BYROM, John (1691-1763), a poet and miscellaneous writer, was born at Kersall, near Manchester, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first poetical essay, the well-known Colin and Phoebe, appeared in the Spectator, No. 603. After leaving the university he studied medicine at Montpellier, and became a convert to the mystical theology of Bourignon and Boehme. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1723. Having reduced himself to narrow circumstances by a precipitate marriage, he supported himself by teaching a new method of shorthand writing, of his own invention, till he succeeded to an estate on the death of an elder brother. He was a man of lively wit, of which, as opportunity offered, he gave many specimens. A collection of his miscellaneous poems was printed at Manchester, in two vols. 8vo, 1773, and reprinted at Leeds in 1814, with a life of Byrom by an anonymous writer. Byrom’s Private Journal and Correspondence have appeared among the publications of the Chetham Society (vols, xxxiv. and xliv.)