HENRY BROOKE. [Born, 1706. Died, 1783.] HENRY BROOKE was born in the county of Cavan, in Ireland, where his father was a clergyman. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and was a pupil of Dr. Sheridan; but he was taken from the university, at the age of seventeen, and sent to England, to study the law at the Temple. On his coming to London he brought letters of introduction (probably from Dr. Sheridan) to Pope and Swift, both of whom noticed him as a youth of promising talents. At the end of a few years, he returned to Dublin, and endeavoured to practise as a chamber counsel; but, without having obtained much business, involved himself in the cares of a family, by marrying a beautiful cousin of his own, who had been consigned to his guardianship. It is related, not much to his credit, that he espoused her in her thirteenth year. The union, however, proved to be as happy as mutual affection could make it. Having paid another visit to London, he renewed his acquaintance with Pope; and, with his encouragement, published his poem, entitled, "Universal Beauty." This poem forms a curious, but unacknowledged prototype of Darwin's "Botanic Garden." It has a resemblance to that work, in manner, in scientific spirit, and in volant geographical allusion, too striking to be supposed accidental; although Darwin has gone beyond his original, in prominent and ostentatious imagery. After publishing his poem he returned to Ireland, and applied to his profession; but his heart was not in it, and he came once more to England, to try his fortune as a man of letters. In that character, he was cordially received by the Prince of Wales and his friends, as an accession to their phalanx; and this patronage was the more flattering to Brooke, as the maintenance of patriotic principles was the declared bond of union at the Prince's court. He had begun to translate the "Jerusalem" of Tasso, and had proceeded as far as the fourth book; but it is said, that he was invited to quit this task, that he might write a tragedy in the cause of Freedom, which should inspirit the people of England. Glover, it was pretended, was the epic champion of Liberty, who had pointed her spear at Walpole; and Brooke was now to turn the arm of tragedy against him, by describing a tyrannic minister, in his play of "Gustavus Vasa." With regard to Glover, this was certainly untrue. His poetry breathed the spirit of liberty, but he was above the wretched taste of making a venerable antique subject the channel of grotesque allusion if to modern parties, or living characters. Brooke's Trollio was really meant for Walpole, the minister's friends need not have been much alarmed at the genius of a tragic poet, who could descend to double meanings. They might have felt secure, one would think, that the arti. fice of poets could not raise any dangerous zeal in Englishmen, against their malt or excise bills, by the most cunning hints about Thermopyla or Dalecarlia. But, as if they had been in collusion with Brooke, to identify Walpole with Trollio, they interdicted the representation of the play. The author, therefore, published it, and got, it is said, £800 by the sale. He lived, for some time, very comfortably on this acquisition, at Twickenham, in the neighbourhood of Pope, till the state of his health obliged him to seek the benefit of his native air; when, to the surprise of those who knew him, he determined to remain in Ireland. This resolution was owing to the influence of his wife, who apprehended that his political zeal, among his English friends, might lead him to some intemperate publication. Brooke, however, had too much of the politician to lose it by returning to his native soil. In the year of the rebellion, he addressed his "Farmer's Letters" to his countrymen, and they were supposed to have had a beneficial influence on their temper, at a critical period. He was also, to his honour, one of the earliest advocates for alleviating the penal laws against the Catholics. Their pacific behaviour in 1745 had certainly furnished him with a powerful argument in their behalf. He wrote thirteen dramatic pieces, of which "Gustavus Vasa," and the "Earl of Essex," were the only two that ever reached the English stage. The rest were not heard of in England, till his collected works were published in 1778; but his novel, "The Fool of Quality," gave some popularity to his name. In Ireland, Lord Chesterfield gave him the appointment of a barrackmaster, which he held till his death. The accounts of his private circumstances, in that kingdom, are given rather confusedly by his biographers; but it appears, upon the whole, that they were unfortunate. He supported an only brother in his house, with a family as numerous as his own; and ruined himself by his generosity. At last the loss of his wife, after a union of fifty years, the death of many of his children, and his other misfortunes, overwhelmed his intellects. Of this imbecility there were indeed some manifestations in the latest productions of his pen. THE REPTILE AND INSECT WORLD. FROM "UNIVERSAL BEAUTY," BOOK V. [flow! LIKE Nature's law no eloquence persuades, And the bright path with wild meanders glaze; The reptile first, how exquisitely form'd, With vital streams through every organ warm'd! External round the spiral muscle winds, And folding close th' interior texture binds ; Secure of limbs or needless wing he steers, And all one locomotive act appears; His rings with one elastic membrane bound, The prior circlet moves th' obsequious round; The next, and next, its due obedience owes, And with successive undulation flows. The mediate glands, with unetuous juice replete, Their stores of lubricating guile secrete; Still opportune, with prompt emission flow, And slipping frustrate the deluded foe; When the stiff clod their little augers bore, And all the worm insinuates through the pore. Slow moving next, with grave majestic pace. Tenacious snails their silent progress trace; Through foreign fields secure from exile roam, And sojourn safe beneath their native home. Their domes self-wreathed, each architect attend, With mansions lodge them, and with mail defend: But chief, when each his wint'ry portal forms, And mocks secluded from incumbent storms; Till gates, unbarring with the vernal ray, Then peeps the sage from his unfolding doors, Assured he glides beneath the smiling calm, And circling rays confess his heavenly frame ; These but the sketch, the garb, the veil of things, Whelm'd on our soul,and lightning on our view!— The spear, the falchion, and the martial mail, And means to propagate their varying kind. Or o'er the flood they spread their future brood; Eludes the wave, and mocks the warring winds; Who that beholds the summer's glist'ring And pearls in living ranges greet our eyes. swarms, Ten thousand thousand gaily gilded forms, In volant dance of mix'd rotation play, Or who with transient view, beholding, loathes Who, with corruption, hold their kindred state, Sublimer powers and brighter forms assume; No fictions here to willing fraud invite, Or armies from Cadmean harvests grown : Though numberless these insect tribes of air, In firmest oak they scoop a spacious tomb, And confident their darling hopes infuse ; Meantime the Sun his fost'ring warmth be- Each tepid air its motive influence breathes, All by their dam's prophetic care receive Nor less each organ suits each place of birth, Thus nursed, these inconsiderate wretches grow, breast, And whisper wonders not to be express'd; The fulness now of circling time arrives ; Their texture nor composed of filmy skin, Each spangled back bright sprinkling specks Each plume imbibes the rosy tinctured morn; JOHN SCOTT. [Born, 1730. Died, 1783.] thren. He was well informed in the laws of his country; and, though prevented by his tenets from becoming a magistrate, he made himself useful to the inhabitants of Amwell, by his offices of arbitration, and by promoting schemes of local improvement. He was constant in his attendance at turnpike meetings, navigation trusts, and commissions of land-tax. Ware and Hertford were indebted to him for the plan of opening a spacious road between those two towns. His treatises on the highway and parochial laws were the result of long and laudable attention to those subjects. His verses, and his amiable character, gained him by degrees a large circle of literary acquaintance, which included Dr. Johnson, Sir William THIS worthy and poetical quaker was the son of a draper, in London, and was born in the borough of Southwark. His father retired to Amwell, in Hertfordshire, when our poet was only ten years old; and this removal, together with the circumstance of his never having been inoculated for the small-pox, proved an unfortunate impediment to his education. He was put to a day-school, in the neighbouring town of Ware, where not much instruction was to be had; and from that little he was called away, upon the first alarm of infection. Such indeed was his constant apprehension of the disease, that he lived for twenty years within twenty miles of London without visiting it more than once. About the age of seventeen, however, he betook himself to reading. His family, from their cast of opi-Jones, Mrs. Montague, and many other distinnions and society, were not likely to abound either in books or conversation relating to literature; but he happened to form an acquaintance and friendship with a neighbour of the name of Frogley, a master bricklayer, who, though an uneducated man, was an admirer of poetry, and by his intercourse with this friend he strengthened his literary propensity. His first poetical essays were transmitted to the Gentleman's Magazine. In his thirtieth year he published four elegies, which were favourably received. His poems, entitled, "The Garden," and "Amwell," and his volume of collected poetical pieces, appeared after considerable intervals; and his " Critical Essays on the English Poets," two years after his death. These, with his "Remarks on the Poems of Rowley," are all that can be called his literary productions. He published also two political tracts, in answer to Dr. Johnson's "Patriot," and "False Alarm." His critical essays contain some judicious remarks on Denham and Dyer; but his verbal strictures on Collins and Goldsmith discover a miserable insensibility to the soul of those poets. His own verses are chiefly interesting, where they breathe the pacific principles of the quaker; while his personal character engages respect, from exhibiting a public spirit and liberal taste, beyond the habits of his bre guished individuals; and having submitted to inoculation, in his thirty-sixth year, he was from that period more frequently in London. In his retirement he was fond of gardening; and, in amusing himself with the improvement of his grounds, had excavated a grotto in the side of a hill, which his biographer, Mr. Hoole, writing in 1785, says, was still shown as a curiosity in that part of the country. He was twice married. His first wife was the daughter of his friend Frogley. He died at a house in Radcliff, of a putrid fever, and was interred there in the burying ground of the Friends*. [ In the life of that good man, Scott of Amwell, is inserted a sort of last dying speech and confession, which the quakers published after his death. This precious paper requires some comment; Scott's life had not merely been innocent, but eminently useful. "He was esteemed regular and moral in his conduct," says this very document; "nevertheless," it adds, "there is reason to believe he frequently experienced the conviction of the spirit of truth for not faithfully following the Lord." Whether any heavier offence can be proved against him by the society than that of having styled himself Esquire in one of his title-pages, and used such heathen words as December and May in his poems, instead of twelfth month and fifth month, we know not; but when he was dying, at a vigorous age, of a typhus fever, he was brought down," says this quaker-process, “as from the clifts of the rocks and the heights of the hills into the valley of deep humiliation."-See Quar. Rev. vol. xi. p. 500.] |