“Verum enimverò de his et hoc genere hominum ne verbum amplius addam, tabellam tamen summi illius artificis Apellis, cùm colorum vivacitate depingere non possim, verbis leviter adumbrabo et proponam, ut Antiphilus noster, suique similes, et qui calumniis credunt, hanc, et in hac seipsos semel simulque intueantur.
“Ad dextram sedet quidam, quia credulus, auribus prælongis insignis, quales ferè illæ Midæ feruntur. Manum porrigit procul accedenti Calumniæ. Circumstant eum mulierculæ duæ, Ignorantia ac Suspicio. Adit aliunde propiùs Calumnia eximiè compta, vultu ipso et gestu corporis efferens rabiem, et iram æstuanti conceptam pectore præ se ferens: sinistra facem tenens flammantem, dextra secum adolescentem capillis arreptum, manus ad superos tendentem, obtestantemque immortalium deorum fidem, trahit. Anteit vir pallidus, in specium impurus, acie oculorum minimè hebeti, cæterùm planè iis símilis, qui gravi aliquo morbo contabuerunt. Hic livor est, ut facilè conjicias. Quin, et mulierculæ aliquot Insidiæ et Fallaciæ ut comites Calumniam comitantur. Harum est munus, dominam hortari, instruere, comere, et subornare. A tergo, habitu lugubri, pullato, laceroque Pœnitentia subsequitur, quæ capite in tergum deflexo, cum lachrymis, ac pudore procul venientem Veritatem agnoscit, et excipit.”
A Fletcher is a maker of bows and arrows.—Ash.
Brooke died at the old mansion opposite the Roman town of Reculver in Kent. The house is still known as Brooke-farm; and the original gateway of decorative brickwork still exists. He was buried in Reculver Church, now destroyed, where a mural monument was erected to his memory, having a rhyming inscription, which told the reader:—
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“Fifteenth October he was last alive, One thousand six hundred and twenty-five, Seaventy-three years bore he fortune’s harms, And forty-five an officer of armes.” |
Brooke was originally a painter-stainer. His enmity to Camden appears to have originated in the appointment of the latter to the office of Clarencieux on the death of Richard Lee; he believing himself to be qualified for the place by greater knowledge, and by his long connexion with the College of Arms. His mode of righting himself lacked judgment, and he was twice suspended from his office, and was even attempted to be expelled therefrom.—Ed.
In Anstis’s edition of “A Second Discoverie of Errors in the Much-commended ‘Britannia,’ &c.,” 1724, the reader will find all the passages in the “Britannia” of the edition of 1594 to which Brooke made exceptions, placed column-wise with the following edition of it in 1600. It is, as Anstis observes, a debt to truth, without making any reflections.