Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/359

 one large sheet with cuts, Antwerp, 1620.
 * 1) ‘Neder Dvytsche Epigrammen,’ Mechelen, 1617, 8vo.
 * 2) ‘Spiegel der Nederlandsche Elenden,’ Mechelen, 1621. ‘England's Joy,’ by R. R., London, 1601, 4to, verses occasioned by Lord Mountjoy's defeat of Irish rebels under Tyrone, is doubtfully attributed to him.

The ‘Nederlantsche Antiquiteyten,’ Brussels, 1646, 12mo, and other works in Dutch attributed to Rowlands, are probably all by another Richard Verstegen or Verstegan whose will was dated Antwerp, 26 Feb. 1640, and whose widow, Catharina de Saulchy, remarried in August 1640 (, Biogr. Woordenboek). He may have been Rowlands's son.



ROWLANDS, SAMUEL (1570?–1630?), author, born about 1570, was a voluminous writer of tracts in prose and verse between 1598 and 1628. His earliest venture, ‘The Betraying of Christ’ (1598), like his latest in 1628, was a fervidly religious poem, and at no period did he wholly neglect pious topics. But his second publication (see No. 2 below), ‘The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head-Vaine’ (1600), is the type of composition which gave him his chief popularity. It consists of thirty-seven epigrams and seven satires on the abuses of contemporary society. Private persons are attacked under feigned Latin names, and types of character are depicted with incisive power. A similar effort, entitled ‘A Mery Meetinge, or 'tis Mery when Knaves mete,’ was published in the same year (although only copies of later editions are extant). Rowlands's biting tone was deemed offensive to the authorities, and both pamphlets were burnt not only in a public place, but also in the kitchen of the Stationers' Company on 26 Oct. 1600. Twenty-nine booksellers were fined 2s. 6d. each for buying these books (, Transcript, ii. 832–3). But Rowlands was not silenced, and when the storm blew over he reissued both pamphlets under somewhat different titles. His later satires have somewhat less asperity, and many of his sketches of the lower middle classes are farcical or good-naturedly humorous. Much of his energy he devoted to descriptions of low London life, and his portraits in verse of beggars, tipplers, thieves, and ‘roaring boys’ possess much historical interest. He owed something to Greene's writings on like topics, and is said to have vamped up some unpublished manuscripts by Nashe. He adversely criticised Dekker, who made excursions into the same field of literature. Occasionally he sank to mere bookmaking—hastily versifying popular stories, as in his ‘Guy of Warwick.’ References abound in Rowlands's works to notorious contemporaries—to actors like Pope and Singer (Letting of Humours Blood, Sat. 4); to Alleyn as the creator of Marlowe's ‘Faustus’ (Knave of Clubs); to Woolner, the great eater (Look to it), and to Ward and Dansike, the pirates (Knave of Harts). Rowlands usually wrote in six-line stanzas.

His literary friends and patrons appear to have been few. ‘My pen never was and never shall be mercenary,’ he wrote to his friend George Gaywood in 1602 (Hell's Broke Loose). He prefixed verses to Thomas Andrewe's ‘Unmasking of a Feminine Machiavell,’ 1604, and to Thomas Collins's ‘Teares of Love,’ 1615. A poem ‘In Vulponem,’ written with some oblique reference to Ben Jonson's ‘Volpone,’ was published in W. Parkes's ‘Curtaine Drawer of the World,’ 1612. Commendatory verses by Rowlands figure in some copies of ‘Great Britaine all in Black,’ 1612 (Brit. Mus.) and ‘The Sculler,’ 1614 (Huth Libr.), both by John Taylor, the water-poet.

The fact that his name appears on the ‘Stationers' Registers’ on one occasion as Samuel Rowley (cf. No. 23 infra) has suggested the theory that he may be identical with the actor [q. v.], but the conjecture cannot be sustained.

Rowlands's books often appeared with his initials only in the title-page or affixed to the preface. Hence some doubt has arisen respecting the works to be assigned to him. He has been wrongly credited with ‘The Choise of Change: containing the Triplicitie of Divinitie, Philosophie, and Poetrie … by S. R., Gent. and Student in the Universitie of Cambridge,’ which was first published in 1585 (new edition, 1598). According to Jolley's ‘Catalogue’ (iv. 389), the author was Simon Robson. Nor was Rowlands responsible for the ‘Court of ciuill Courtesy. Out of the Italian, by S. R., Gent.’ (1591).