Brown's major popular success was the "Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times" (2 vols., 1757–1758), a bitter satire. It struck a chord after the Battle of Minorca (1756), a British reverse at the outset of the Seven Years' War. Edmund Burke, in a review for "The Annual Register" for 1758, rejected Brown's analysis as far as it depended on charges of "effeminacy" in the British nation and aesthetic. Thomas Sheridan believed the fundamental issue was selfishness, and the solution better oratory.