Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/232

 fugitive poetry, and numerous essays contributed to the ‘Prospective’ and ‘National’ reviews. These compositions were collected and published in 1860 by Mr. Hutton, with a memoir; the poems and dramas were republished in 1891 by his daughter, Elizabeth Mary Roscoe.

Roscoe was a man of great, almost excessive, moral and intellectual refinement. The fastidiousness thus engendered impaired his power of direct appeal to human sympathies. ‘Violenzia,’ his principal work, is a finely conceived, and frequently eloquent, tragedy; but the good characters are too good, the bad too bad, the sentiments continually overstrained, and the result an atmosphere of impossibility. ‘Eliduc’ is less academical, but less characteristic, and chiefly deserves notice as a fine study in the manner of the Elizabethans. The minor poems, though always graceful and feeling, seldom rise above the level of occasional verse. Two, however, ‘Love's Creed’ and ‘To Little A. C.,’ are very beautiful, and should alone preserve the author's name as a lyric poet. As a critic Roscoe did excellent work, especially in the ‘National Review,’ a periodical which, with his aid and that of R. H. Hutton and Walter Bagehot, helped for several years to maintain a high standard both of literary and political criticism. If not a profoundly penetrating, he is in general a discriminating, and sometimes a subtle, critic; and although his views are occasionally a little startling, as in his condemnation of the stanza of ‘In Memoriam,’ they are in general distinguished by common-sense.



ROSCOMMON,. [See, fourth earl, 1633?-1685.]

ROSE or ROSS, ALEXANDER (1647?–1720), bishop of Edinburgh. [See .]

ROSE, CALEB BURRELL (1790–1872), geologist, was born at Eye in Suffolk, 10 Feb. 1790. In due course he was apprenticed to an uncle, a surgeon, and continued his studies for the medical profession at Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals. In 1816 he settled down in practice at Swaffham, Norfolk, where he married and had children, but was left a widower early in 1828. He was successful in his profession, and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1846. In 1859 he retired from practice, and went to reside at Great Yarmouth, where he died 29 Jan. 1872. He was the author of several medical papers, more especially on the subject of entozoa, but from youth to old age he was an example of a genuine 'naturalist.' It was as a geologist, and especially as an authority on Norfolk geology, that he made his mark; his first published contribution to science appearing in 1828. He formed a fine collection of fossils, which is now in the Norwich Museum. In 1839 he was elected F.G.S. Of some twenty-three papers by him on geological subjects, the most important one full of original observations and sound reasoning is entitled 'Sketch of the Geology of West Norfolk' (published in the 'Philosophical Magazine,' 1835-6); but he also was the first to call attention to the 'Brick Earth of the Valley of the Nar' (Proc. Sci. Soc. London, 1840, p. 61), and he described some 'parasitic borings in the scales of fossil fish' (Trans. Microsc. Soc. 2nd ser. iii. 7).



ROSE, GEORGE (1744–1818), statesman, second son of David Rose, born in his father's house on 17 June (O.S.) 1744, was a nonjuring clergyman of Lethnot, near Brechin, by his second wife, Margaret, daughter of Donald Rose of Westerclune. He was descended on his father's side from the family of Rose of Kilravock in the county of Nairn. When four years old he was adopted by his mother's brother, who lived at Hampstead, Middlesex, and who sent him to Westminster School. At an early age he entered the navy under the charge of Captain James Mackenzie, who from 1758 to 1762 was in command of the Infernal, a 'bomb-ketch' of eight guns (, Naval Memoirs, ii. App. pp. 106, 123, iii. App. p. 115). He sailed with him to the West Indies, and in June 1758 took part as a midshipman in the expedition against St. Malo. In 1759 he was again in the West Indies, the Infernal being then part of the fleet at the Leeward Islands, and in that year or in the course of the next three years was twice wounded in action. Later gossip, which made him out a natural son of Lord Marchmont [see, third ] (, Memoirs, iii. 457), an apothecary's apprentice (ib. p. 121 n.}, or a purser's clerk (, Political Eclogues, p. 202), may safely be disregarded. He probably, according to the custom of the time, went to sea as captain's servant, and Mackenzie, acting as his own purser, employed him to keep his book, and he became a midshipman in due course (Diaries, i. 8).

Finding that he had no chance of promotion, Rose left the navy in 1762, when the