Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/439

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Brooke
427
Brooke

earliest of these appears to be that executed at Dublin in 1756 by Miller, from a painting by Lewis. In the plate, which is inscribed 'The Farmer.' Brooke is represented as seated, with a pen in his hand. This portrait was reproduced in 1884, on a reduced scale, among the illustrations to the work by J. C. Smith on British mezzotinto portraits. A revised edition of Brooke's works was projected by his daughter Charlotte, with the co-operation of friends, but while it was in progress the defective collection already noticed was, without her knowledge, reprinted by a London bookseller. She, however, succeeded in purchasing the copies, and, with such emendations and revisions as she could effect, they were issued by her in four volumes in 1792 as a new edition. To the first volume was prefixed a panegyrical but unsatisfactory notice of Brooke, the writer of which was described by his daughter as an 'old contemporary and relation.' He, however, avowed that he knew little with certainty concerning Brooke's career and the many busy and interesting scenes through which he had passed. On this subject Miss Brooke stated that, in her attempts to procure materials for a memoir of her father, she had encountered great difficulties, and as he had outlived most of his contemporaries, she, his last surviving child, remembered nothing of them before the period of his retirement from the outer world. Some papers connected with Brooke, including a letter from Pope to him, were collected by C. H. Wilson of the Middle Temple, London, who in 1804 issued a compilation in two small volumes entitled 'Brookiana.' The 'Fool of Quality' was republished in two volumes in 1859 by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, who expressed an opinion that, notwithstanding the defects of the work, readers would learn from it more of that which is pure, sacred, and eternal, than from any book published since Spenser's 'Faerie Queene.'

[Dublin journals, 1744; unpublished letters of Henry Brooke; letters by Benjamin Victor, 1776; Anthologia Hibernica, 1794; Memoirs of C. O'Conor (1797); Manuscripts of C. O'Conor; D'Olier's Memoirs of Henry Brooke, 1816; Seymour's Memoirs of Miss Brooke, 1816; Private Correspondence of David Garrick, 1831; Hist. of Dublin, 1856; Reports of Hist. MSS. Commission, 1884; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 215-6; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. iv. 131.]

J. T. G.

BROOKE, HENRY (1738–1806), painter, was born in Dublin in 1738. He chiefly practised historical painting, and, upon coming to London in 1761, gained both fame and fortune by the exhibition of his pictures. Seven years later, in 1767, he had married and settled in his native city, where he lost the whole of his savings in some foolish speculation. Thenceforward his art was principally displayed in the decoration of Roman catholic chapels, but in 1776 he sent a mythological painting to the Society of Artists. Brooke died in Dublin in 1806.

[Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists (1878), p. 57; A. Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760-80, p. 31.]

G. G.

BROOKE, HENRY JAMES (1771–1857), crystallographer, son of a broadcloth manufacturer, born at Exeter on 25 May 1771, studied for the bar, but went into business in the Spanish wool trade, South American mining companies, and the London Life Assurance Association successively. He devoted his leisure hours to mineralogy, geology, and botany. His large collections of shells and of minerals were presented to the university of Cambridge, while a portion of his valuable collection of engravings was given by him to the British Museum. He was elected F.G.S. in 1815, F.L.S. in 1818, and F.R.S in 1819. He discovered thirteen new mineral species. He died on 26 June 1857. He published a ' Familiar Introduction to Crystallography,' London, 1823; and contributed the important articles on t Crystallography' and 'Mineralogy' in the 'Encyclopaedia Metropolitana,' in which he first introduced six primary crystalline systems.

[Proc. Roy. Soc. ix. 41; Q. Journ. Geol. Soc. 14, xliv.]

H. F. M.

BROOKE, HUMPHREY (1617–1693), physician, was born in London in 1617. He was educated in Merchant Taylors' School, and entered St. John's College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow. He proceeded M.B. 1646, M.D. 1659, was elected fellow of the London College of Physicians 1674, and was subsequently several times censor. He died very rich at his house in Leadenhall Street, 9 Dec. 1693. Brooke was the author of 'A Conservatory of Health, comprised in a Plain and Practical Discourse upon the Six Particulars necessary for Man's Life,' London, 1650, and also a book of paternal advice, addressed to his children, under the title of 'The Durable Legacy,' London, 1681, of which only fifty copies were printed. It contains 250 pages of practical, moral, and religious directions, couched in a sincere and simple Christian style, with neither sectarianism nor bigotry.

[Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 514, ii. 91, 221; Munk's College of Physicians (1878), i. 368; Durable Legacy, in British Museum.]

G. T. B.