BREWER, ANTHONY, a dramatic poet, in the reign of James I. He appears to have been in high estimation among the wits of that time, as may be gathered from a compliment paid to him in a poem called Steps to Parnassus, in which he is supposed to have a magic power of calling the muses to his assistance, and is even set on an equality with Shakespeare himself. He wrote six plays; in one of which, called Lingua, or the Five Senses, Oliver Cromwell (according to Winstanley) acted, when a youth at Cambridge, the part of Tactus or Touch.