the impression of scepticism contained in the first part. He tells us himself that the tragedies were not intended for the stage. Charles Lamb says they should rather be called political treatises. Of Brooke Lamb says, “He is nine parts Machiavel and Tacitus, for one of Sophocles and Seneca. . . . Whether we look into his plays or his most passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and made rigid with intellect.” He goes on to speak of the obscurity of expression that runs through all Brooke’s poetry, an obscurity which is, however, due more to the intensity and subtlety of the thought than to any lack of mere verbal lucidity.
It is by his biography of Sidney that Fulke Greville is best known. The full title expresses the scope of the work. It runs: The Life of the Renowned Sr. Philip Sidney. With the true Interest of England as it then stood in relation to all Forrain Princes: And particularly for suppressing the power of Spain Stated by Him: His principall Actions, Counsels, Designes, and Death. Together with a short account of the Maximes and Policies used by Queen Elizabeth in her Government. He includes some autobiographical matter in what amounts to a treatise on government. He had intended to write a history of England under the Tudors, but Robert Cecil refused him access to the necessary state papers.
Brooke left no sons, and his barony passed to his cousin, Robert Greville (c. 1608–1643), who thus became 2nd Lord Brooke. This nobleman was imprisoned by Charles I. at York in 1639 for refusing to take the oath to fight for the king, and soon became an active member of the parliamentary party; taking part in the Civil War he defeated the Royalists in a skirmish at Kineton in August 1642. He was soon given a command in the midland counties, and having seized Lichfield he was killed there on the 2nd of March 1643. Brooke, who is eulogized as a friend of toleration by Milton, wrote on philosophical, theological and current political topics. In 1746 his descendant, Francis Greville, the 8th baron (1710–1773), was created earl of Warwick, a title still in his family.
Dr A. B. Grosart edited the complete works of Fulke Greville for the Fuller Worthies Library in 1870, and made a small selection, published in the Elizabethan Library (1894). Besides the works above mentioned, the volumes include Poems of Monarchy, A Treatise of Religion, A Treatie of Humane Learning, An Inquisition upon Fame and Honour, A Treatie of Warres, Caelica in CX Sonnets, a collection of lyrics in various forms, a letter to an “Honourable Lady,” a letter to Grevill Varney in France, and a short speech delivered on behalf of Francis Bacon, some minor poems, and an introduction including some of the author’s letters. The life of Sidney was reprinted by Sir S. Egerton Brydges in 1816; and with an introduction by N. Smith in the “Tudor and Stuart Library” in 1907; Caelica was reprinted in M. F. Crow’s “Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles” in 1898. See also an essay in Mrs. C. C. Stopes’s Shakespeare’s Warwickshire Contemporaries (1907).
BROOKE, HENRY (c. 1703–1783), Irish author, son of William Brooke, rector of Killinkere, 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 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 1760 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 (1780) 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 10th 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).
BROOKE, SIR JAMES (1803–1868), English soldier, traveller and raja of Sarawak, was born at Coombe Grove near Bath, on the 29th of April 1803. His father, a member of the civil service of the East India Company, had long lived in Bengal. His mother was a woman of superior mind, and to her care he owed his careful early training. He received the ordinary school education, entered the service of the East India Company, and was sent out to India about 1825. On the outbreak of the Burmese War he was despatched with his regiment to the valley of the Brahmaputra; and, being dangerously wounded in an engagement near Rungpore, was compelled to return home (1826). After his recovery he travelled on the continent before going to India, and circumstances led him soon after to leave the service of the company. In 1830 he made a voyage to China, and during his passage among the islands of the Indian Archipelago, so rich in natural beauty, magnificence and fertility, but occupied by a population of savage tribes, continually at war with each other, and carrying on a system of piracy on a vast scale and with relentless ferocity, he conceived the great design of rescuing them from barbarism and bringing them within the pale of civilization. His purpose was confirmed by observations made during a second visit to China, and on his return to England he applied himself in earnest to making the necessary preparations. Having succeeded on the death of his father to a large property, he bought and equipped a yacht, the “Royalist,” of 140 tons burden, and for three years tested its capacities and trained his crew of
