ROSCOE, THOMAS (1791–1871), author and translator, fifth son of William Roscoe [q. v.], was born at Toxteth Park, Liverpool, on 23 June 1791, and educated by Dr. W. Shepherd and by Mr. Lloyd, a private tutor. Soon after his father's pecuniary embarrassments, in 1816, he began to write in local magazines and journals, and he continued to follow literature as a profession until a few years before his death, which took place in his eighty-first year, on 24 Sept. 1871, at Acacia Road, St. John's Wood, London. He married Elizabeth Edwards, and had seven children.
The following are his principal original works:
- ‘Gonzalo, the Traitor: a Tragedy,’ 1820.
- ‘The King of the Peak’ [anon.], 1823, 3 vols.
- ‘Owain Goch: a Tale of the Revolution’ [anon.], 1827, 3 vols.
- ‘The Tourist in Switzerland and Italy,’ 1830 (being the first volume of the ‘Landscape Annual,’ followed in eight succeeding years by similar volumes on Italy, France, and Spain).
- ‘Wanderings and Excursions in North Wales,’ 1836.
- ‘Wanderings in South Wales’ (partly written by Louisa A. Twamley, afterwards Mrs. Meredith), 1837.
- ‘The London and Birmingham Railway,’ 1839.
- ‘Book of the Grand Junction Railway,’ 1839 (the last two were afterwards issued together as the ‘Illustrated History of the London and North-Western Railway’).
- ‘Legends of Venice,’ 1841.
- ‘Belgium in a Picturesque Tour,’ 1841.
- ‘A Summer Tour in the Isle of Wight,’ 1843.
- ‘Life of William the Conqueror,’ 1846.
- ‘The Last of the Abencerages, and other Poems,’ 1850.
- ‘The Fall of Granada.’
Roscoe's translations comprise:
- ‘Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini,’ 1822.
- Sismondi's ‘Literature of the South of Europe,’ 1823, 4 vols.
- ‘Italian Novelists,’ 1825, 4 vols.
- ‘German Novelists,’ 1826, 4 vols.
- ‘Spanish Novelists,’ 1832, 3 vols.
- ‘Potter's Memoirs of Scipio de Ricci,’ &c., 1828, 2 vols.
- Lanzi's ‘History of Painting in Italy,’ 1828, 6 vols.
- Silvio Pellico's ‘Imprisonments,’ 1833.
- Pellico's ‘Duties of Men,’ 1834.
- Navarrete's ‘Life of Cervantes,’ 1839 (in Murray's ‘Family Library’).
- Kohl's ‘Travels in England,’ 1845.
Roscoe edited ‘The Juvenile Keepsake,’ 1828–30; ‘The Novelists' Library, with Biographical and Critical Notices,’ 1831–3, 17 vols. 12mo; the works of Fielding, Smollett, and Swift (1840–9, 3 vols. royal 8vo), and new issues of his father's ‘Lorenzo de' Medici’ and ‘Leo the Tenth.’
[Men of the Time, 7th edit.; Allibone's Dict. of Authors; British Museum and Advocates' Library Catalogues; information supplied by James Thornely, esq., of Woolton, Liverpool. Symonds, in the Introduction to his translation of Cellini's Autobiography, criticises his predecessor's translation in severe terms.]
ROSCOE, WILLIAM (1753–1831), historian, born on 8 March 1753 at the Old Bowling Green House, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, was the only son of William Roscoe, by his wife Elizabeth. His father owned an extensive market-garden, and kept the Bowling Green tavern, which was much frequented for its garden and bowling-green. Roscoe was sent when six years old to schools kept by Mr. Martin and Mr. Sykes, in a house in Paradise Street, Liverpool, where he was taught reading and arithmetic. Leaving school when not quite twelve, he learnt something of carpentry and painting on china; his mother, an affectionate and humane woman, supplied him with books. He acquired a good deal of Shakespeare by heart, and invested in the ‘Spectator,’ the poems of Shenstone, and ‘the matchless Orinda.’ He helped in his father's market-garden, and shouldered potatoes to market until 1769, when he was articled to John Eyes, jun., and afterwards to Peter Ellames, both attorneys of Liverpool. His chief friend at this time was Francis Holden, a young schoolmaster of varied talents, who gave him gratuitous instruction in French, and who, by repeating Italian poetry in their evening walks, attracted Roscoe to the study of Italian. William Clarke and Richard Lowndes, two of his early friends and lifelong associates, used to meet Roscoe early in the morning to study the Latin classics before their business hours.
In 1773 Roscoe was one of the founders of a Liverpool society for the encouragement of the arts of painting and design. In 1774 he was admitted an attorney of the court of king's bench, and went into partnership in Liverpool, successively with Mr. Bannister, Samuel Aspinall, and Joshua Lace. In 1777, he published ‘Mount Pleasant, a descriptive Poem [in imitation of Dyer's ‘Grongar Hill’]; also an Ode on the Institution of a Society of Art in Liverpool.’ The volume obtained commendation from Sir Joshua Reynolds, and is of some interest from its denunciation of the slave trade. Roscoe remained through life a diligent writer of verse, couched in conventional ‘poetic diction’ and rarely, if ever, inspired (cf. De Quincey, Works, ed. Masson, ii. 129–130). It was, however, his pleasant lot to produce a nursery classic in verse—‘The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast.’ This first appeared in the Novem-
