Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/60

48 which was a favourite book with. His now forgotten poem, Universal Beauty (1735) was admired by. His dau.,, the only survivor of 22 children, tended him to his last days of decay, and was herself a writer, her principal work being Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789). She d. 1793.

 Author:Charles William Shirley Brooks (1816-1874).—Journalist and novelist, b. in London, began life in a solicitor's office. He early, however, took to literature, and contributed to various periodicals. In 1851 he joined the staff of Punch, to which he contributed "Essence of Parliament," and on the death of (q.v.) he succeeded him as editor. He pub. a few novels, including Aspen Court and The Gordian Knot.

 Author:Maria Brooks  (1795?-1845).—American poetess, was early m. to a merchant, who lost his money, and left her a young widow, after which she wrote highly romantic and impassioned poetry. Her chief work, Zophiël or The Bride of Swen, was finished under the auspices of Southey, who called her "Maria del Occidente," and regarded her as "the most impassioned and imaginative of all poetesses," but time has not sustained this verdict.

 Author:William Broome (1689-1745).—Poet and translator, b. at Haslington, Cheshire, and ed. at Eton and Camb., entered the Church, and held various incumbencies. He translated the Iliad in prose along with others, and was employed by Pope, whom he excelled as a Greek scholar, in translating the Odyssey, of which he Englished the 8th, 11th, 12th, 16th, 18th, and 23rd books, catching the style of his master so exactly as almost to defy identification, and thus annoying him so as to earn a niche in The Dunciad. He pub. verses of his own of very moderate poetical merit.

 Author:Henry Brougham,  (1778-1868).—S. of Henry B. of Brougham Hall, Westmoreland, b. in Edin., and ed. at the High School and Univ. there, where he distinguished himself chiefly in mathematics. He chose a legal career, and was called to the Scottish Bar in 1800, and to the English Bar in 1808. His chief forensic display was his defence of Queen Caroline in 1822. In 1810 he entered Parliament, where his versatility and eloquence soon raised him to a foremost place. The questions on which he chiefly exerted himself were the slave trade, commercial, legal, and parliamentary reform, and education, and in all of these he rendered signal service. When, in 1830, the Whigs, with whom he had always acted, attained power, B. was made Lord Chancellor; but his arrogance, selfishness, and indiscretion rendered him a dangerous and unreliable colleague, and he was never again admitted to office. He turned fiercely against his former political associates, but continued his efforts on behalf of reform in various directions. He was one of the founders of London Univ. and of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. In literature he has a place as one of the original projectors of and most voluminous contributors to The Edinburgh Review, and as the author of a prodigious number of treatises on science, philosophy, and history, including Dialogues on Instinct, Lives of Statesmen, Philosophers, and Men of Science of