language, but it has been the errata of my heart, and this is the perfect book which I could offer, were my being now to end."

The reputation of Sir Thomas Lawrence is a sufficient proof of his merit as a painter. "We may be permitted, however, to doubt," says an able American critic, "whether the English do not place him too high, when they rank him as the first artist of the age. In his own line

he was certainly the first, but that line is not entitled to an equal rank with those branches of the art which require a far wider scope of imagination and invention. Indeed, he seems himself truly to have estimated the extent of his own powers. Undoubtedly he aspired to historical composition; he attempted it himself, and his admiration of the great historical painters was enthusiastic. Yet with all this, he confined himself to portraits. It is true, he threw into these the variety, the spirit, the genius, of historical compositions; but still they were and will be considered as portraits. This was certainly an evidence of great judgment. It has given to his portraits a character far beyond those of other contemporary masters. It has imbued them with an historical spirit, if we may be allowed the expression; and instead of being an historical painter below the greatest, he has made himself a portrait painter equal, and perhaps, taken altogether, superior to the best. Though some of the Italian critics found fault with his drawing, there seems to be little ground for their censure. It arose, perhaps, from his style of finish, which is less hard than that now usually seen in the works of the continental artists. At least he has displayed a perfect knowledge of the human figure, in its various classes, and his back grounds usually indicate a fine and luxuriant taste. It is, however, in the intellectual character which he has given to his pictures, that his great excellence consists. He produced a surprising variety of happy and original combinations: he seized always the most interesting expression of countenance: and certainly, in painting beauty, he yielded to no artist. There was sometimes, perhaps, a love of dramatic effect too easily perceptible, but in general his attitudes were graceful and easy. In his colouring, he followed nature rather than the style of other painters, and though this has deprived his pictures often of the depth. and richness to be found in the works of the best Italian colourists, it gives them a striking air of fidelity and truth. He bestowed on his pictures excessive labour, and finished them with uncommon care. This increased rather than diminished with his reputation. In the latter part of his life, when his great practice might have been expected to make him more rapid in the completion of his works, the increased pains he took, arising no doubt from his improved perceptions, and his anxiety to maintain or add to his excellence, acquired for him the character of slowness, with which he could not be, in the slightest degree, truly charged. On one occasion, he is known to have painted thirty-eight hours together, without reposing, or taking any sustenance but coffee. In painting children he was remarkably happy. He caught, perhaps beyond any other painter, the innocence, the artless simplicity, the easy, unaffected attitudes of childhood, and he has left several compositions of this kind, that will pass down to posterity, not as portraits, but as the sweetest productions of the art The same may be said of several pictures of female beauty. He has combined all the vivacity of youth and intellect, with the freshness of gaiety and fashion."

William Roscoe.

BORN A. D. 1753.-DIED A. D. 1831.

WILLIAM ROSCOE was born in Liverpool on the 8th of March, 1753. His father kept a public-house, and cultivated a market-garden, and was fond of field sports and other amusements,-a taste for which did not descend to his son, who was formed in a gentler and nobler mould. His remoter ancestors do not seem to have been of any higher rank in the world than his father; a circumstance which was so far from troubling him, that he made it a matter of good-natured pleasantry, telling Garter king-at-arms, when he met him in London, that as nothing was known of his humble forefathers, and as he himself had six sons, he thought he was an unobjectionable person to stand at the head of a family.

Of the childhood and early youth of Mr Roscoe, he has himself given a short account in an epistle to a friend, which is preserved by his biographer. One of the first things which he remembers, is "a decided aversion to compulsion and restraint." This, to be sure, is not uncommon in children; but in him it was the dawning of that love of virtuous liberty, which afterwards enlightened his whole character. From first to last it may be said of him, that his soul,

"and

At the age of six he was put under the tuition of a Mr Martin, who kept a school for boys in Liverpool. "To his care," he says, the instructions of a kind and affectionate mother, I believe I may safely attribute any good principles which may have appeared in my conduct during my future life. It is to her I owe the inculcation of those sentiments of humanity, which became a principle in my mind. Nor did she neglect to supply me with such books as she thought would contribute to my literary improvement." Here is another instance added to the many which history records, of the power which maternal influence has exerted in forming great and good men. Elizabeth Roscoe, the inn-keeper's wife at the Bowling Green,' had little reason to envy the equipages which rolled past her door, or to sigh for a more extended sphere of duty or display, while she was guiding the mind and guarding the heart of a beloved boy, which was by and bye to take his place among the most distinguished writers and eminent philanthropists of his age. After remaining about two years with Mr Martin, young Roscoe was removed to another school, where he continued till he was twelve years of age. The germs of a poetical temperament and a humane disposition were now fast unfolding. "According to my best re collection," he says, "I was at this period of my life of a wild, rambling, and unsocial disposition; passing many of my hours in strolling along the shore of the river Mersey, or in fishing, or in taking long waiks alone. On one occasion I determined to become a sportsman; and, having procured a gun, and found an unfortunate thrush perched on the branch of a tree, I brought him to the ground with fatal aim;

but I was so horrified and disgusted with the agonies I saw him endure in death, that I have never since repeated the experiment."

He now began to be of service to his father in the garden; and often carried potatoes to Liverpool market for sale, on his head, in a large basket, and was intrusted with the disposal of them. Being called upon in his fifteenth year to make choice of a profession, his attachment to reading induced him to prefer that of a bookseller, but, on being apprenticed, he soon grew tired of it. In the following year, 1769, he was articled for six years to an attorney and solicitor, and thus entered on the study of the law, but still devoted what time he could spare to the perusal of poets and other authors who fell in his way, among whom Shenstone and Goldsmith were his favourites. About this time he had the misfortune to lose his excellent mother.

In the year 1773 Mr Roscoe became one of the founders of a society for the encouragement of the arts of painting and design, in Liverpool, and commemorated the event by an ode which was his first published piece. The following comparison between the great masters of poetry and painting is well imagined, and shows the early taste of the author for both those arts:

"Majestic, nervous, bold, and strong,

Let Angelo with Milton vie;
Opposed to Waller's amorous song,
His art let wanton Titian try;

I et great Romano's free design
Contend with Dryden's pompous line;

And chaste Corregio's graceful air

With Pope's unblemished page compare ;
Lorraine may rival Thomson's name;
And Hogarth equal Butler's fame;
And still, where'er the aspiring muse
Her wide unbounded flight pursues,
Her sister soars on kindred wings sublime,

And gives her favourite names to grace the rolls of time."

Before he had attained his twentieth year he published a longer poem, entitled, Mount Pleasant,' which was the name of an eminence overlooking the town of Liverpool. This poem obtained the praise of Dr Enfield, the poet Mason, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and is remarkable as containing the author's first public protest against the slave trade. He also composed a tract in prose about the same period, to which he gave the title of Christian Morality, as contained in the Precepts of the New Testament, in the language of Jesus Christ.'

Having completed his clerkship, Mr Roscoe was admitted, in 1774, an attorney of the court of king's bench, and commenced the practice of his profession at Liverpool. On the 22d of February, 1781, he was married to Miss Jane Griffics, a lady to whom he had been attached for several years, and whose literary taste, good sense, amiable dispositions, and correct principles harmonized with his own character and pursuits, and made her a help meet for him. In the spring of the year 1782 Mr Roscoe visited London on professional business, where he took the opportunity of adding, as far as prudence permitted, to his small collection of books and prints, and where he became acquainted with several distinguished men. In the years 1787 and 1788, he published the first and second parts of his Wrongs of Africa,' a poem in

which he manfully continued his opposition to that traffic which above all others has been branded with the epithet "accursed." His high and true heroism in being so active in this cause may be in some measure estimated from the following remarks from his son: "The African slave-trade constituted, at this period, a great part of the commerce of Liverpool. A numerous body of merchants and ship-owners, and a still more formidable array of masters of vessels and sailors, looked to the continuance of that traffic for their emolument or their support. The wealth and prosperity of the town were supposed to depend chiefly upon this branch of commerce, and there were few persons whose interests were not, directly or indirectly, connected with the prosecution of it. Even those whose employments had no reference to commercial objects, found their opinions and feelings with regard to the traffic necessarily affected by the tone of the society in which they mingled. Under these circumstances it was hardly to be expected that Liverpool should be the place from which a voice should be heard appealing to the world on behalf of the captive African. Fortunately, however, the mind of Mr Roscoe remained unshackled by the prejudices or the interests of those around him, nor did any motives of a personal nature operate to prevent the expression of his opinions. He had been gifted with those strong feelings of abhorrence to injustice, and resistance to oppression, which are the great moral engines bestowed by God upon man for the maintenance of his virtue and his freedom. The aversion to compulsion, recorded by Mr Roscoe as one of his earliest characteristics, led him in his youth to form very decided opinions upon this question, which, in after life, occupied much of his attention, and in which he had ultimately the gratification of knowing that he had laboured not unsuccessfully."

At the same period he published a pamphlet on the same important subject, entitled, A General View of the African Slave Trade, demonstrating its Injustice and Impolicy; with Hints towards a Bill for its Abolition.' This excited great attention, and was much commended by the friends of the cause of freedom; and yet more praise was elicited by an answer which he published a few months afterwards, to a work called Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave-trade,' written by a Rev. Raymond Harris, a clergyman of the church of England, who had been educated for the catholic priesthood. It immediately attracted the attention of the London Abolition committee, who took all the remaining copies, and ordered another edition to be printed. "It is the work of a master," says his friend, Mr Barton, "and by much the best answer Harris has received."

Mr Roscoe now began to engage himself pretty actively in politics; from no interested motives, however, but because he found it impossible to remain a quiet spectator of the excitement produced in England by the accounts of the commencement and progress of the French revolution. It is hardly worth while to state which side he espoused, it is so evident from what has already been exhibited of his principles, that he must have joined the friends of rational freedom, and enemies of arrogant despotism. He went into the controversy heart and hand, and, as usual, brought his pen to the contest in poetry and prose. At a meeting held in Liverpool to celebrate the taking of the Bastile, on the 14th of July, 1790, he produced a song which became quite popular,

beginning, "Unfold, Father Time! thy long records unfold;' and on a similar occasion, the next year, he brought forward his more successful and better remembered song, 'O'er the vine-covered hill and gay regions of France.' At this period he engaged in correspondence with some of the most distinguished men of the liberal party, among whom was the marquess of Lansdowne. As the French revolution went on, he, with all other good men, was shocked and even dismayed by the excesses and atrocities which were every day committed; but he did not on that account conceive it necessary that he should forsake his principles, as many did, and go over to the favourers of arbitrary government. Mr Burke's Two Letters to a Member of Parliament' were answered by Mr Roscoe, in a pamphlet containing Strictures' on those letters; and as he was aware that ridicule is often as formidable a weapon as argument, he assailed his great antagonist in a ballad, entitled, 'The Life, Death, and Wonderful Achievements of Edmund Burke.'

Amidst the storms of politics, however, Mr Roscoe did not lose his taste for the calmn pursuits of literature, or for the pleasures of the country and agricultural occupations. About the year 1792 he formed the design of reclaiming and cultivating an extensive tract of moss-land in the neighbourhood of Manchester; and, in order to obtain a lease of it, he visited London in the winter of that year, in company with his friend, Mr Thomas Wakefield, who had joined him in the enterprise. Two years before this he had removed from Liverpool, and taken a house pleasantly situated at Foxteth park, about two miles from the town. He was attracted to this place of residence by a beautiful dingle which stretched on to the shores of the Mersey, and which he has celebrated by an Inscription,' beginning, Stranger that with careless feet." In 1793 he left this situation, and removed to Birchfield, also in the vicinity of Liverpool, where he erected a house for himself. Previously to the last named removal, Mr Roscoe had applied himself seriously and diligently to the execution of his long cherished design of writing the life of Lorenzo de Medici. The obstacles in his way, arising from the great quantity of necessary materials, published and unpublished, and the difficulty of procuring them, were many and great. Many books he had obtained by busy search into all the book-stalls and shops of London; and the Crevenna and Pinelli libraries, being on sale at this time, supplied him with many more; but the rich stores contained in the literary repositories of Italy were still inaccessible, and his engagements at home prevented his taking a journey to the continent for the purpose of personal examination. Perhaps he might have been discouraged at this, had it not been that an intimate friend of his, Mr William Clarke, was residing for the winter at Florence, for the sake of his health, who became of the greatest service to him, by sending him the titles of such books as he supposed he might require, and by causing extracts to be taken from many valuable manuscripts which existed in the great Florentine libraries, relating to the history of the Medici family. Among the unpublished pieces thus transmitted to him were many original poems of Lorenzo de Medici, a small collection of which he sent to the press in 1791, as a sort of avant-courier to his life, limiting the number of copies to twelve, to be distributed among his literary friends. This volume was appropriately dedicated, in the Italian language, to his friend Mr Clarke. The first sheets of the life of Lorenzo