BROWNE  ,

HAI#LOT KNIGHT (1815–1882), English artist, famous as " Phiz," the illustrator of the best-known books by Charles Dickens, Charles Lever and Harrison Ainsworth in their original editions . His talents in other directions of art were of a very ordinary kind . As an interpreter and illustrator of Di'cken's characters, " Phiz," as he always signed his drawings, was in some respects the equal of his rivals Cruikshank and Leech, while, in his own way, he excelled them both . Of Huguenot extraction, he was born in Lambeth on the 1 rth of June 1815 . His father died early and left the family badly off . Browne was apprenticed to Finden, the eminent engraver on steel, in whose studio he obtained his only artistic education . To engraving, however, he was entirely unsuited, and having in 1833 secured an important prize from the Society of Arts for a drawing of " John Gilpin," he abandoned engraving in the following year and took to other artistic work, with the ultimate object of becoming a painter . In the spring of 1836 he met Charles Dickens . It was at the moment when the serial publication which place his father was vicar . He was educated at Lichfield, at Westminster school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge . After taking his M.A. degree he removed to Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar, but never practised . He was the author of Design and Beauty," a poem addressed to his friend Joseph Highmore the painter; and of " The Pipe of Tobacco " which parodied Cibber, Ambrose Philips, Thomson, Young, Pope and Swift, who were then all living .

He was elected to

Parliament through private interest in 1744 and again in 1747 for the borough of Wenlock in Shropshire . In 1754 he published his chief work, De Animi Immortalitate, a Latin poem much admired by the scholars of his time . The best of the many translations of these verses is by Soame Jenyns . Browne is said by Johnson to have been " one of the first wits of this country." He was a brilliant talker in private life, especially when his tongue was loosed by wine; but he made no mark in public life . He died in London on the 14th of February 176o . Two editions of his Poems on Various Subjects, Latin and English, were published in 1767 by his son Isaac Hawkins Browne (1745-1818), the author of two volumes of essays on religion and morals . One of these was printed for private circulation, and is said to have contained a memoir . A full account by Andrew Kippis in Biographia Britannica (178o) includes large extracts from his poems .