At this time, men of letters expected little from the sale of books; but often obtained patrons who conferred valuable appointments upon them.  Brown’s temper and position rendered him ineligible for this sort of promotion.  Not being a gentleman by birth, he had no good introductions, nor would he have been very acceptable in the houses of the great.  His coarseness in writing—­excessive even in that day—­was probably reflected in his manners and language, and he had so little prudence that he ridiculed not only the clergy, but was always ready to lose a friend rather than a joke.  Mere literary talent will not procure success in society.

Brown wrote a variety of essays, generally rather admonitory than humorous.  His “Pocket-book of Common Places” resembles a collection of Proverbs or good sayings.  It commences,

“To see the number of churches and conventicles open every Sunday, a stranger would fancy London all religion.  But to see the number of taverns, ale-houses, &c., he would imagine Bacchus was the only God that is worshipped there.  If no trades were permitted but those which were useful and necessary, Lombard Street, Cheapside, and the Exchange might go a-begging.  For more are fed by our vanities and vices than by our virtues, and the necessities of Nature.”

But his favourite and characteristic mode of writing was under the form of letters.  We have “Letters Serious and Comical,” “Diverting Letters to Gentlemen.”  One letter is to four ladies with whom the author was in love at the same time.

He probably took his idea of “Letters from the Dead to the Living,” from Lucian.  He never spares Dissenters, and comically makes a Quaker relate his warm reception in the lower world:—­

“A parcel of black spiritual Janissaries saluted me as intimately as if I had been resident in these parts during the term of an apprenticeship; at last, up comes a swinging, lusty, overgrown, austere devil, armed with an ugly weapon like a country dung-fork, looking as sharp about the eyes as a Wood Street officer, and seemed to deport himself after such a manner that discovered he had ascendancy over the rest of the immortal negroes, and as I imagined, so ’twas quickly evident; for as soon as he espied me leering between the diminutive slabbering-bib and the extensive rims of my coney-wood umbrella, he chucks me under the chin with his ugly toad-coloured paw, that stunk as bad of brimstone as a card-match new-lighted, saying, ’How now, Honest Jones, I am glad to see thee on this side the river Styx, prithee, hold up thy head, and don’t be ashamed, thou art not the first Quaker by many thousands that has sworn allegiance to my government; besides, thou hast been one of my best benefactors on earth, and now thou shalt see, like a grateful devil, I’ll reward thee accordingly.’  ‘I thank your excellence kindly,’ said I, ’pray, what is it your infernal protectorship will be pleased to confer upon me?’ To which