BROWN, THOMAS (1663-1704), English satirist, of "facetious memory" as Addison designates him, was born at Shifnal, in Shropshire, and was entered, in 1678, at Christ Church, Oxford, where he is said to have escaped expulsion by the famous lines beginning, "I do not love thee, Dr. Fell." He was for three years schoolmaster at Kingston-on-Thames, and afterwards set tled in London. Under the pseudonym of Dudley Tomkinson he wrote a satire on Dryden, The Reasons of Mr. Bays changing his Religion: considered in a Dialogue between Crites, Eugenius and Mr. Bays, with two other parts having separate titles (1688 90, republished with additions in 1691). He was the author of a great variety of poems, letters, dialogues and lampoons. He died June 16, 1704.
His collected works were published in 1707-08. The second volume contains a collection of Letters from the Dead to the Living, some of which are translated from the French. His Comical Romance done into English (1772, the Roman Comique of Scarron) was reprinted in 1892.