Brooke

Brooke, STOPFORD AUGUSTUS, writer and preacher, was born in Letterkenny, Donegal, in 1832. After a brilliant course at Trinity College, Dublin, he took orders, and after holding various curacies, was incumbent of St James's Chapel from 1866 to 1875, thereafter of Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury, where his sermons, at once rich in thought and graceful in literary form, made him one of the chief preachers in London. In 1872 he was appointed chaplain-in-ordinary to the Queen. In 1880, through a conscientious inability any longer to believe in miracles, he seceded from the Church of England, but continued to preach in his proprietary chapel in Bloomsbury. Brooke showed fine literary sense and spiritual sympathy in his Life of Frederick Robertson of Brighton (1865); and his reputation did not suffer by his Theology in the English Poets (1874), Primer of English Literature, and Milton (1876), and six volumes of Sermons (1868-88).