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 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.

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.

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.

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,