Henrietta was the daughter of Theophilus Brocas, Dean of Killala and William, at the time, was a captain of the First Regiment of Foot.

At Christ Church he studied French and Italian literature, his command of which is evidenced in his notes to his translation of Dante.

This article, and praise bestowed on the work by Coleridge in a lecture at the Royal Institution, led to a general acknowledgment of its merit.

He resigned because the appointment of keeper of the printed books, which should have been his in the ordinary course of promotion, was refused to him when it fell vacant.

He died in Charlotte St., St. George's, Bloomsbury, London, in 1844 and was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.