BYROM, JOHN, an ingenious poet born at Kersall, near Manchester in 1691, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first poetical essay appeared in the Spectator, No. 603, beginning, "My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent;" which, with two humorous letters on dreams, are to be found in the eighth volume. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1723; and having originally entertained thoughts of practising physic, he used to be styled doctor by his friends, though he had never obtained a diploma. Having reduced himself to narrow circumstances by a precipitate marriage, he supported himself by teaching a new method of writing short-hand, of his own invention, until an estate devolved to him by the death of an elder brother. He was a man of lively wit; of which, whenever a favourable opportunity tempted him to indulge it, he gave many specimens. He died in 1763; and 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.