after having almost despaired of his life, advised him, as a last resource, to try his native air; with this he complied, and obtained a complete recovery. It was then expected that he should return to London; and such was certainly his intention; but to the surprise of his friends he determined to remain in Ireland. For a conduct so apparently inconsistent, not only with his interest but his inclination, he was long unwilling to account. It appeared afterwards, that Mrs. Brooke was alarmed at the zeal with which he espoused the cause of the opposition, and dreaded the consequences with which his next intemperate publication might be followed. She persuaded him therefore to remain in Ireland ; and for so singular a measure, at this favourable crisis in his history, he could assign no adequate reason, without exposing her to the imputation of caprice, and himself to that of a too yielding temper.

During his residence in Ireland, he kept up a literary correspondence with his London friends; but all their letters were consumed by an accidental fire. Two from Pope, we are told, are particularly to be lamented, as, in one of these, he professed himself in heart a protestant, but apologized for not publicly conforming, by alleging that it would render the eve of his mother's life unhappy. Pope's filial affection is the most amiable feature in his character; but this story of his declining to conform because it would give uneasiness to his mother, falls to the ground when the reader is told that his mother had been dead six or seven years before Brooke went to Ireland. In another letter he is said, with more appearance of truth, to have advised Brooke to take orders, "as being a profession better suited to his principles, his disposition, and his genius, than that of the law, and also less injurious to his health." Why he did not comply with this advice cannot now be known; but before this time he appears to have been of a religious turn, although it is not easy to reconcile his principles, which were those of the strictest kind, with his continual ambition to shine as a dramatic writer.

For some years after his arrival in Ireland little is known of his life, except that lord Chesterfield, when viceroy, conferred upon him the office of barrack-master. His pen, however, was not idle. In 1741, he contributed to Ogle's version of Chaucer, Constantia, or the Man of Law's Tale; and in 1745, according to one account, his tragedy of The Earl of Westmoreland was performed, on the Dublin stage; but the editor of the Biographia Dramatica informs us that it was first acted at Dublin in 1741, under the title of The Betrayer of his Country; and again in 1754, under that of Injured Honour. Its fame, however, was confined to Ireland; nor was it known in England until the publication of his poetical works in 1778. A more important publication was his Farmer's Letters, written in 1745, on the plan of Swift's Drapier's Letters, and with a view to rouse the spirit of freedom among the Irish, threatened as they were, in common with their fellow-subjects, by rebellion and invasion. On this occasion Garrick addressed the following lines to him:

Oh, thou, whose artless free-born genius charms;
Whose rustic zeal each patriot bosom warms;

Pursue the glorious task, the pleasing toil,
Forsake the fields, and till a nobler soil;

Extend the farmer's care to human kind,
Manure the heart and cultivate the mind;
There plant religion, reason, freedom, truth,
And sow the seeds of virtue in our youth.

Let not rank weeds corrupt, or brambles choke,
And shake the vermin from the British oak;
From northern blasts protect the vernal bloom,

And guard our pastures from the wolves of Rome;
On Britain's liberty engraft thy name,

And reap the harvest of immortal fame!

In 1746, he wrote an Epilogue on the birth-day of the duke of Cumberland, spoken by Mr. Garrick in Dublin, and a Prologue to Othello, which are now added to his works. In 1747, he contributed to Moore's volume of Fables four of great poetical merit, viz. The Temple of Hymen, The Sparrow and Dove, The Female Seducer, and Love and Vanity. In 1748, he wrote a Prologue to The Foundling, which is now added to this edition, and a dramatic opera, entitled Little John and the Giants. This was acted only one night in Dublin, being then prohibited on account of certain political allusions. On this occasion, he wrote The Last Speech of John Good, alias, Jack the Giant Queller, a satirical effusion, not very pointed, and mixed with political allegory, and a profusion of quotations from scripture against tyrants and tyranny. In 1749, his Earl of Essex, a tragedy, was performed at Dublin, and afterwards, in 1760, at Drury Lane theatre, with so much success as to be preferred to the rival plays on the same subject, by Banks and Jones. At what time his other dramatic pieces were written, or acted, if acted at all, is uncertain'.

His biographer informs us, that "wearied, at length, with fruitless efforts to rouse the slumbering genius of his country-disgusted with her ingratitude-and sick of her venality, he withdrew to his paternal seat, and there, in the society of the Muses, and the peaceful bosom of domestic love, consoled himself for lost advantages and disappointed hopes. An only brother, whom he tenderly loved, accompanied his retirement, with a family almost as numerous as his own; and there, for many years, they lived together with uninterrupted harmony and affection: the nephew was as dear as the son― -the uncle as revered as the father-and the sister-in-law almost as beloved as the wife." In 1762, he published a pamphlet entitled The Trial of the Roman Catholics; the object of which was to remove the political restraints on that class, and to prove that this may be done with safety. In this attempt, however, his zeal led him so far as to question incontrovertible facts, and even to assert that the history of the Irish massacre in 1641 is nothing but an old wife's fable; and upon the whole, he leans more to the principles of the Roman Catholic religion than an argument professedly political, or a mere question of extended toleration, seemed to require.

His next work excited more attention in England. In 1766, appeared the first volume of The Fool of Quality, or the History of the Earl of Moreland, a novel replete with knowledge of human life and manners, and in which there are many admirable traits of moral feeling and propriety, but mixed, as the author advances towards the close, with so much of religious discussion, and mysterious stories and opinions, as to leave it doubt

These were, The Contending Brothers, The Female Officer, and The Marriage Contract, comedies; The Impostor, a tragedy, and Cymbeline, an injudicious alteration from Shakspeare. Montezuma, a tragedy, is printed among his works, but is said to have been the production of another hand. Of these, The Female Officer only is said to have been once acted, when Mrs. Woffington personated the officer; probably at her benefit. C.

LIFE OF BROOKE.

ful whether he inclined most to Behmenism or Popery. It became, however, when completed in five volumes, 1770, a very popular novel, and has often been reprinted

since.

In 1772, he published Redemption, a poem, in which that great mystery of our religion is explained and amplified by bolder figures than are usually hazarded. His taste was, indeed, evidently on the decline; and in this, as well as all his later performances, he seems to have yielded to the enthusiasm of the moment, without any reserve in favour of his better judgment. In this poem too he appears to have left his pronunciation of the English so far as to introduce rhymes which must be read according to the vulgar Irish. His last work was Juliet Grenville, a novel in three volumes, which appeared in 1774. This is very justly entitled The History of the Human Heart, the secret movements of which few novelists have better understood; but there is such a mixture of the most sacred doctrines of religion with the common incidents and chit-chat of the modern romance, that his best friends could with difficulty discover among these ruins some fragments which indicated what his genius had once been.

In this year (1774) we are told that Garrick pressed him earnestly to write for the stage, and offered to enter into articles with him, at the rate of a shilling per line for all he should write during life, provided that he wrote for him alone. "This Garrick," says his biographer, "looked upon as an extraordinary compliment to Mr. Brooke's abilities; but he could not, however, bring him over to his opinion, nor prevail with him to accept of his offer; on the contrary, he rejected it with some degree of haughtiness— for which Garrick never forgave him. He was then in the full and flattering career to fortune and to fame, and would have thought it a disgrace to hire out his talents, and tie himself down to necessity."

In this story there is enough to induce us to reject it. Brooke was so far from being, at this time, in the full and flattering career to fortune and to fame, that he had outlived both. And, supposing that there may be some mistake in the date of Garrick's proposal, and that for 1774 we should read 1764, or even 1754, the proposal itself is too ridiculous to bear examination.

Our author's tenderness of heart, and unsuspecting temper, involved him in pecuniary difficulties. He was ever prone to give relief to the distressed, although the immediate consequence of his liberality was that he wanted relief himself; and at length was compelled to dispose of his property, and remove to Kildare. After living some time here, he took a farm near his former residence. Where this residence was, his biographers have not mentioned; but soon after his return, they inform us that he lost his wife, to whom he had been happily united for nearly fifty years. The shock which this calamity gave to a mind never, I suspect, very firm, and the wreck of a family of seventeen children now reduced to two, was followed by a state of mental imbecility from which he never recovered. The confusion of his ideas, indeed, had been visible in most of his latter writings; and the infirmities of age completed what his family losses and personal disappointments had begun. His last days, however, were cheered by the hopes of religion, which became brighter as he approached the hour in which they were to be fulfilled. He died, October 10, 1783', leaving a son, since dead, and a daughter, the child of his old age.

2 He was in possession of the place of barrack-master of Mullingar at his death

C.

His poetical works were collected in 1778, in four volumes octavo, printed very incorrectly, and with the addition of some pieces which were not his. In 1792 another edition was published at Dublin, by his daughter, who procured some memoirs of her father prefixed to the first volume. In this she informs us she found many difficulties. He had lived to so advanced an age that most of his contemporaries departed before him, and this young lady remembered nothing of him previous to his retirement from the world. Such an apology cannot be refused, while we must yet regret that Miss Brooke was not able to collect information more to be depended on, and arranged with more attention to dates. The narrative, as we find it, is confused and contradictory.

From all, however, that can now be learned, Brooke was a man of a most amiable character and ingenuous temper, and perhaps few men have produced writings of the same variety, the tendency of all which is so uniformly in favour of religious and moral principle. Yet even in this there are inconsistencies which we know not how to explain, unless we attribute them to an extraordinary defect in judgment. During a great part of his life, his religious opinions approached to what are now termed methodistical, and one difficulty, in contemplating his character, is to reconcile this with his support of the stage, and his writing those trifling farces we find among his works. Perhaps it may be said that the necessities of his family made him listen to the importunity of those friends who considered the stage as a profitable resource, but by taking such advice he was certainly no great gainer. Except in the case of his Gustavus and Earl of Essex, there is no reason to think that he was successful, and the greater part of his dramas were never performed at all, or printed, until 1778, when he could derive very little advantage from them. Nor can we impute it to any cause, except a total want of judgment and an ignorance of the public taste, that he intermixed the most awful doctrines of religion and the lighter incidents and humorous sketches of vulgar or fashionable life, in his novels.

He lived, however, we are told, more consistently than he wrote. No day passed in which he did not collect his family to prayer, and read and expounded the scriptures to them3. Among his tenants and humble friends he was the benevolent and generous character which he had been accustomed to depict in his works, and while he had the means, he literally went about doing good.

As a poet, he delights his readers principally by occasional flights of a vivid imagination, but has in no instance given us a poem to which criticism may not suggest many reasonable objections. The greater part of his life, he lived remote from the friends of whose judgment he might have availed himself, and by whose taste his own might have

3 The following anecdote is given by his biographer, with some regret that he had not been educated for the church. "One Sunday, while the congregation were assembled in the rural church of the parish in which he lived, they waited a long time the arrival of their clergyman. At last, finding he was not likely to come that day, they judged that some accident had detained him; and being loth to depart entirely without their errand, they with one accord requested that Mr. Brooke would perform the service for them, and expound a part of the scriptures.-He consented, and the previous prayers being over, he opened the Bible, and preached extempore on the first text that struck his eye. In the middle of his discourse, the clergyman entered, and found the whole congregation in tears. He entreated Mr. Brooke to proceed; but this he modestly refused; and the other as modestly declared, that after the testimony of superior abilities, which he perceived in the moist eyes of all present, he would think it presumption and folly to hazard any thing of his own. Accordingly, the concluding prayers alone were said, and the congregation dismissed for the day." C.

been regulated. His first production, Universal Beauty, has a noble display of fancy in many parts. It is not improbable that Pope, to whom he submitted it, gave him some assistance, and he certainly repaid his instructor by adopting his manner, yet he has avoided Pope's monotony, and would have done this with more effect, if we did not perceive a mechanical lengthening of certain lines, rather than a natural variety of movement. On the other hand, the sublimity of the subject, by which he was inspired, and which he hoped to communicate, sometimes betrays him into a species of turgid declama tion. Harmony appears to be consulted, and epithets multiplied, to please the ear at the expense of meaning.

The three books of Tasso have already been noticed, and the reader of the present collection may have an opportunity of comparing them with Hoole's translation. The Man of Law's Tale, from Chaucer, will incline every reader to wish that he had contributed more to Ogle's translation. Of all his original poems, the most correct are the four fables, first published in Moore's collection. They are perhaps too long for fables, but as moral tales we have few that exceed them in poetical spirit, and sprightly turns of thought. The Fox Chase and his lesser pieces, if we except some of the songs composed for his dramas, will add but inconsiderably to his fame.