Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/45

Rh make sketches before he learned to write," and that he covered his lesson-books with caricatures of his masters and fellow-pupils. On leaving school he became a student in the Royal Academy. At the age of sixteen he resided and studied for a time in Paris, and he afterwards made frequent tours on the Continent, enriching his portfolios with numerous jottings of life and character. In 1775 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a drawing of Delilah visiting Samson in Prison, and in the following years he was represented by various portraits and landscapes. Possessed of much facility of execution and a ready command of the figure, he was spoken of as a promising student; and had he continued his early application he would have made his mark as a painter. But he was the victim of a disastrous piece of good fortune. By the death of his aunt, a French lady, he fell heir to a sum of 7000, and presently he plunged into the dissipations of the town. Gambling became a passion with him, and he has been known to sit at the gaming-table for thirty-six hours at a stretch. In time poverty overtook him; and the friendship and example of Gillray and Bunbury seem to have suggested that his early aptitude for caricature might furnish a ready means of filling an empty purse. His drawing of Vauxhall, shown in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1784, had been engraved by Pollard, and the print was a success. Rowlandson was largely employed by Rudolph Ackermann, the art publisher, who in 1809-1811 issued in his Poetical Magazine "The Schoolmaster's Tour" a series of plates with illustrative verses by Dr William Coombe. They were the most popular of the artist's works. Again engraved by Rowlandson himself in 1812, and issued under the title of the Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, they had attained a fifth edition by 1813, and were followed in 1820 by Dr Syntax in Search of Consolation, and in 1821 by the Third Tour of Dr Syntax, in Search of a Wife. The same collaboration of designer, author, and publisher appeared in the English Dance of Death, issued in 1814-16, one of the most admirable of Rowlandson's series, and in the Dance of Life, 1822. Rowlandson also illustrated Smollett, Goldsmith, and Sterne, and his designs will be found in The Spirit of the Public Journals (1825), The English Spy (1825), and The Humourist (1831). He died in London, after a prolonged illness, on the 22d April 1827.

Rowlandson's designs were usually executed in outline with the reed-pen, and delicately washed with colour. They were then etched by the artist on the copper, and afterwards aqua-tinted usually by a professional engraver, the impressions being finally coloured by hand. As a designer he was characterized by the utmost facility and ease of draughtsmanship. He poured forth his designs in ill-considered profusion, and the quality of his art suffered from this haste and over-production. He was a true if not a very refined humorist, dealing less frequently than his fierce contemporary Gillray with politics, but commonly touching, in a rather gentle spirit, the various aspects and incidents of social life. His most artistic work is to be found among the more careful drawings of his earlier period; but even among the gross forms and exaggerated caricature of his later time we find, here and there, in the graceful lines of a figure or the sweet features of some maiden's face, sufficient hints that this master of the humorous might have attained to the beautiful had he so willed.

See J. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, a Selection from his Works, &c. (2 vols., 1880).

 ROWLEY,, actor and dramatist, collaborated with several of the celebrated dramatists of the Elizabethan period—,, , , , , and. Nothing is known of his life except that he was an actor in various companies, and married in 1637. There was another Rowley, an actor and playright in the same generation, Samuel, and probably a third, Ralph. Four plays by W. Rowley are extant,—A Woman never Vext (printed 1632), A Match at Midnight (1633), All's Lost by Lust (1633), and A Shoemaker a Gentleman (1638). From these an opinion may be formed of his individual style. Effectiveness of situation and ingenuity of plot are more marked in them than any special literary faculty, from which we may conjecture why he was in such request as an associate in play-making. There are significant quotations from two of his plays in Specimens. It is recorded by Langbaine that he "was beloved of those great men, Fletcher, and "; and the tradition of his personal amiability is supported by the fact of his partnerships with so many different writers.

 ROWLEY REGIS, an urban sanitary district of Staffordshire, is situated on the Birmingham Canal, and on the Stourbridge branch of the Great Western Railway, 6 miles west of Birmingham. The original village surrounds the parish church, dating from the 13th century, but rebuilt in 1840 with the exception of the tower, which was also rebuilt in 1858. The village is situated in a rich coal and ironstone district, and round it numerous hamlets have grown up within recent years. Lately the parish has been erected into an urban sanitary district, governed by a local board of fifteen members. Besides collieries, iron works, and extensive quarries for "Rowley rag" (a basaltic intrusion), there are potteries, rivet, chain, and anchor works, breweries, and agricultural implement works, the district being one of the most important manufacturing centres of Staffordshire. The population of the urban sanitary district (area 3670 acres) in 1871 was 23,534 and in 1881 it was 27,385.

 ROXANA, or, daughter of the Bactrian Oxyartes and wife of Alexander the Great (see , vol. i. p. 484, and , vol. xv. p. 142).

 ROXBURGH, a border county of Scotland, occupying the greater part of the border line with England, is bounded E. and S.E. by Northumberland, S.E. by Cumberland, S.W. by Dumfriesshire, W. by Selkirkshire, N.W. by Midlothian, and N.E. by Berwickshire. It lies between 55 6' 30" and 55 42' 30" N. lat., and between 2 10' and 3 7' W. long. Its greatest length from north to south is 43 miles, and its greatest breadth about 30 miles. The area is 428,464 acres, or about 670 square miles.

Surface and Geology.—The greater part of Roxburgh is included in Teviotdale. The whole course of the Teviot, 40 miles in length, is included within the county. It rises in the ranges of greywacke hills which separate the county from Dumfriesshire and Selkirk, and runs north-eastwards, following the deposition of the greywacke rocks to the Tweed at Kelso, and dividing the county into two unequal parts. On the north a high range of land runs parallel with its banks and slopes to its margin. South-west between Dumfries and Cumberland the greywacke formation constitutes an almost continuous succession of eminences, through which the Liddel finds its way southwards. The highest summits of the greywacke ranges exceed 1800 feet. Although occasionally rocky and rugged, the hills are for the most part rounded in outline and clothed with grass to their summits. This Silurian formation occupies nearly the whole of the western half of the county, but along with the greywacke rocks is associated clay slate of a bluish colour, glimmering with minute scales of mica and frequently traversed by veins of calcareous spar. The formation is succeeded to the eastward by an extensive deposit of Old Red Sandstone, forming an irregular quadrangular area towards the centre of the county, emitting two irregular projections from its southern extremity, and interrupted towards the north by an intrusion of trap rocks. Owing to the sandstone formation the transverse valleys formed by various affluents of the Teviot present features of great interest. The action of the water has scooped deep channels in the rock, and thus formed picturesque narrow defiles, of which the high sandstone scaurs are a  XXI.—5