BYROM, JOHN (1692-1763), English poet, writer of hymns and inventor of a system of shorthand, was born at Kersal Cell, near Manchester, on Feb. 29, 1692, and died on Sept. 26, 1763, in London. He became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1714. His first poem, "Colin to Phoebe," a pastoral, appeared in the Spectator, No. 6o3. The heroine is said to have been Dr. Bentley's daughter, Joanna, the mother of Richard Cumberland, the dramatist. After leaving the University Byrom went abroad, ostensibly to study medicine, but possibly his errand was political, for he was an adherent of the Pretender. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1724. On his return to London he taught a new method of shorthand of his own invention. His diary gives interesting portraits and letters of the many great men of his time whom he knew intimately. A collection of his poems was published in 1773, and he is included in Alexander Chalmers's English Poets. His system of shorthand was not pub lished until after his death, when it was printed as The Universal English Shorthand; or the way of writing English in the most easy, concise, regular and beautiful manner, applicable to any other language, but particularly adjusted to our own (Manchester, 1767).
The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, related by Richard Parkinson, D.D., was published by the Chetham Society