DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY EDITED BY LESLIE STEPHEN VOL. VII. BROWN-BURTHOGGE LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1886 [All rights reserved] a portrait of Brown in the Painted Hall at Greenwich. [Charnock's Biog. Nav. iv. 1; Beatson's Nav. and Mil. Memoirs, i. 49; E. H. Locker's Naval Memoirs, 1831; H. A. Locker's Naval Gallery of Greenwich Hospital, 1842.] A. L. BROWN, CHARLES (d. 1753), commodore, entered the navy about 1693. Through the patronage of Sir George Byng, afterwards Lord Torrington, he was appointed captain of the Stromboli in 1709. He commanded the York in 1717, and the Advice in 1726 in the cruises up the Baltic. In 1727, during the siege of Gibraltar by the Spaniards, he com- BROWN, CHARLES ARMITAGE manded the Oxford, and in 1731 the Buck- (1787 ?-1842 ?), writer on Shakespeare's soningham in the Mediterranean. In 1738 he nets and friend of Keats, went to St. Peterswas appointed to command the Hampton burg at the age of eighteen to conduct the busiCourt, and was senior officer at this station ness of a Russia merchant started there by until the arrival of Admiral Vernon in the his eldest brother John. Working on very following year. His opportunity arrived in little capital, and hampered by political dis1739, when, during the war with Spain, he turbances, the firm soon collapsed, and about served under Vernon in the attack on Porto- 1810, at the age of twenty-three, Brown rebello, in the isthmus of Darien. He led the turned to this country utterly ruined. For squadron into Boca Chica, placing his vessel, some years afterwards he struggled hard for a the Hampton Court, alongside the strongest livelihood, but the death of another brother part of the fortifications. When the fortress who had settled in Sumatra put him at length surrendered, the Spanish governor presented in the possession of a small competence, and his sword in token of submission. Brown he devoted himself to literary pursuits. In very properly declined to receive it, saying 1814 he wrote a serio-comic opera on a Rushe was but second in command,' and took sian subject, entitled 'Narensky, or the Road the governor in his boat to Admiral Vernon. to Yaroslaf,' with music by Braham and Reeve. But the Spaniard was obstinate, declaring It was acted at Drury Lane, under Arnold's that but for the insupportable fire of the com- management, for several nights from 11 Jan. modore he never would have yielded. There- 1814, with Braham in the chief part (GENEST, upon Vernon, very handsomely turning to viii.405). The libretto was published in 1814, Brown, presented to him the sword, which but its literary quality is poor. Brown made is still in the possession of his descendants. the acquaintance of Keats and his brothers beIn 1741 Brown was appointed to the office fore September 1817. At the time Brown was of commissioner of the navy at Chatham, a living at Wentworth Place, Hampstead, a situation which he held with unblemished double house part of which was in the occureputation until his death, 23 March 1753. pation of Charles Wentworth Dilke, and His daughter, Lucy, became the wife of Keats was living in Well Walk, near at hand. Admiral William Parry, commander-in-chief In July 1818 Brown and Keats made a tour of the Leeward Islands; and her daughter and together in the north of Scotland. Brown namesake married Captain Locker, under sent a number of amusing letters to Dilke whom Lord Nelson served in his early days, describing the trip, some of which have been and who subsequently became lieutenant-printed in Dilke's Papers of a Critic,' and in governor of Greenwich Hospital. There is Buxton Forman's elaborate edition of Keats's VOL. VII. B |