[1] Young Brown was a shy and timid boy; the family gardener instilled in him a love of nature, and introduced him to Walter Scott's Waverley Novels.

Arthur Quiller-Couch writes: Here his abilities soon declared themselves, and hence he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where his position (as a servitor) cost him much humiliation, which he remembered to the end of his life.

He won a double first, however, and was elected a fellow of Oriel in April 1854, Dean [Thomas] Gaisford having refused to promote him to a senior studentship of his own college, on the ground that no servitor had ever before attained to that honour.

Although at that time an Oriel fellowship conferred a deserved distinction, Brown never took kindly to the life, but, after a few terms of private pupils, returned to the Isle of Man as vice-principal of his old school.

John Percival (afterwards bishop of Hereford), who had recently been appointed to the struggling young foundation of Clifton College, which he soon raised to be one of the great public schools.

Percival wanted a master for the modern side, and made an appointment to meet Brown at Oxford; "and there," he writes, "as chance would have it, I met him standing at the corner of St Mary's Entry, in a somewhat Johnsonian attitude, four-square, his hands deep in his pockets to keep himself still, and looking decidedly volcanic.

Brown remained [at Clifton College] from September 1863 to July 1892, when he retired—to the great regret of boys and masters alike, who had long since come to regard "T.E.B.

[Seccombe notes, "He died suddenly at Clifton College while giving an address to the boys, from the bursting of a blood vessel in the brain, on 30 Oct. 1897.

Brown's more important poems are narrative, and written in the Manx dialect, with a free use of pauses, and sometimes with daring irregularity of rhythm.