Memoir of William Roscoe, Esq. ^OS 



but, on the following day, a mob rose and destroyed the coun- 

 ter-address where it lay for signature. Party spirit, on that oc- 

 casion, rose so high in Liverpool, that a small private literary 

 society, of which Mr Roscoe, Mr Rathbone, and Dr Currie 

 were members*, thought it expedient to discontinue their meet- 

 ings, lest their objects should, by party malice, be represented 

 as seditious or revolutionary. 



On the breaking out of the war with France, Roscoe again ap- 

 pears as a political writer. He inveighed against the unjust and 

 impolitic interference of this government with France ; and, in a 

 pamphlet entitled " Thoughts on the late Failure,^" published 

 in 1793, he attributes the mercantile distress of that period to 

 the consequences of our meddling policy, a subject which he re- 

 sumed in 1796, in " An Exposure of the Fallacies of Mr 

 Burke'^s^'' celebrated invectives against the French Revolution. 



We come now to the principal event in the history of our 

 author, the publication of " the Life of Lorenzo de'' Medici^ 

 which appeared in the winter of 1795, in two volumes quarto. 

 The work was printed by John M'Creery in Liverpool, and is 

 a fine specimen of provincial typography, both for accuracy and 

 elegance of execution. 



The sensation produced by this work was immense ; the first 

 edition was rapidly exhausted, and a second was demanded by 

 the pubhc within a few months. Letters of the most gratifying 

 kind were showered on the author from high literary authorities 

 in all quarters. Among others, the late Earl of Bristol, Bishop 

 of Derry, then resident at Rome, hailed with the highest en- 

 comiums the appearance of an English work, which was the 

 surprise and envy of the Italians themselves ; and he imme- 

 diately wrote to the publisher to know " what present of Italian 

 books would be most acceptable to the accomplished author."" 

 Its success on the continent was no less gratifying. Besides a 

 reprint of the original, the work was speedily translated into the 

 Italian, French, and German languages ; and it procured for 

 Roscoe the esteem and correspondence of some of the most emi- 

 nent literary men of Europe. 



• Besides these gentlemen, it consisted of the Rev. Joseph Smith, the 

 Rev. John Yates, Mr Ralph Kddows, Mr Tattersall, the Rev. William 

 Shepherd, and Dr Rutter. 



