Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/884

Rh west the Curlew Mountains, of similar formation, between Roscommon and Sligo rise abruptly to a height of over 800 feet. In the east the Slievebawn range, formed of sandstone, have a somewhat similar elevation. The Connaught coal field, which embraces the mountainous district round Lough Allen, touches on Roscommon, but the mineral is not much wrought within the limits of the county. Ironstone is also found in the same district, but mining is no longer prosecuted. The Shannon with its expansions forms nearly the whole eastern boundary of the county, and on the west the Suck from Mayo forms for over 50 miles the boundary with Galway till it unites with the Shannon at Shannon Bridge. The other tributaries of the Shannon within the county are the Arigna, the Feorish, and the Boyle. The lakes formed by expansions of the Shannon on the borders of Roscommon are Loughs Allen, Boderg, Boffin, Forbes, and Ree. Of the numerous other lakes within the county the most important are Lough Key in the north, very picturesquely situated with finely wooded banks, and Lough Gara in the west.



ROSCOMMON, (1634-1684), one of the pioneers of the so-called “classical” school in English poetry, owed his burial in Westminster Abbey more to his rank than to his achievements in poetry. But his Essay on Translated Verse (1684), though feeble in thought, has a certain distinction in the history of our literature as being the first definite enunciation of the principles of the “poetic diction” of our Augustan age. He is vary refined and fastidious in his notions of dignified writing, and intimates, though with a genteel affectation of humility, that the “railing heroes” and “wounded gods” of Homer are too vulgar for a correct taste. He himself wrote in the finest of diction, but he wrote little. On Fenton's remark that his imagination might have been more fertile if his judgment had been less severe Johnson makes the comment that his judgment might have been less severe if his imagination had been more fertile. The subjects of his half-dozen of original poems range from the death of a pet dog to the day of judgment, both treated in the same elevated and conventional style. Roscommon, a nephew of the great earl of Strafford, was born in Ireland, and educated partly under a tutor at his uncle's seat in Yorkshire, partly at Caen in Normandy, and partly at Rome. He published a translation of Horace's Art of Poetry in 1680.  ROSE (Rosa). The rose has for all ages been the favourite flower, and as such it has a place in general literature that no other plant can rival. In most cases the rose of the poets and the rose of the botanist are one and the same in kind, but popular usage has attached the name rose to a variety of plants whose kinship to the true plant no botanist would for a moment admit. In this place we shall employ the word in its strict botanical significance, and in commenting on it treat it solely from the botanical point of view (see also, vol. xii. p. 260). The rose gives its name to the order Rosaceæ, of which it may be considered the type. The genus consists of species varying in number, according to the diverse opinions of botanists of opposite schools, from thirty to one hundred and eighty, or even two hundred and fifty, exclusive of the many hundreds of mere garden varieties. While the lowest estimate is doubtless too low, the highest is enormously too large, but in any case the wide discrepancies above alluded to illustrate very forcibly the extreme variability of the plants, their adaptibility to various conditions, and consequently their wide dispersion over the globe, the facility with which they are cultivated, and the readiness with which new varieties are continually being produced in gardens by the art of the hybridizer or the careful selection of the raiser. The species are natives of all parts of the northern hemisphere, but are scantily represented in the tropics unless at considerable elevations.

