age of twenty-one, and in later years he was President of the Dijon Parlement. All his life he was assiduous in the study of science, letters, and law, and he wrote various historical and archaeological works. He was intimate with all the "philo sophers " (except Voltaire, with whom he had a private quarrel), and he wrote a number of articles for the Dictionnaire Encyclopedique. D. Mar. 7, 1777.

BROUSSAIS, Professor Francois Joseph Victor, French physiologist. B. Dec. 17, 1772. Ed. College de Dinan. He became a surgeon in the Eevolutionary army, and in 1799 he went to Paris to complete his medical education, working under Bichat.and adopting his Materialistic 115


views. His chief medical works had a profound influence on French medicine, of which he was one of the foremost reformers. Broussais is generally regarded as the founder of the physiological school of medicine. In 1830 he became professor of pathology and general therapeutics at Paris. D. Nov. 17, 1838.

BROWN, Professor Arthur, M.A.,

LL.D., jurist. B. Apr. 5, 1884. Ed. Cambridge (St. John s College). Professor Brown had a brilliant scholastic career. He won First Class Honours in History and Law in 1905, 1906, and 1907, and was Macmahon Law Student in 1907 and Senior Whewell Scholar in International Law in 1908. In 1910 and 1911 he was secretary to Dr. Oppenheim, Whewell Pro fessor of International Law. He was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1932, and for two years worked as University Extension Lecturer in Economics, Politics, and Sociology. In 1914 he accepted the position of Professor of Politics and Eco nomics at the Cotton College, Gauhati (India). In 1914 and 1915 he gave courses of lectures at Calcutta University. At the close of 1919 he was appointed Professor of International Law at Calcutta Uni versity. Professor Brown is a member of the Eationalist Press Association.

BROWN, Ford Madox, painter. B. Apr. 16, 1821. Ed. Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp. He exhibited his first picture at Ghent in 1837, and in 1846 he settled in London. Though he was intimate with Eossetti and the Pre-Eaphaelites, he did not join them. He gave lessons in drawing to working men at Camden Town, and later at the Working Men s College. Brown painted a large number of distinguished religious pictures, but he was an utter Eationalist. His grandson, Ford Madox Hueffer, observes in his biography of the painter (Ford Madox Brown, 1896, p. 401) : In his early days he was a conventional member of the Church of England ; in later years he was an absolute Agnostic, 116