Brome, Alexander

, an English poet, has the reputation of ably assisting the royal party in the time of Charles I. 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 his printed works, 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 must judge. His songs are in^neasures, varied with considerable ease and harmony, and have many sprightly turns, and satirical strokes, which the Roundheads 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. Phillips styles him the “English Anacreon.” Walton has draxvn a very favourable character of him in the eclogue prefixed to his works, the only one of the commendatory poems which seems worthy of a republication; Mr. Ellis enumerates three editions of these poems, the first in 1660, the second in 1664, and the third in 1668. That, however, used in the late edition of the English Poets 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 he published a “Translation of Horace,” by himself, Fanshaw, Holliday, Hawkins, Cowley, Ben Jonson, &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. ¹