Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/328

 Loyalty,’ an adaptation from the French of Barrière, by W. Muskerry. In addition to these parts, she played at the Queen's, in February 1871, Rosalind in ‘As you like it,’ in April 1873, at Drury Lane, Cordelia to her husband's Lear, and in May 1876 Mariana in a revival of the ‘Wife’ of Sheridan Knowles. In Jersey, where her husband was lessee of the theatre, she played, in addition to the parts named, Ophelia and Desdemona. She also acted with her husband in Wales and in the north. Her last performance was at the Queen's, as the heroine of ‘Madelaine Morel,’ an adaptation from the German of D. E. Bandmann, first produced on 20 April 1878, and speedily withdrawn after giving rise to some scandal and to legal proceedings. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Rousby, whose health had been seriously impaired, left England, under medical advice, for Wiesbaden, where she died, on 19 Sept. 1879. As an actress she never acquired firmness of touch.

[Personal knowledge; private information; Sunday Times, various years; Era, 27 April 1879; Pascoe's Dramatic List; Dutton Cook's Nights at the Play; Scott and Howard's E. L. Blanchard; Era Almanac, various years; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. ix. 18, 33, 231.]

 ROUSE or RUSSE, JOHN (1574–1652), Bodley's librarian, born in Northamptonshire in 1574, matriculated at Oxford in 1591, and graduated B.A. from Balliol College on 31 Jan. 1599. He was elected fellow of Oriel College in 1600, proceeding M.A. 27 March 1604 (, Alumni Oxon. early ser. iii. 1290; Oxf. Univ. Reg., Oxf. Hist. Soc., vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 212, pt. iii. p. 212).

On 9 May 1620 he was chosen chief librarian of the Bodleian Library, at which time he occupied 'Cambye's lodgings,' once a part of St. Frideswide's Priory. He afterwards sold the house to Pembroke College as a residence for the master. About 1635 Rouse formed a friendship with Milton. He importuned the poet for a complete copy of his works for the library, and Milton in 1647 sent two volumes to Oxford, the prose pamphlets carefully inscribed in his own hand 'to the most excellent judge of books,' and a smaller volume of poems which was stolen or lost on the way. To this circumstance we owe Milton's mock-heroic ode to Rouse (dated 23 Jan. 1646-7) inserted in a second copy, still preserved at the Bodleian [cf. art. , 1605-1635].

Rouse's leaning was towards the parliament, but he was not a strong politician. On one occasion his prudent measures restrained some turbulent spirits who were bent on breaking open Bodley's chest, presumably for the use of the parliament. When Cromwell visited Oxford in 1649, Rouse made a speech at the banquet in the library.

He appears 'to have discharged his trust in the library with faithfulness' (, p. 56). In 1645 he refused to lend King Charles the 'Histoire Universelle du Sieur d'Aubigné' because the statutes forbade the removal of such a book (ib. p. 99). The German professor of history at Nuremberg, Christopher Arnold, who visited Oxford in August 1651, calls him in a letter to a friend 'a man of the truest politeness.' He was also praised by Lambecius for his honesty and truthfulness. He died on 3 April 1652, and was buried in Oriel College Chapel. His portrait in clerical dress hangs in the library, to which he bequeathed 201. by his will. Rouse wrote a dedicatory preface to a collection of verses addressed to the Danish proconsul, Johan Cirenberg (Oxford, 1631, sm. 4to). He also issued an appendix to the 'Bodleian Catalogue' in 1635 (ib. pp. 56, 82-3).

[Macray's Annals of the Bodleian Library, passim; Shadwell's Registr. Orielense; Leland's Itinerary, ed. Hearne, v. 288; Wood s Athenae Oxon.ed. Bliss, ii. 631, iii. 38, iv. 334, and Fasti, ii. 117; Masson's Life of Milton, i. 626, 738, iii. 644-50, iv. 350, vi. 689; Foster's Alumni Oxon. early ser. iii. 1 2, 90; Burrows's Visitation of Oxford, p. 536; Wood's Hist. Univ. Oxford, ed. Gutch, ii. 295, 565, 611, 620, 625, 713, 944, 951, and his Antiq. of the Colleges and Halls, pp. 135, 623; Hearne's Collections, i. 291, iii. 18, 39, 355, 364.]  ROUSSEAU, JACQUES (1626–1694), painter, born in Paris in 1626, was instructed in landscape-painting by Herman van Swanevelt, the famous Dutch painter, then resident in Paris, who was connected with him by marriage. At an early age he went to Rome and acquired great skill in the fashionable style of combining classic architecture and landscape. On his return he was elected a member of the French academy, and employed by Louis XIV at Marly; but on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, being a protestant, he left France for Switzerland, and declined the overtures of Louvois to return and complete his work. He then went to Holland, and thence to England, at the invitation of Ralph, duke of Montagu, for whom, in conjunction with De la Fosse and Monnoyer, he decorated Montagu House, Bloomsbury (afterwards the British Museum). For this work he received an annuity from the duke. Rousseau was employed by William III at Hampton Court, where some of his decorative panels still remain. He was a prominent member of the French refugee settlement in London, and on his death, which