attack (Gilchrist, William Blake, i. 193–8). He died of consumption at his residence in Chancery Lane, London, on 20 Dec. 1804, and was buried in the church of St. Andrew, Holborn; some lines were written on him by Hayley. He married, at Bath, on 3 Aug., 1790, Sarah, elder daughter of William Farr, M.D., a fellow student of Goldsmith. She survived him with four sons. Cowper Rose, R.E., the second child and the poet's godson, for whose benefit Hayley published in 1808 Cowper's translations of the ‘Latin and Italian Poems of Milton,’ was the author of ‘Four Years in South Africa,’ 1829, 8vo. The youngest son, George Edward Rose, born in 1799, was English professor at the Polish college of Krzemieniec, on the borders of the Ukraine, from 1821 until his retirement was compelled by the persecution of the Russian officials in 1824; he translated the letters of John Sobieski to his queen during the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, and made researches for a history of Poland. He died at Odessa on 22 Oct. 1825 (Gent. Mag. 1826, i. 368).
In 1787, when travelling from Glasgow to London, Rose went six miles out of his way to call on Cowper at Weston, the main object of the visit being to give to the poet the thanks of some of the Scots professors for the two volumes which he had published. He developed a strong affection for the poet, and many letters passed between them (cf. Addit. MS. 21556; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. viii. 383). Rose was with Cowper in August 1788 (when he transcribed for the poet his version of the twelfth book of the Iliad), and paid him many subsequent visits, the last of all in March and April 1800. He got many names, especially from Scotland, as subscribers to Cowper's ‘Homer,’ and in October 1793 he carried Sir Thomas Lawrence to Weston Underwood, in order that he might paint the poet's portrait. The royal pension of 300l. per annum to Cowper was made payable to Rose, as his trustee, and Canning, so late as December 1820, called him ‘Cowper's best friend.’
The miscellaneous works of Goldsmith were collected by Rose and published in 1801, 1806, 1812, and 1820 in four volumes. The memoir prefixed was compiled under the direction of Bishop Percy, but numerous additions were made to it by Rose and others. Percy subsequently accused Rose of impertinently tampering with the ‘Memoir’ (Forster, Life of Goldsmith, i. 14, ii. 492).
Rose edited in 1792 an edition of the ‘Reports of Cases by Sir John Comyns,’ and in 1800 Sir John Comyns's ‘Digest of the Laws of England,’ in six volumes, of which the first was dedicated to Lord Thurlow (cf. Temple Bar, January 1896, pp. 42–3). He regularly contributed to the ‘Monthly Review,’ chiefly on legal subjects, and is said to have assisted Lord Sheffield in editing Gibbon's miscellaneous and posthumous works.
Rose's portrait was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1798, and was engraved in 1836 by H. Robinson, from a drawing by W. Harvey.
[Nichols's Lit. Anecd. iii. 387; Nichols's Illustrations of Lit. vi. 583–4; Prior's Goldsmith, vol. i. pp. xiii, 153; Faulkner's Brentford and Chiswick, pp. 349–54, 363–8; Hayley's Cowper (1809), iii. 449–58; Johnson's Life of Hayley, i. 457–72; Gent. Mag. 1790 ii. 764, 1804 ii. 1249; Wright's Cowper, pp. 449–50, 484, 615, 623, 631; Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill, i. 46 n.; Thorn's Environs of London, p. 102.]
ROSE, WILLIAM STEWART (1775–1843), poet and translator, born in 1775, was second son of George Rose (1744–1818) [q. v.], and was educated at Eton, where he contributed to the ‘Musæ Etonenses.’ Soon after leaving school he was returned to parliament in conjunction with his father for the borough of Christchurch on 30 May 1796. In April or May 1800 he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, on being nominated by his father reading clerk of the House of Lords and clerk of the private committees. Wraxall mentions the appointment as an illustration of George Rose's success in providing for his family at the public expense (Posthumous Memoirs, i. 148). At the instigation of his father he commenced ‘A Naval History of the late War,’ but the volume, which appeared in 1802, was the only one published. Stewart Rose's real interests lay elsewhere. Like his schoolfellow, William Herbert (1778–1847) [q. v.], he had caught the prevailing enthusiasm for mediæval romance, and in 1803 he brought out a rhymed version of the first three books of the ‘Amadis,’ as translated into French by Herberay des Essarts at the instigation of Francis I. The original was a good deal condensed in Rose's translation, but he added a considerable body of notes in imitation, as he says in his preface, of the method adopted in Way's edition of the French fabliaux. In all his subsequent writings Rose displayed a decided fondness for annotation.
When Scott visited London in 1803, he made the acquaintance of Rose, and a cordial friendship grew up between them. It was from Rose that Scott learned of Pitt's admiration of ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ and through Rose that he became acquainted with the Morritts of Rokeby. In 1807 Scott visited Rose at his villa of Gundimore, on
