[396] This work was not given to the public till 1724, a small quarto,
with a fine portrait of Brooke. More than a century had
elapsed since its forcible suppression. Anstis printed it
from the fair MS. which Brooke had left behind him. The
author's paternal affection seemed fondly to imagine its
child might be worthy of posterity, though calumniated by
its contemporaries.
[397] "Verum enimvero de his et hoc genere hominum ne verbum amplius
addam, tabellam tamen summi illius artificis Apellis, cum
colorum vivacitate depingere non possim, verbis leviter
adumbrabo et proponam, ut Antiphilus noster, suique similes,
et qui calumniis credunt, hanc, et in hac seipsos semel
simulque intueantur.
"Ad dextram sedet quidam, quia credulus, auribus praelongis
insignis, quales fere illae Midae feruntur. Manum porrigit
procul accedenti Calumniae. Circumstant eum mulierculae duae,
Ignorantia ac Suspicio. Adit aliunde propius Calumnia eximie
compta, vultu ipso et gestu corporis efferens rabiem, et iram
aestuanti conceptam pectore prae se ferens: sinistra facem
tenens flammantem, dextra secum adolescentem capillis
arreptum, manus ad superos tendentem, obtestantemque
immortalium deorum fidem, trahit. Anteit vir pallidus, in
specium impurus, acie oculorum minime hebeti, caeterum plane
iis similis, qui gravi aliquo morbo contabuerunt. Hic livor
est, ut facile conjicias. Quin, et mulierculae aliquot Insidiae
et Fallaciae ut comites Calumniam comitantur. Harum est munus,
dominam hortari, instruere, comere, et subornare. A tergo,
habitu lugubri, pullato, laceroque Poenitentia subsequitur,
quae capite in tergum deflexo, cum lachrymis, ac pudore procul
venientem Veritatem agnoscit, et excipit."
[398] A _Fletcher_ is a maker of bows and arrows.--ASH.
[399] Brooke died at the old mansion opposite the Roman town of
Reculver in Kent. The house is still known as Brooke-farm; and
the original gateway of decorative brickwork still exists. He
was buried in Reculver Church, now destroyed, where a mural
monument was erected to his memory, having a rhyming
inscription, which told the reader:--
"Fifteenth October he was last alive,
One thousand six hundred and twenty-five,
Seaventy-three years bore he fortune's harms,
And forty-five an officer of armes."
Brooke was originally a painter-stainer. His enmity to Camden
appears to have originated in the appointment of the latter to
the office of Clarencieux on the death of Richard Lee; he
believing himself to be qualified for the place by greater
knowledge, and by his long connexion with the College of Arms.
His mode of righting himself lacked judgment, and he was twice
suspended from his office, and was even attempted to be
expelled therefrom.--ED.
[400] In Anstis's edition of "A Second Discoverie of Errors in the
Much-commended 'Britannia,' &c.," 1724, the reader will find
all the passages in the "Britannia" of the edition of 1594 to
which Brooke made exceptions, placed column-wise with the
following edition of it in 1600. It is, as Anstis observes, a
debt to truth, without making any reflections.
[401] There is a sensible observation in the old "Biographia
Britannica" on Brooke. "From the splenetic attack originally
made by Rafe Brooke upon the 'Britannia' arose very _great
advantages to the public_, by the shifting and bringing to
light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic account of
our nobility, than had been given at that time of those in any
other country of Europe."--p. 1135.