On 18 Oct. 1728 Roome succeeded his friend Horneck as solicitor to the treasury, and he died on 10 Dec. 1729. Fourteen months after his death was produced at Drury Lane (8 Feb. 1731) ‘The Jovial Crew,’ a comic opera, adapted from Broome's play of that name; the dialogue was curtailed, some parts omitted, and some excellent songs added (fifty-three in all), the work conjointly of Roome, Concanen, and Sir William Yonge. The opera, thus enlivened, had much success, and was frequently revived. Pope states that the following epigram was made upon Roome:
You ask why Roome diverts you with his jokes,
Yet, if he writes, is dull as other folks?
You wonder at it. This, Sir, is the case:
The jest is lost unless he prints his face!
[Baker's Biogr. Dram. 1812, i. 606; Genest's Hist. of the Stage, iii. 287–8; Elwin's Pope, iii. 100, iv. 54, 172, 344; The Jovial Crew, 1731, 4to (Brit. Mus. copy, with manuscript note by Isaac Reed); Hist. Reg. 1729, Chron. Diary, p. 68.]
ROOS. [See Ros.]
ROOTH, DAVID (1573–1650), bishop of Ossory. [See Roth.]
ROPER, ABEL (1665–1726), tory journalist, younger son of Isaac Roper, was born at Atherstone in Warwickshire in 1665. He was adopted in 1677 by his uncle, Abel Roper, who published books from 1638 at the Spread Eagle, opposite St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street; he was master of the Stationers' Company in 1677, and gave the company a large silver flagon (Arber, Transcript of Stationers' Registers, iv. 429; Mr. Waller's Speech in Parliament, 6 July 1641; Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. ii. 76; Nichols, Lit. Anecd. iii. 579). When he was fourteen, young Roper was apprenticed to his uncle, but on the latter's death, in 1680, he was turned over to the printer Christopher Wilkinson. He showed a talent for learning, and is said to have spoken Greek by rote before he understood Latin. Under his uncle's will (P.C.C. 40 Bath) he received 100l. on the completion of his apprenticeship, with all the elder Roper's copyrights; and having married, when he was thirty, the widow of his last master, he set up business in one side of a saddler's shop near Bell Yard, opposite Middle Temple Gate, but afterwards he moved next door to the Devil tavern, at the sign of the Black Dog.
Roper is said to have worked for the revolution, and to have been the first printer of ‘Lilliburlero.’ The preface to ‘The Life of William Fuller, the pretended evidence,’ 1692, is signed by Roper. A warrant was issued for his arrest in May 1696, on an information that, under the name of John Chaplin, he had printed a paper on the assassination plot called ‘An Account of a most horrid Conspiracy against the Life of his most sacred Majesty,’ with intent to give notice to the people mentioned in it to fly from justice. He had been committed to prison on 18 April, but must have been released soon afterwards (Add. MS. 28941, f. 92; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 47). Roper sided with Tom Brown, the comic writer (1663–1704), in his quarrel with Richard Kingston [q. v.], and after 1700 he undertook the publication of Brown's works. Brown subsequently assisted Roper in ‘The Auction of Ladies,’ a series of lampoons which ran to eight or nine numbers. Roper got into trouble with the Earl of Nottingham for his ‘Newsletters into the Country,’ with Secretary Boyle, and with Secretary Trumbull for printing a play without license, and he was summoned before the lord mayor and court of aldermen for reflecting upon the Society for the Reformation of Manners. A Frenchman named Fontive, who wrote the ‘Postman,’ was Roper's assistant, and afterwards his partner.
In May 1695 Roper had started a newspaper called the ‘Post Boy,’ which appeared three times a week, and was the rival of the whig ‘Flying Post,’ begun by George Ridpath (d. 1726) [q. v.] in the same month. Roper's enemies said he wrote for either party, according as he was paid. John Dunton, who commends Roper's honesty, says that the ‘Post Boy’ was written by a man named Thomas, and on his death by Abel Boyer [q. v.], compiler of the ‘Annals of Queen Anne,’ which Roper published (cf. Life and Errors, 1818, pp. 210, 431–3). After editing the ‘Post Boy’ for Roper for four years, Boyer grew dissatisfied and started a ‘True Post Boy’ of his own, which, he complained, Roper tried to burke (cf. Mr. Boyer's Case, August 1709; Nichols, Lit. Anecd. iv. 83).
When Steele lost the post of gazetteer in October 1710, Roper, on whose behalf Lord Denbigh had written to Lord Dartmouth as early as June, was an unsuccessful candidate for the vacant post [see King, William, (1663–1712); Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. v. 296, 298]. Next year (November 1711) Roper gave great offence by papers printed in the ‘Post Boy’ on behalf of the proposed peace, and, upon complaint of the envoys extraordinary from the king of Portugal and the Duke of Savoy, he was arrested on a warrant from Lord Dartmouth, and bound over to appear at the court of queen's bench. He escaped further punishment by begging pardon and publishing a recantation.
