Brooke, Henry (c. 1703–1783)

Irish novelist and poet. The only one of his works now read is the novel The Fool of Quality (1766–70). His poem Universal Beauty (1735) was admired by the satirist Alexander Pope, and is said to have suggested Erasmus Darwin's long poem Botanic Garden.

Brooke conceived a plan for a collection of Irish historical tales, but it was never realized. He also intended to learn Irish Gaelic, but his daughter Charlotte made more progress with the language, publishing in 1789 Reliques of Irish Poetry, an anthology of Irish poems with her own rather declamatory translations. Her notes show a keen sensitivity to the difficulties of translation from Gaelic.