On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    yet never stopping at their point , or ceasing to pursue a just principle to its legitimate consequences ,, through fear or favour . Against the delusions of a temperament somewhat sanguine , he was not perhaps wholly proof . The principles and the feeling of Hope and Faith were strong within him , and he did probably too often c think the world without like that within / His imagination also sometimes brought before him shadows ,, on which he vainly

    expended a portion of his strength ; but every failing was frankly exhibited—no sophistry darkens the pages of Roscoe . As a writer on elegant literature , we are disposed to regard him rather as a most useful auxiliary , and as a striking example of perseverance , and of the happiness which accrues to individuals

    from the cultivation of pure tastes , than as the producer of any thing intrinsically splendid . His style is neither brilliant nor very much calculated , by its strength and nervousness , to leave a powerful impression on the mind . In a few of his shorter poems , particularly in his Songs on the French Revolution , he rises to a degree of animation which was not common in his printed compositions , his translations from the Italian are also highly poetical and spirited , and his private letters are delightful : but , generally

    speaking , Mr . Roscoe is content to be sensible and correct ; and though all he writes bespeaks an intimate acquaintance with elegant literature , the flow of his language is placid and even . That he always took the side of what he considered true liberty , in all he wrote and said , no one can question . We are not so certain however , that in his contest with M . Sismondi , respecting the

    Medicis , he was on the right side—the probability is , from the too uniform strain of panegyric which pervades the memoirs of Lorenzo , that Mr . Koscoe ' s imagination was in a degree dazzled by the congenial splendours of his hero . He saw in him a man truly extraordinary in his time , endowed with the most noble and

    useful tastes , and exercising his political power in a manner highly calculated to improve the human race ; but still we are afraid M . Sismondi is right ; ' * the means by which Lorenzo acquired and endeavoured to perpetuate power savour strongly of craft and statesmanlike absence of sound principle .

    Some have thought Mr . Roscoe disposed to severity towards Luther and his brother reformers , and undoubtedly he may be charged with occasional forgetfulness of their sources of irritation ; but , as he well says , in his own defence , — 4 adverting to the persecutions of which Protestants Lave been

    Untitled Article

    guilty , iny only object has been to excite that abhorrence of persecution , under every shape and pretext , which is the surest safeguard against its return . If it should appear , as has been imputed to me , that I have animadverted witli more severity on the Protestants than on the Papists , it is because better things were to have been expected from them : because they who asserted the right of private judgment ia themselves , ought not to have denied it to others : because they who

    Untitled Article

    On the Life and Character of the late Mr . Roscoe * 673

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 673, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/13/