{{rh|Drope|21|Drue))
twang.’ Sheil, describing Dromgoole's mode of emphasising the end of each sentence in his speeches by knocking loudly on the ground with a heavy stick, spoke of him as ‘a kind of rhetorical paviour.’ Dromgoole's ill-timed outspokenness brought a hornets' nest about his ears; he was satirised by Dr. Brennan under the name of ‘Dr. Drumsnuffle,’ and was at last driven into exile, ending his days at Rome under the shadow of the Vatican. He probably died between 1824 and 1829.
[W. J. Fitzpatrick's Irish Wits and Worthies, ch. xxiv.; Wyse's Catholic Association of Ireland, i. 161.]
DROPE, FRANCIS (1629?–1671), arboriculturist, a younger son of the Rev. Thomas Drope, B.D., vicar of Cumnor, Berkshire, and rector of Ardley, near Bicester, Oxfordshire, was born at Cumnor vicarage about 1629, became a demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1645, three years after his brother John, and graduated as B.A. in 1647. In 1648 he was ejected, having probably, like his brother, borne arms for the king, and he then became an assistant-master in a private school, kept by one William Fuller, at Twickenham. At the Restoration he proceeded M.A. (23 Aug. 1660), and in 1662 was made fellow of his college. He subsequently graduated as B.D. (12 Dec. 1667), and was made a prebendary of Lincoln (17 Feb. 1669–1670). He died 26 Sept. 1671, and was buried in the chancel of Cumnor Church. His one work, ‘A Short and Sure Guide in the Practice of Raising and Ordering of Fruit-trees,’ is generally described as posthumous, being published at Oxford, in 8vo, in 1672. The work is eulogised in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ vol. vii., No. 86, p. 5049, as written from the author's own experience.
Drope's elder brother, John (1626–1670), was demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1642; proceeded B.A. 12 July 1645; ‘bore arms for the king’ in the garrison of Oxford; was made fellow of his college in 1647, being ejected by the parliamentary visitors the next year; became master at John Fetiplace's school at Dorchester about 1654; proceeded M.A. at the Restoration (23 Aug. 1660); was restored to his fellowship; studied physic, which he practised at Borough, Lincolnshire, and died at Borough in October 1670. He was a poet on a small scale, and published ‘An Hymenæan Essay’ on Charles II's marriage in 1662, a poem on the Oxford Physic Garden, 1664, and other poems which Wood read in manuscript.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 941; Fasti, ii. 103, 228, 299; Felton's Portraits of Writers on Gardening, p. 31.]
DROUT, JOHN (fl. 1570), poet, was, as we learn from the title-page of his only known work, an attorney of Thavies Inn. He is author of a black-letter tract of thirty leaves, entitled ‘The pityfull Historie of two louing Italians, Gaulfrido and Barnardo le vayne, which ariued in the countrey of Grece, in the time of the noble Emperoure Vaspasian. And translated out of Italian into Englishe meeter,’ &c., 12mo, London, 1570. In dedicating ‘this, the first frutes of my trauell,’ to Sir Francis Jobson, knt., lieutenant of the Tower, Drout mentions his parents as still living, and expresses his own and their obligations to Jobson. In 1844 John Payne Collier reprinted twenty-five copies of this piece from a unique copy. Collier doubts whether Drout really translated the story from the Italian, and suggests that Drout describes it as a translation so that he might take advantage of the popularity of Italian novels. In his preliminary remarks upon ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Malone, whose sole knowledge of Drout's book was derived from its entry in the ‘Stationers' Registers,’ supposed it to be a prose narrative of the story on which Shakespeare's play was constructed (Malone, Shakespeare, ed. Boswell, vi. 4). It is not in prose, and only a part relates to the history of Romeo and Juliet; it is in the ordinary fourteen-syllable metre of the time, divided into lines of eight and of six syllables. It is merely valuable to the literary antiquary.
[Arber's Transcript of Stationers' Registers, i. 204 b; Lowndes's Bibl. Manual (Bohn), ii. 869, voce ‘Gaulfrido,’ Appendix, p. 250; Athenæum, 26 April 1862, p. 563.]
DRUE, THOMAS (fl. 1631), dramatist, is the author of an interesting historical play, ‘The Life of the Dvtches of Svffolke,’ 1631, 4to, which has been wrongly attributed by Langbaine and others to Thomas Heywood. The play was published anonymously, but it is assigned to Drue in the ‘Stationers Registers’ (under date 13 Nov. 1629) and in Sir Henry Herbert's ‘Office-book.’ Another play, ‘The Bloodie Banquet. By T. D.,’ 1620, 4to, has been attributed without evidence to Drue. An unpublished play, the ‘Woman's Mistake,’ is ascribed in the ‘Stationers' Registers,’ 9 Sept. 1653, to Robert Davenport [q. v.] and Drue. Possibly the dramatist may be the Thomas Drewe who in 1621 published ‘Daniel Ben Alexander, the converted Jew, first written in Syriacke and High Dutch by himselfe. Translated … into French by S. Lecherpiere. And out of French into English,’ 4to.
[Arber's Transcript of Stationers' Registers, iv. 188; Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 217.]
