His reputation grew steadily, and his first volume, ’Artemus Ward, His Book,’ was brought out in 1862.  In 1863 he went to San Francisco by way of the Isthmus and returned overland.  This journey was chronicled in a short volume, ‘Artemus Ward, His Travels.’  He had already undertaken a career of lecturing, and his comic entertainments, given in a style peculiarly his own, became very popular.  The mimetic gift is frequently found in the humorist; and Browne’s peculiar drawl, his profound gravity and dreamy, far-away expression, the unexpected character of his jokes and the surprise with which he seemed to regard the audience, made a combination of a delightfully quaint absurdity.  Browne himself was a very winning personality, and never failed to put his audience in good humor.  None who knew him twenty-nine years ago think of him without tenderness.  In 1866 he visited England, and became almost as popular there as lecturer and writer for Punch.  He died from a pulmonary trouble in Southampton, March 6th, 1867, being not quite thirty-three years old.  He was never married.

When we remember that a large part of Browne’s mature life was taken up in learning the printer’s trade, in which he became a master, we must decide that he had only entered on his career as humorous writer.  Much of what he wrote is simply amusing, with little depth or power of suggestion; it is comic, not humorous.  He was gaining the ear of the public and training his powers of expression.  What he has left consists of a few collections of sketches written for a daily paper.  But the subjoined extracts will show, albeit dimly, that he was more than a joker, as under the cap and bells of the fool in Lear we catch a glimpse of the face of a tender-hearted and philosophic friend.  Browne’s nature was so kindly and sympathetic, so pure and manly, that after he had achieved a reputation and was relieved from immediate pecuniary pressure, he would have felt an ambition to do some worthy work and take time to bring out the best that was in him.  As it is, he had only tried his ’prentice hand.  Still, the figure of the old showman, though not very solidly painted, is admirably done.  He is a sort of sublimated and unoffensive Barnum; perfectly consistent, permeated with his professional view of life, yet quite incapable of anything underhand or mean; radically loyal to the Union, appreciative of the nature of his animals, steady in his humorous attitude toward life:  and above all, not a composite of shreds and patches, but a personality.  Slight as he is, and unconscious and unpracticed as is the art that went to his creation, he is one of the humorous figures of all literature; and old Sir John Falstaff, Sir Roger de Coverley, Uncle Toby, and Dr. Primrose will not disdain to admit him into their company; for he too is a man, not an abstraction, and need not be ashamed of his parentage nor doubtful of his standing among the “children of the men of wit.”

EDWIN FORREST AS OTHELLO