Isaac Hawkins Browne (1705-1760) was a poet, who was called to the bar in 1728 and was MP for Much Wenlock in Shropshire from 1744-1754. He was a friend of Samuel Johnson, whom Hester Piozzi reported as saying that Browne that he was “of all conversers the most delightful with whom I ever was in company; his talk was at once so elegant, so apparently artless, so pure and so pleasing, it seemed a perpetual stream of sentiment, enlivened by gaiety and sparkling with images.” William Duncombe (1690-1769), father-in-law of Elizabeth Carter’s friend Susanna Highmore, sent Browne’s poem De Animi Immortalitate to Carter in manuscript for her opinion.