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Significant Scots
James Brown |
BROWN, JAMES, a traveler and scholar of some
eminence, was the son of James Brown, M.D., who published a translation of
two "Orations of Isocrates," without his name, and who died in
1733. The subject of this article was born at Kelso, May 23d, 1709, and
was educated at Westminster School, where he made great proficiency in the
Latin and Greek classics. In the year 1722, when less than fourteen years
of age, he accompanied his father to Constantinople, where, having
naturally an aptitude for the acquisition of languages, he made himself a
proficient in Turkish, modern Greek, and Italian. On his return in 1725,
he added the Spanish to the other languages which he had already mastered.
About 1732, he was the means of commencing the publication of the London
Directory, a work of vast utility in the mercantile world, and which has
since been imitated in almost every considerable town in the empire. After
having laid the foundation of this undertaking, he transferred his
interest in it to Mr Henry Kent, a printer in Finch-Lane, Cornhill, who
carried it on for many years, and eventually, through its means, acquired
a fortune and an estate. In 1741, Brown entered into an engagement with
twenty-four of the principal merchants in London, to act as their chief
agent in carrying on a trade, through Russia, with Persia. Having
travelled to that country by the Wolga and the Caspian Sea, he established
a factory at Reshd, where he continued nearly four years. During this
time, he travelled in state to the camp of the famous Kouli Khan, with a
letter which had been transmitted to him by George II. for that monarch.
He also rendered himself such a proficient in the Persic language, as to
be able, on his return, to compile a copious dictionary and grammar, with
many curious specimens of Persic literature, which, however, was never
published. A sense of the dangerous situation of the settlement, and his
dissatisfaction with some of his employers, were the causes of his return;
and his remonstrances on these subjects were speedily found to be just, by
the factory being plundered of property to the amount of L.80,000, and a
period being put to the Persian trade. From his return in 1746 to his
death, which took place in his house at Stoke Newington, November 30,
1788, he appears to have lived in retirement upon his fortunes. In the
obituary of the Gentleman’s Magazine, he is characterised as a person of
strict integrity, unaffected piety, and exulted but unostentatious
benevolence.
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