BROOKE (Dorothea), calm, queenly heroine of Middlemarch, by George Eliot.

BROO’KER, the man who stole the son of Ralph Nickleby out of revenge, called him “Smike,” and put him to school at Dotheboy’s Hall, Yorkshire.—­C.  Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838).

BROOKS OF SHEFFIELD, name by which Murdstone alludes to David Copperfield in novel of that name.

BROTHER JON’ATHAN.  When Washington was in want of ammunition, he called a council of officers; but no practical suggestion being offered, he said, “We must consult brother Jonathan,” meaning his excellency Jonathan Trumbull, the elder governor of the state of Connecticut.  This was done, and the difficulty surmounted.  “To consult brother Jonathan” then became a set phrase, and “Brother Jonathan” became the “John Bull” of the United States.—­J.  R. Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms.

BROTHER SAM, the brother of lord Dundreary, the hero of a comedy based on a German drama, by John Oxenford, with additions and alterations by E. A. Sothern and T. B. Buckstone.—­Supplied by T. B. Buckstone, Esq.

BROWDIE (John), a brawny, big-made Yorkshire corn-factor, bluff, brusque, honest, and kind-hearted.  He befriends poor Smike, and is much, attached to Nicholas Nickleby.  John Browdie marries Matilda Price, a miller’s daughter.—­C.  Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838).

BROWN (Hablot) illustrated some of Dickens’s novels and took the pseudonym of “Phiz” (1812-).

Brown (Jonathan), landlord of the Black Bear at Darlington.  Here Frank Osbaldistone meets Rob Roy at dinner.—­Sir W. Scott, Rob Roy (time, George I.).

Brown (Mrs.), the widow of the brother-in-law of the Hon. Mrs. Skewton.  She had one daughter, Alice Marwood, who was first cousin to Edith (Mr. Dombey’s second wife).  Mrs. Brown lived in great poverty, her only known vocation being to “strip children of their clothes, which she sold or pawned.”—­C.  Dickens, Dombey and Son (1846).

Brown (Mrs.), a “Mrs. John Bull,” with all the practical sense, kind-heartedness, absence of conventionality, and the prejudices of a well-to-do but half-educated Englishwoman of the middle shop class.  She passes her opinions on all current events, and travels about, taking with her all her prejudices, and despising everything which is not English.—­Arthur Sketchley [Rev. George Rose].

Brown (Tom), hero of Tom Brown’s School-Days and Tom Brown at Oxford, by Thomas Hughes.

Brown (Vanbeest), lieutenant of Dirk Hatteraick.—­Sir W. Scott, Guy Mannering (time, George II.).

BROWN, JONES, AND ROBINSON, three Englishmen who travel together.  Their adventures, by Richard Doyle, were published in Punch.  In them is held up to ridicule the gaucherie, the contracted notions, the vulgarity, the conceit, and the general snobbism of the middle-class English abroad.