English poet, hymnist, and inventor of a system of shorthand, student of religious mysticism. John Byrom's light-hearted and good-natured character is apparent in his journals. His shorthand was never widely used and it was too slow professional stenographers. 'Hymn for Christmas Day', with its uplifting words, is Byrom's best-known work. The phrase " Tweedledum and Tweedledee", about a silly battle between two men, may have been coined by Byrom. As the Tweedle boys, these names later appeared in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Class (1871).

Some say, that Signor Bononcini,
Compared to Handel's a mere ninny;
Others aver, to him, that Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.
Strange! that such high dispute should be
'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
('On the Feuds between Handel and Bononcini')

John Byrom was born near Manchester into a family of prosperous merchants and linendrapers. He was educated at Chester, and later he went to Merchant Taylors' School. Byrom studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, under the reign of Richard Bentley (1662-1742) - he ruled the college with such despotic power that his mastership was a succession of quarrels and scandals. However, Byrom defended Bentley. He may have addressed a pastoral published in the Spectator in 1714 to the daughter of the master. The poem, 'Colin and Phoebe', became very popular. In Cambridge he became a fellow. He also studied medicine at the University of Montpellier in France. Though he did not take a degree and never practiced he was afterward called 'doctor' by his friends. Byrom possibly spent some time in France but chiefly he lived in Manchester. In 1721 Byrom married his cousin, Elizabeth Byrom.

While in Cambridge Byrom, invented his own system of shorthand, and became its teacher. According to a story, Byrom made his invention in a concert. His pupils, who called him the grand master, were required to take an oath of secresy. Byrom's system was used by John (1703-1791) and Charles Wesley (1707-1788), founders of Methodism, who recorded their self-examinations in coded diaries. However, Timothy Bright had been called the father of modern shorthand. Queen Elizabeth granted him a patent for a "shorte and new kynde of writing by character to the furtherance of good learning." Later on Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) used the technique in his famous diary, so that no one could read it while he was alive. William Mason first published his system in 1672 under the title Pen plucked from an Eagles Wing; it formed the basis of the Guerney system, used at least 200 years. From 1724 Byrom was a fellow of Royal Society. His varied acquaintances included the physician David Hartley, the Wesleys, devout Christians, J. Butler, writer of Fifteen Sermons, and William Law (1686-1761), of whom Byrom left accounts in his Private Journal and Literary Remains (1854-57). It is an important source of information on Law, a very religious writer, whose guide to the practice of Christian faith, A Serious Call, influenced deeply Samuel Johnson.

Byrom's Miscellaneous Poems (1773) include some modifications of Law's poem, and the well-known 'Hymn for Christmas Day' (Christians awake, salute the happy morn, / Whereon the saviour of the world was born) of which Byrom is best remembered for. Originally the poem was written for Byrom's daughter Dolly as a Christmas gift in 1749. A copy was given to John Wainwright, an organist, who composed music for it.

Most of Byrom's religious poems are now forgotten. In the epigram on King and Pretender, Byrom showed his Jacobite sympathies. The ambiguously loyal toast begins 'God bless the King! I mean the Faith's Defender...' In 'On Clergymen Preaching Politics' he wrote: "Were I a king (God bless me) I should hate / My chaplains meddling with affairs of state; / Nor would my subjects, I should think, be fond, / Whenever theirs the Bible went beyond." Byrom also wrote religious verse and a pastoral (1714), he had many varied linguistic, literary, religious, and scientific interests, and was attracted to the mysticism of writers like Jacob Boehme and Malebranche. Byrom contributed two papers on shorthand to the Philosophical Transactions and copyrighted his 'tychygraphy' system in 1742, but his Universal English Shorthand did not appear during his life time. Byrom died in London on September 26, 1763.

"God bless the King, I mean the Faith's Defender;
God bless – no harm in blessing – the Pretender;
But who Pretender is, or who is King,
God bless us all – that's quite another thing."
(in Miscellaneous Poems, 1773)

For further reading: The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble (1998); The Queen's Chameleon: The Life of John Byrom by Joy Hancox (1994); The Byrom collection by Joy Hancox (1992); The Edges of Augustanism; The Aesthetics of Spirituality in Thomas Ken, John Byrom, and William Law by John Hoyles (1972)

Selected works:

• The Universal English Short-Hand; or, the Way of writing English, in the most easy, concise ... manner Invented by J. Byrom, 1767
• Miscellaneous poems, by John Byrom, M.A. F.R.S. sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and inventor of the universal English short-hand, 1773 (2 vols.)
  
• The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, 1854-1857 (2 vols., ed. Richard Parkinson)
• The Poems of John Byrom, 1894-1912 (edited by Adolphus William Ward)
• Prayer, the passion of love, 1981