John Brown

Who was John Brown?

John Brown was an English divine and author.

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; 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 Richard Osbaldiston, on his admission to the bishopric of Carlisle.

His poem, entitled Honour, 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.

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 and Athelstane; Garrick played in both, and the first was a success. Brown's revision of Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair was rejected by Garrick the year before Brown's death.