His poetical works were collected in 1778, in four volumes octavo, printed very incorrectly, and with the addition of some pieces which were not his. In 1792 another edition was published at Dublin, by his daughter, who procured some memoirs of her father prefixed to the first volume. In this she informs us she found many difficulties. He had lived to so advanced an age that most of his contemporaries departed before him, and this young lady remembered nothing of him previous to his retirement from the world. Such an apology cannot be refused, while we must yet regret that Miss Brooke was not able to collect information more to be depended on, and arranged with more attention to dates. The narrative, as we find it, is confused and contradictory.

From all, however, that can now be learned, Brooke was a man of a most amiable character and ingenuous temper, and perhaps few men have produced writings of the same variety, the tendency of all which is so uniformly in favour of religious and moral principle. Yet even in this there are inconsistencies which we know not how to explain, unless we attribute them to an extraordinary defect in judgment. During a great part of his life, his religious opinions approached to what are now termed methodistical, and one difficulty, in contemplating his character, is to reconcile this with his support of the stage, and his writing those trifling farces we find among his works. Perhaps it may be said that the necessities of his family made him listen to the importunity of those friends who considered the stage as a profitable resource, but by taking such advice he was certainly no great gainer. Except in the case of his Gustavus and Earl of Essex, there is no reason to think that he was successful, and the greater part of his dramas were never performed at all, or printed, until 1778, when he could derive very little advantage from them. Nor can we impute it to any cause, except a total want of judgment and an ignorance of the public taste, that he intermixed the most awful doctrines of religion and the lighter incidents and humorous sketches of vulgar or fashionable life, in his novels.

He lived, however, we are told, more consistently than he wrote. No day passed in which he did not collect his family to prayer, and read and expounded the scriptures to them3. Among his tenants and humble friends he was the benevolent and generous character which he had been accustomed to depict in his works, and while he had the means, he literally went about doing good.

As a poet, he delights his readers principally by occasional flights of a vivid imagination, but has in no instance given us a poem to which criticism may not suggest many reasonable objections. The greater part of his life, he lived remote from the friends of whose judgment he might have availed himself, and by whose taste his own might have

3 The following anecdote is given by his biographer, with some regret that he had not been educated for the church. "One Sunday, while the congregation were assembled in the rural church of the parish in which he lived, they waited a long time the arrival of their clergyman. At last, finding he was not likely to come that day, they judged that some accident had detained him; and being loth to depart entirely without their errand, they with one accord requested that Mr. Brooke would perform the service for them, and expound a part of the scriptures.-He consented, and the previous prayers being over, he opened the Bible, and preached extempore on the first text that struck his eye. In the middle of his discourse, the clergyman entered, and found the whole congregation in tears. He entreated Mr. Brooke to proceed; but this he modestly refused; and the other as modestly declared, that after the testimony of superior abilities, which he perceived in the moist eyes of all present, he would think it presumption and folly to hazard any thing of his own. Accordingly, the concluding prayers alone were said, and the congregation dismissed for the day." C.

been regulated. His first production, Universal Beauty, has a noble display of fancy in many parts. It is not improbable that Pope, to whom he submitted it, gave him some assistance, and he certainly repaid his instructor by adopting his manner, yet he has avoided Pope's monotony, and would have done this with more effect, if we did not perceive a mechanical lengthening of certain lines, rather than a natural variety of movement. On the other hand, the sublimity of the subject, by which he was inspired, and which he hoped to communicate, sometimes betrays him into a species of turgid declama tion. Harmony appears to be consulted, and epithets multiplied, to please the ear at the expense of meaning.

The three books of Tasso have already been noticed, and the reader of the present collection may have an opportunity of comparing them with Hoole's translation. The Man of Law's Tale, from Chaucer, will incline every reader to wish that he had contributed more to Ogle's translation. Of all his original poems, the most correct are the four fables, first published in Moore's collection. They are perhaps too long for fables, but as moral tales we have few that exceed them in poetical spirit, and sprightly turns of thought. The Fox Chase and his lesser pieces, if we except some of the songs composed for his dramas, will add but inconsiderably to his fame.