BROOKE, HENRY (c. 1703-1783), Irish author, of county Cavan, studied at Trinity college, Dublin, and then went to Lon don to study law. He wrote a philosophical poem in six books entitled Universal Beauty , translated the first and second books of Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (1738), and produced a tragedy, Gustavas Vasa, the Deliverer of his Country (1739). This play had been rehearsed for five weeks at Drury Lane, but at the last moment the performance was forbidden, on account of a sup posed portrait of Sir Robert Walpole in the part of Trollio. 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. He then returned to Ireland. 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 Let ters. For this service he received the post of barrack-master at Mullingar, which he held till his death. 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. His best-known work is the novel entitled The Fool of Quality; or the History of Henry Earl of Moreland (1765—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 (I 780) an abridged edition, and to Charles Kingsley, who pub lished it with a eulogistic notice in 1859. He died at Dublin in a state of mental infirmity on Oct. 10, '783.