Our author’s letters, though written carelesly to private friends, bear the true stamp and image of a genius.  The variety of his learning may be seen in the Lacedaemonian Mercury, where abundance of critical questions of great nicety, are answered with much solidity and judgment, as well as wit, and humour.  But that design exposing him too much to the scruples of the grave and reserved, as well as to the censure, and curiosity of the impertinent, he soon discontinued it.  Besides, as this was a periodical work, he who was totally without steadiness, was very ill qualified for such an undertaking.  When the press called upon him for immediate supply, he was often found debauching himself at a tavern, and by excessive drinking unable to perform his engagements with the public, by which no doubt the work considerably suffered.

But there is yet another reason why Mr. Brown has been charged with inequality in his writings, viz. that most of the anonymous pieces which happened to please the town, were fathered upon him.  This, though in reality an injury to him, is yet a proof of the universality of his reputation, when whatever pleased from an unknown hand was ascribed to him; but by these means he was reputed the writer of many things unworthy of him.  In poetry he was not the author of any long piece, for he was quite unambitious of reputation of that kind.  They are generally Odes, Satires, and Epigrams, and are certainly not the best part of his works.  His Translations in Prose are many, and of various kinds.  His stile is strong and masculine; and if he was not so nice in the choice of his authors, as might be expected from a man of his taste, he must be excused; for he performed his translations as a talk, prescribed him by the Booksellers, from whom he derived his chief support.  It was the misfortune of our author to appear on the stage of the world, when fears, and jealousies had soured the tempers of men, and politics, and polemics, had almost driven mirth and good nature out of the nation:  so that the careless gay humour, and negligent chearful wit, which in former days of tranquility, would have recommended him to the conversation of princes, was, in a gloomy period, lost upon a people incapable of relishing genuine humour.

An anonymous author who has given the world some account of Mr. Brown, observes, ’that it was not his immorality that hindered him from climbing to the top of poetry, and preferment; but that he had a particular way of sinning to himself.  To speak in plain English (says he) Tom Brown had less the spirit of a gentleman than the rest of the Wits, and more of a Scholar.  Tom thought himself as happy with a retailer of damnation in an obscure hole, as another to have gone to the devil with all the splendour of a fine equipage.  ’Twas not the brightness of Caelia’s eyes, nor her gaudy trappings that attracted his heart.  Cupid might keep his darts to himself; Tom always carried his fire about him.  If he had but a mouth, two