THE

LIFE OF ALEXANDER BROME.

BY MR. CHALMERS.

THE turbulent reign of Charles I. was less unfavourable to poetry than might have been expected. In his happier days, the monarch was a friend to learning and the arts, and it is seldom that the natural bias of wits is interrupted by the calamities of their country. Amidst civil convulsions and sanguinary contests, the Muses lent their aid to the hostile parties; and poetical ridicule, though the most harmless, was not the least commonly employed of those means by which they sought to exasperate each other. In this species of warfare, if the loyalists did not exhibit the highest abilities, they were enabled to take the wider range: they were men of gaiety approaching to licentiousness, and opposed psalms and hymns by anacreontics and

satires.

Brome, the writer now before us, has the reputation of ably assisting the royal cause by his poetry, and of even having no inconsiderable hand in promoting the Restoration. Of his personal history, we have only a few notices in the Biographia Dramatica. He was born in 1620 and died June 30, 1666. He was an attorney in the Lord Mayor's Court, and through the whole of the protectorship, maintained his loyalty, and cheered his party by the songs and poems in this collection, most of which must have been sung, if not composed at much personal risk. How far they are calculated to excite resentment, or to promote the cause which the author espoused, the reader is now enabled to judge. His songs are in measures varied with considerable ease and harmony, and have many sprightly turns, and satirical strokes, which the round-heads must have felt. Baker informs us that he was the author of much the greater part of those songs and epigrams which were published against the Rump. Philips styles him the "English Anacreon." Walton has drawn a very favourable character of him in the Eclogue prefixed, the only one of the commendatory poems which seems worthy of a republication. His translations, and a few of his inferior pieces are also omitted in the present edition, and perhaps it may be thought that some which are retained might have shared the same fate without injury to the reader.

Mr. Ellis enumerates three editions of these poems, the first in 1660, the second in 1664, and the third in 1668. That, however, from which we print, is dated 1661. In 1660 he published, A Congratulatory Poem on the miraculous and glorious Return of Charles II. which we have not seen'.

Besides these poems, be published a translation of Horace, by himself and Fanshaw, Holliday, Hawkins, Cowley, Ben Johnson, &c. and had once an intention to translate Lucretius. In 1654 he published a comedy entitled The Cunning Lovers, which was acted in 1651 at the private house in Drury-lane. He was also editor of the plays of Richard Brome, who, however, is not mentioned as being related to him.

Kennet's Register. p. 216.

TO THE HONOURABLE,

SIR J. ROBINSON,

KNIGHT AND BARONET, HIS MAJESTY'S LIEUTENANT OF THE TOWER OF

LONDON.

SIR,

THE many great obligations, which you have from time to time laid on me, do merit a more serious acknowledgment than this rude and toyish address can pretend to, whose design is only to beg pardon and protection, for that I being seduced to print these youthful vanities, have thus audadiously sheltered them under your name. I should not have done it, but that I well know the kindness you have for me, is a sufficient screen against any offence I can commit against you; and I have considered also that there are four great things committed to your custody; the soldiers, the lions, the guns, and (which is more powerful) the money. So that if any should have an itch to snarl at me, they will not dare to open their mouths,

, lest they should be thought to bark at you; in whose regiment I desire to list this volunteer, being encouraged by this consideration, that together with those great and serious emblems and instruments of power, the apes and catamountains, and other properties of diversion, do there find safety and subsistence; that those privileges may extend to this brat of mine, no less ridiculous, is the ainbition of,

sir,

your grateful servant,

A. BROME.