employed to induce Mr. Roscoe to hasten his labours on the great subject of the Life of Leo, completely succeeded, and the public hailed with delight the appearance of this work in the summer of 1805. The success of this performance was quite as brilliant, and its reception and adoption in other countries, through translations by first-rate literary men belonging to those countries, were as flattering as in the former case of the Life of Lorenzo; nor did the wanton asperity of the Edinburgh Review damp the curiosity of the public for the work, and much less did it retard the expression of that general admiration of his powers which the public universally felt towards Mr. Roscoe.

A new scene was now trodden by Mr. Roscoe, for his public virtues would have wanted that complete sanction which they deserved, if they were not sealed by a seat in parliament, secured to him exclusively by the uninfluenced suffrages of an enlightened body of electors. He was returned, but his experience in the house satisfied him that his best course was to relinquish the parliamentary character. Constituents were of a different opinion, and sought to force upon their modest favourite the high character of their representative. But in vain, for Mr. Roscoe determined to take no further part in politics as a senator, feeling that he could act more beneficially for his country through the press, and by means of his personal exertions at home. He accordingly declined another seat in parliament; wrote several pamphlets upon particular political exigencies, which arose unexpectedly, and by degrees returned to those literary pursuits which formed the great charm of his existence. He became, in the mean time, an active member of the African Association, and by his act proved the sincerity of his professions in joining such a society. An example of practical interference for the suppression of the infernal traffic has been given by Mr. Roscoe, of which the following are the particulars :

In the year 1809 Mr. Roscoe was so fortunate as to receive the thanks of the African Institution, for his services in assisting to rescue some negroes from an attempt to recapture them in this country. A Brazilian vessel, called the Monte de Carino, under the command of a person whose name was Joze Antonio Cardozo, having arrived at the port of Liverpool, nine of the crew, who were negroes, and had been slaves in Brazil, were immediately arrested under process from the Borough Court of Liverpool, at the suit of the captain, Cardozo, and lodged in the borough gaol. The affidavit of debt, upon which this process was founded, stated that these men were indebted to the plaintiff for advances of money. They were carried, in handcuffs, to the prison, where they remained for about a month; when, the ship being ready for sea, the captain, attended by his attorney, and a gang of men, went to the gaol and produced discharges for all the prisoners from his suit. The unfortunate captives, aware that, on their release from confinement, they should be hurried on board ship and carried out again as slaves, refused to quit the prison; their fellow-prisoners declared that they would protect them; and the gaoler, with a humanity

which did him credit, afforded them the protection of the prison-walls. These circumstances reaching the ears of Mr. Roscoe, an immediate inquiry was instituted into them; bail was, by his direction, put in, in all the actions; and, with the assistance of the magistrates of the town, who acted with alacrity in the affair, such proceedings were taken as effectually secured the freedom of the negroes. Mr. Roscoe's exertions on this occasion procured him the thanks of the African Institution.-vol. i. pp. 477, 478.

The committee of this institution resolved that their thanks should be given to him for his humane and successful interposition on behalf of nine black men, lately confined in the borough gaol of Liverpool, by process for debt sued out by a Portuguese shipmaster, with the purpose of securing them till he should be ready to sail, and then forcibly carrying them into slavery. The committee congratulated Mr. Roscoe on his having thus been the instrument of delivering nine human beings from the dreadful state of negro slavery, and vindicating at the same time the justice of the British laws, which were fraudulently abused for purposes of oppression.

The strenuous exertions made at this period to preserve the country from being engaged in war, may be judged of from the numerous pamphlets which he published, and a great proportion of which appear to be extorted from him in the teeth of his own expressed resolutions to avoid the subject in future.

In 1811 and 1812, Mr. Roscoe's attention was chiefly absorbed by the measures taken by the friends of freedom to further the cause of reform. Mr. Roscoe, throughout this critical period, proved the sincerity and honesty of his purpose, and still rejected all overtures which tended to his restoration to a seat in the House of Commons. He found time, however, at this period, for the study of bibliography, and indulged upon that subject in a correspondence with Dr. Dibdin. His agricultural tastes, which were by no means left ungratified by Mr. Roscoe, were the means of introducing him to many eminent persons, and he seems to have been especially delighted with a pressing invitation from the hospitable Mr. Coke, to Holkham. This he accepted in 1814, and spent his time there with Dr. Parr and Sir J. Smith, in searching through the literary treasures with which that fine mansion abounds. The effect of the visit was so favourable upon him, that he signalized it as an event worthy of the best numbers of his Muse.

We now arrive at the melancholy era of Mr. Roscoe's career, when he was called upon to sustain one of those reverses of fortune which try the temper and firmness of men. It appears that, in consequence of embarking large sums in landed and mining property, the banking house of which Mr. Roscoe was a partner began to experience some difficulties towards the close of the year 1815. In the January following, the house was compelled to stop payment, and Mr. Roscoe's valuable property, with his various collections, fell a sacrifice to the general creditors. But many of his

friends behaved on the unhappy occasion with a degree of generosity which could not but have proved a consolation even to such affliction as his. He had, however, an ample resource in the conscious integrity of his own mind, which must have supported him, not only with resignation, but also with cheerfulness; for it appears that he was able in November, 1817, to open the Liverpool Royal Institution, with a discourse on the origin and vicissitudes of literature, science, and art, and their influenee on the present state of society. He gave a considerable portion of his time at this period to questions of a purely philosophical nature, and maintained a correspondence with many of the scientific characters of the day. The circumstances in which, to the knowledge of all the world, Mr. Roscoe was now placed, led to the belief that he was ready to resume his literary labours, he having found them already profitable. He was importuned accordingly by various booksellers, to whom he expressed uniformly his intention to decline their commissions: but in the midst of all those teasing occupations, which were so well calculated to harass him, he did not relax in his efforts to make himself useful to the public, by lending himself to the foundation of new institutions, having useful purposes for their end, and by endeavouring to circulate amongst the mass just and sound principles respecting the welfare of society, civil and political. But even in these benevolent moods his mind must have been liable to be betrayed into a sense of the painful condition in which he was then placed, not only because he had done so little that was successful for his family, and still as little, as he believed, for promoting the public weal. How he must have suffered from the pangs of disappointment cannot be better explained than by the following beautiful

lines:

That when, removed from grief and pain,
This fragile form on earth shall lie,
Some happier effort may remain

To touch one human heart with joy;

One nobler precept to bestow,

One kind and generous wish reveal
To bid the breast with virtue glow
To love, to pity, and to feel;

To soothe the ills it cannot cure,
The sufferer's injuries redress;
And through life's varied channels pour
The living stream of happiness.

Then, though in cold oblivion laid,
Some secret beam of heavenly glow
May pierce the dark incumbent shade,
And warm the dust that rests below.

This mouldering form, from God that came,
An instrument at his command,
Waits silent yet, through all its frame
The impulse of its Master's hand.

Smite, Lord! this frame shall own thy power,
And every trembling chord reply;

Smite, Lord! and, in my latest hour,

This falling frame shall ring with joy! 8th Feb. 1818.

In 1819, whilst his affairs were still in an unpleasant state of perplexity, Mr. Roscoe devoted much of his time and talents to the elucidation of the principles which should guide society in the regulation of its means of suppressing crime; but the termination of his affairs in bankruptcy induced him to retire once more from public life, and to seek occupation in his favourite pursuit-Italian literature. During the tedious proceedings which retained him in the bondage of a Chancery suit, for a long time before his certificate would be allowed, he was gratified by the voluntary and gratuitous professional services of Mr. Basil Montagu and Mr. Lowndes, and when at last he was restored to his family, by having obtained his certificate, he relinguished all mercantile business, and devoted himself to literature. His generous friends did all in their power to retrieve his shattered fortunes, and a fund of 2500l., subscribed by them, was vested in trustees for his benefit and that of his family. He was afterwards kindly invited to Holkham again, where a congenial occupation was contrived for him in the compilation of a catalogue, expressly intended by the excellent proprietor to wean the innocent sufferer from the melancholy contemplation of his past suffer

ings. He returned in 1821 to Liverpool, with renovated health, and in better spirits than he left it. He now proceeded to employ himself for the booksellers, and soon produced his Illustrations of the Life of Lorenzo de Medici. But one of the most curious of his publications, namely, The Memoir of Richard Robert Jones, appeared about this time. The individual here mentioned was marked by the most extraordinary combination of mental extremes that has ever been presented to human contemplation. In his habits and ordinary conduct, he showed a deficiency of common sense which amounted almost to idiotcy, and the squalid state of wretchedness in which he usually appeared would have disgraced the most destitute of mendicants; but, extraordinary to relate, there was never known a scholar more profoundly skilled in the languages, or more deeply versed in all the elaborate mysteries of the Hebrew dialect, than this pitiable creature, as Dr. Parr, on personal examination, was able to testify. Jones, when he was first brought to the notice of Mr. Roscoe, was a poor Welsh fisherman, who in his small and humble boat acquired the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin languages, read the Iliad, and the works of Hesiod and Theocritus, in the original, studied the refinements of Greek pronunciation, and examined the connection of that language with the Hebrew. The wretched being read Latin with the greatest facility, and translated it either into Welsh or English, and with Mr. Roscoe he conversed in Italian and French. The prodigy is still, we are told, living in Liverpool, having exhausted the fund which had been raised for him by the sale of the Memoirs which had been prepared for him by Mr. Roscoe.

It would be quite a superfluous labour in us to attempt to follow the biographer through the account which he gives of the further labours of Mr. Roscoe in literature. His works are before the world, and they are too duly appreciated, or in other words, are too extensively known, to require from us any indications as to their number and nature. The valuable life of Mr. Roscoe terminated in June, 1831, his death being the result, we are informed, of dropsy of the chest. In the review of his character, which recounts his talents, his industry, but above all, the high-minded probity which uniformly distinguished his life, we fully and cordially agree with the biographer, to whom we cannot allude without saying, that the utmost praise is due to him for the admirable union of qualifications which he has brought to this very delicate and difficult task, and which has enabled him to succeed in a manner that few biographers can expect to attain.

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