Brooke prepared “A Discovery of Certain Errors in the Much-commended Britannia.” When we consider Brooke’s character, as headstrong with heraldry as Don Quixote’s with romances of chivalry, we need not attribute his motives (as Camden himself, with the partial feelings of an author, does, and subsequent writers echo) to his envy at Camden’s promotion to be Clarencieux King of Arms; for it appears that Brooke began his work before this promotion. The indecent excesses of his pen, with the malicious charges of plagiarism he brings against Camden for the use he made of Leland’s collections, only show the insensibility of the mere heraldist to the nobler genius of the historian. Yet Brooke had no ordinary talents: his work is still valuable for his own peculiar researches; but his naïve shrewdness, his pointed precision, the bitter invective, and the caustic humour of his cynical pen, give an air of originality, if not of genius, which no one has dared to notice. Brooke’s first work against Camden was violently disturbed in its progress, and hurried, in a mutilated state, into the world, without licence or a publisher’s name. Thus impeded, and finally crushed, the howl of persecution followed his name; and subsequent writers servilely traced his character from their partial predecessors.
But Brooke, though denied the fair freedom of the press, and a victim to the powerful connexions of Camden, calmly pursued his silent labour with great magnanimity. He wrote his “Second Discovery of Errors,” an enlargement of the first. This he carefully finished for the press, but could never get published. The secret history of the controversy may be found there.[396]
Brooke had been loudly accused of indulging a personal rancour against Camden, and the motive of his work was attributed to envy of his great reputation; a charge constantly repeated.
Yet this does not appear, for when Brooke first began his “Discovery of Errors,” he did not design its publication; for he liberally offered Camden his Observations and Collections. They were fastidiously, perhaps haughtily, rejected; on this pernicious and false principle, that to correct his errors in genealogy might discredit the whole work. On which absurdity Brooke shrewdly remarks—“As if healing the sores would have maimed the body.” He speaks with more humility on this occasion than an insulted, yet a skilful writer, was likely to do, who had his labours considered, as he says, “worthy neither of thanks nor acceptance.”
“The rat is not so contemptible but he may help the lion, at a pinch, out of those nets wherein his strength is hampered; and the words of an inferior may often carry matter in them to admonish his superior of some important consideration; and surely, of what account soever I might have seemed to this learned man, yet, in respect to my profession and courteous offer, (I being an officer-of-arms, and he then but a schoolmaster), might well have vouchsafed the perusal of my notes.”
When he published, our herald stated the reasons of writing against Camden with good-humour, and rallies him on his “incongruity in his principles of heraldry—for which I challenge him!—for depriving some nobles of issue to succeed them, who had issue, of whom are descended many worthy families: denying barons and earls that were, and making barons and earls of others that were not; mistaking the son for the father, and the father for the son; affirming legitimate children to be illegitimate, and illegitimate to be legitimate; and framing incestuous and unnatural marriages, making the father to marry the son’s wife, and the son his own mother.”
He treats Camden with the respect due to his genius, while he judiciously distinguishes where the greatest ought to know when to yield.
“The most abstruse arts I profess not, but yield the palm and victory to mine adversary, that great learned Mr. Camden, 494 with whom, yet, a long experimented navigator may contend about his chart and compass, about havens, creeks, and sounds; so I, an ancient herald, a little dispute, without imputation of audacity, concerning the honour of arms, and the truth of honourable descents.”
Brooke had seen, as he observes, in four editions of the “Britannia,” a continued race of errors, in false descents, &c., and he continues, with a witty allusion:—