HENRY

See also:

• BROOKE, FRANCES (1724-1789)
• BROOKE, FULKE OREVILLE, 1ST BARON (1554-1628)
• HENRY BROOKE (c. 1703-1783)
• BROOKE, SIR JAMES (1803-1868)
• BROOKE, STOPFORD AUGUSTUS (1832– )

BROOKE (c. 1703-1783)  , Irish author, son of William Brooke, rector of Killinkerer,Co . Cavan, was born at Rantavan in the same county, about 1703 . His mother was a daughter of Simon Digby, bishop of Elphin . Dr Thomas Sheridan was one of his schoolmasters, and he was entered at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1720; in 1724 he was sent to . London to study law . He married his cousin and ward, Catherine Meares, before she was fourteen . Returning to London he published a philosophical poem in six books entitled Universal Beauty (1735) . He attached himself to the party of the prince of Wales, and took a small house at Twickenham near to Alexander Pope . In 1738 he translated the first and second books of Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, and in the next year he produced a tragedy, Gustavas Vasa, the Deliverer of his Country . This play had been rehearsed for five weeks at Drury Lane, but at the last moment the performance was forbidden . The reason of this prohibition was a supposed portrait of Sir Robert Walpole in the part of Trollio . In any case the spirit of fervent patriotism which pervaded the play was probably disliked by the government .

The piece was printed and sold largely, being afterwards put on the Irish

stage under the title of The Patriot . This affair provoked a satirical pamphlet from . Samuel Johnson, entitled " A Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage from the malicious and BROOKE; SIR J . scandalous Aspersions of Mr Brooke " (1739) . His wife feared that his connexion with the opposition was imprudent, and induced him to return to Ireland . He interested himself in Irish history and literature, but a projected collection of Irish stories and a history of Ireland from the earliest times were abandoned in consequence of disputes about the ownership of the materials . During the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 Brooke issued his Farmer's Six Letters to the Protestants of Ireland (collected 1746) the form of which was suggested by Swift's Drapier's Letters . For this service he received from the government the post of barrack-master at Mullingar, which he held till his death . He wrote other pamphlets on the Protestant side, and was secretary to an association for promoting projects of national utility . About 176o he entered into negotiations with leading Roman Catholics, and in 1761 he wrote a pamphlet advocating alleviation of the penal laws against them . He is said to have been the first editor of the Freeman's Journal, established at Dublin in 1763 . Meanwhile he had been obliged to mortgage his property in Cavan, and had removed to Co .

Kildare . Subsequently a bequest from Colonel Robert Brooke enabled him to purchase an estate near his old home, and he spent large sums in attempting to reclaim the waste-land . His best-known work is the novel entitled The Fool of Quality; or the History of Henry Earl of Moreland, the first part of which was published in 1765; and the fifth and last in 1770 . The characters of this book, which relates the education of an ideal nobleman by an ideal merchant-prince, are gifted with a " passionate and tearful sensibility," and reflect the real humour and tenderness of the writer . Brooke's religious and philanthropic temper recommended the book to John Wesley, who edited (178o) an abridged edition, and to Charles Kingsley, who published it with a eulogistic notice in 1859 . Brooke had a large family, but only two children survived him . His wife's death seriously affected him, and he died at Dublin in a state of mental infirmity on the loth of October 1783 . His daughter, Charlotte Brooke, published The Poetical Works of Henry Brooke in 1792, but was able to supply very little biographical material . Other sources for Brooke's biography are C . H . Wilson, Brookiana (2 vols., 1804), and a biographical preface by E . A .

Baker prefixed to a new edition (1906) of The Fool of Quality . Brooke's other works include several tragedies, only some of which were actually staged . He also wrote: Jack the Giant Queller (1748), an operatic satire, the repetition of which was forbidden on account of its political allusions; Constantia, or the Man of Lawe's Tale " (1741), contributed to George Ogle's Canterbury Tales modernized; Juliet Grenville; or the History of the Human Heart (1773), a novel; and some fables contributed to Edward Moore's Fables for the Female Sex (1744) .