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
twenty men, chiefly in the Mediterranean. At length, on the 27th of October 1838, he sailed from the Thames on his great adventure. On reaching Borneo, after various delays, he found the raja Muda Hassim, uncle of the reigning sultan, engaged in war in the province of Sarawak with several of the Dyak tribes, who had revolted against the sultan. He offered his aid to the raja; and with his crew, and some Javanese who had joined them, he took part in a battle with the insurgents, and they were defeated. For his services the title of raja of Sarawak was conferred on him by Muda Hassim, the former raja being deprived in his favour. It was, however, some time before the sultan could be induced to confirm his title (September 1841). During the next five years Raja Brooke was engaged in establishing his power, in making just reforms in administration, preparing a code of laws and introducing just and humane modes of dealing with the degraded subjects of his rule. But this was not all. He looked forward to the development of commerce as the most effective means of putting an end to the worst evils that afflicted the archipelago; and in order to make this possible, the way must first be cleared by the suppression, or a considerable diminution, of the prevailing piracy, which was not only a curse to the savage tribes engaged in it, but a standing danger to European and American traders in those seas. Various expeditions were therefore organized and sent out against the marauders, Dyaks and Malays, and sometimes even Arabs. Captain (afterwards Admiral Sir Harry) Keppel, and other commanders of British ships of war, received permission to co-operate with Raja Brooke in these expeditions. The pirates were attacked in their strongholds, they fought desperately, and the slaughter was immense. Negotiations with the chiefs had been tried, and tried in vain. The capital of the sultan of Borneo was bombarded and stormed, and the sultan with his army routed. He was, however, soon after restored to his dominion. So large was the number of natives, pirates and others, slain in these expeditions, that the "head-money" awarded by the British government to those who had taken part in them amounted to no less than £20,000. In October 1847 Raja Brooke returned to England, where he was well received by the government; and the corporation of London conferred on him the freedom of the city. The island of Labuan, with its dependencies, having been acquired by purchase from the sultan of Borneo, was erected into a British colony, and Raja Brooke was appointed governor and commander-in-chief. He was also named consul-general in Borneo. These appointments had been made before his arrival in England. The university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L., and in 1848 he was created K.C.B. He soon after returned to Sarawak, and was carried thither by a British man-of-war. In the summer of 1849 he led an expedition against the Seribas and Sakuran Dyaks, who still persisted in their piratical practices and refused to submit to British authority. Their defeat and wholesale slaughter was a matter of course. At the time of this engagement Sir James Brooke was lying ill with dysentery. He visited twice the capital of the sultan of Sala, and concluded a treaty with him, which had for one of its objects the expulsion of the sea-gypsies and other tribes from his dominions. In 1851 grave charges with respect to the operations in Borneo were brought against Sir James Brooke in the House of Commons by Joseph Hume and other members, especially as to the "head-money" received. To meet these accusations, and to vindicate his proceedings, he came to England. The evidence adduced was so conflicting that the matter was at length referred to a royal commission, to sit at Singapore. As the result of its investigation the charges were declared to be "not proven." Sir James, however, was soon after deprived of the governorship of Labuan, and the head-money was abolished. In 1867 his house in Sarawak was attacked and burnt by Chinese pirates, and he had to fly from the capital, Kuching. With a small force he attacked the Chinese, recovered the town, made a great slaughter of them, and drove away the rest. In the following year he came to England, and remained there for three years. During this time he was attacked by paralysis, a public subscription was raised, and an estate in Devonshire was bought and presented to him. He made two more visits to Sarawak, and on each occasion had a rebellion to suppress. He spent his last days on his estate at Burrator in Devonshire, and died there, on the 11th of June 1868, being succeeded as raja of Sarawak by his nephew. Sir James Brooke was a man of the highest personal character, and he displayed rare courage both in his conflicts in the East and under the charges advanced against him in England.
His Private Letters (1838 to 1853) were published in 1853. Portions of his Journal were edited by Captains Munday and Keppel. (See also Sarawak.)
BROOKE, STOPFORD AUGUSTUS (1832- ), English divine and man of letters, born at Letterkenny, Donegal, Ireland, in 1832, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1857, and held various charges in London. From 1863 to 1865 he was chaplain to the empress Frederick in Berlin, and in 1872 he became chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria. But in 1880 he seceded from the Church, being no longer able to accept its leading dogmas, and officiated as a Unitarian minister for some years at Bedford chapel, Bloomsbury. Bedford chapel was pulled down about 1894, and from that time he had no church of his own, but his eloquence and powerful religious personality continued to make themselves felt among a wide circle. A man of independent means, he was always keenly interested in literature and art, and a fine critic of both. He published in 1865 his Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson (of Brighton), and in 1876 wrote an admirable primer of English Literature (new and revised ed., 1900), followed in 1892 by The History of Early English Literature (2 vols., 1892) down to the accession of Alfred, and English Literature from the Beginnings to the Norman Conquest (1898). His other works include various volumes of sermons; Poems (1888); Dove Cottage (1890); Theology in the English Poets—Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Burns (1874); Tennyson, his Art and Relation to Modern Life (1894); The Poetry of Robert Browning (1902); On Ten Plays of Shakespeare (1905); and The Life Superlative (1906).
BROOK FARM, the name applied to a tract of land in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, on which in 1841-1847 a communistic experiment was unsuccessfully tried. The experiment was one of the practical manifestations of the spirit of "Transcendentalism," in New England, though many of the more prominent transcendentalists took no direct part in it. The project was originated by George Ripley, who also virtually directed it throughout. In his words it was intended "to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labour than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom by providing all with labour adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry; to do away with the necessity of menial services by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labour to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent and cultivated persons whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life than can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions." In short, its aim was to bring about the best conditions for an ideal civilization, reducing to a minimum the labour necessary for mere existence, and by this and by the simplicity of its social machinery saving the maximum of time for mental and spiritual education and development. At a time when Ralph Waldo Emerson could write to Thomas Carlyle, "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform; not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket,"—the Brook Farm project certainly did not appear as impossible a scheme as many others that were in the air. At all events it enlisted the co-operation of men whose subsequent careers show them to have been something more than visionaries. The association bought a tract of land about 10 m. from Boston, and in the summer of 1841 began its enterprise with about twenty members. In September the "Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education" was formally organized, the members
signing the Articles of Association and forming an unincorporated joint-stock company. The farm was assiduously, if not very skilfully, cultivated, and other industries were established—most of the members paying by labour for their board—but nearly all of the income, and sometimes all of it, was derived from the school, which deservedly took high rank and attracted many pupils. Among these were included George William Curtis and his brother James Burrill Curtis, Father Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819-1888), General Francis C. Barlow (1834-1896), who as attorney-general of New York in 1871-1873 took a leading part in the prosecution of the "Tweed Ring." For three years the undertaking went on quietly and simply, subject to few outward troubles other than financial, the number of associates increasing to seventy or eighty. It was during this period that Nathaniel Hawthorne had his short experience of Brook Farm, of which so many suggestions appear in the Blithedale Romance, though his preface to later editions effectually disposed of the idea—which gave him great pain—that he had either drawn his characters from persons there, or had meant to give any actual description of the colony. Emerson refused, in a kind and characteristic letter, to join the undertaking, and though he afterwards wrote of Brook Farm with not uncharitable humour as "a perpetual picnic, a French Revolution in small, an age of reason in a patty-pan," among its founders were many of his near friends. In 1844 the growing need of a more scientific organization, and the influence which F.M.C. Fourier's doctrines, as modified by Albert Brisbane (1809-1890), had gained in the minds of Ripley and many of his associates, combined to change the whole plan of the community. It was transformed, with the strong approval of all its chief members and the consent of the rest, into a Fourierist "phalanx" in 1845. There was an accession of new members, a momentary increase of prosperity, a brilliant new undertaking in the publication of a weekly journal, the Harbinger, in which Ripley, Charles A. Dana, Francis G. Shaw and John S. Dwight were the chief writers, and to which James Russell Lowell, J.G. Whittier, George William Curtis, Parke Godwin, T.W. Higginson, Horace Greeley and many more now and then contributed. But the individuality of the old Brook Farm was gone. The association was not rescued even from financial troubles by the change. With increasing difficulty it kept on till the spring of 1846, when a fire which destroyed its nearly completed "phalanstery" brought losses which caused, or certainly gave the final ostensible reason for, its dissolution. The experiment was abandoned in the autumn of 1847. Besides Ripley and Hawthorne, the principal members of the community were Charles A. Dana, John S. Dwight, Minot Pratt (c. 1805-1878), the head farmer, who, like George Partridge Bradford (1808-1890), left in 1845, and Warren Burton (1810-1866) a preacher and, later, a writer on educational subjects. Indirectly connected with the experiment, also, as visitors for longer or shorter periods but never as regular members, were Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes A. Brownson, Theodore Parker and William Henry Channing, Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. The estate itself, after passing through various hands, came in 1870 into the possession of the "Association of the Evangelical Lutheran Church for Works of Mercy," which established here an orphanage, known as the "Martin Luther Orphan Home."
The best account of Brook Farm is Lindsay Swift's Brook Farm, Its Members, Scholars and Visitors (New York, 1900). Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs (Boston, 1894), is by Dr J.T. Codman, one of the pupils in the school. See also Morris Hillquit's History of Socialism in the United States (New York, 1903).
(E. L. B.)