"'——Lycidas our sorrow is not dead.
Sunk though he be beneath the watery flood,'—
But that he hath mounted to a higher sphere—
"'Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.'"
AUTHOR OF "THE FOOL OF QUALITY."
Of the interesting papers in the February Dublin University Magazine, we have read none with more satisfaction than the biographical sketch and portrait of one of the most distinguished Irishmen of his own or any age, the gifted and pure minded author of Gustavus Vasa and The Fool of Quality, Henry Brooke. Of his literary fate it might be said that the most unfortunate thing he did was to assert the patriotism of Dean Swift; and the most unfortunate thing was to be left out of Doctor Johnson's "Lives of the Poets." Trials had he to undergo, although not absolutely driven to the wall, like many children of "the fatal dowry," and those of Irish complexion, in particular; but he bravely bore up against them. Those who deem that relatives may live more happily apart, and that friendship is best preserved in full dress, may look at the picture of Henry Brooke, the poet and politician, and Robert Brooke, the painter, with their wives and children, not less than twenty, living together in perfect peace and amity at Daisy Park, in the flattest part of Kildare, where, in those dull seats and distant times, a family breeze might now and then have been looked on in the Irish sense as a "convenience and a comfort." "While Henry wrote," says the biographer, "Robert painted, and sold his pictures; and thus these two loving brothers, having lost their property, made a right and manful use of their intellectual gifts, and supported their large families by the sweat of their brows."
"In his politics, Brooke was of the old whig school; and, had he lived in 1829, he would probably have been an emancipator. He was a right-minded, ardent Irishman in his love for fatherland; hated oppression; idolized liberty; wrote most keenly against Poyning's infamous laws; mourned over the misrule and misgovernment of his country, under the tyranny and rapacity of the Stuart dynasty; admired King William, and was an exulting Protestant; yet greatly loved his Roman Catholic neighbors, and would preserve to them their properties, though he disliked their principles, and deprecated their ascendency."
Dr. Johnson's feelings respecting Brooke are accounted for, not improbably, as follows:
"It may be asked why did Dr. Johnson exclude Brooke from his 'Lives of the Poets,' where so many names of little note are to be found? In 1739, Johnson had written in Brooke's praise in his 'Complete Vindication,' and twenty years afterwards, when the learned Dr. Campbell showed a spirited 'Prospectus of a History of Ireland' written by him, to the great moralist, he read it with much pleasure and praise, saying that 'every line breathed the true fire of genius.' It is recorded that, on this occasion, Johnson lamented that 'the vanity of Irishmen, even if their patriotism were extinct, did not enable Brooke to carry his design into execution.' In Johnson's letter to Charles O'Connor we have his mind on the subject. To Brooke he appears never to have written; there had been an ancient quarrel between them. They had argued and disagreed; and the traditionary story in Brooke's family bears so heavily on the manner of the philosopher, and is so flattering to the courtesy of the poet, that we should prefer not to write it down. Brooke was at all times strangely careless of fame; independent to a fault, and more proud than vain; and though much urged by his friends to humble himself, yet he could not be induced to 'bow down' to the cap of this literary Gesler, much as he regarded his learning and noble intellect. This dislike of the Doctor continued during his life; and Boswell narrates that on the occasion of a play being read to him (it was Brooke's Gustavus Vasa) and a circle of friends, on coming to the line—