194> Memoir of WiUiam Roscoe, Esq. 



ing, by his own exertions, from obscurity to eminence, that age 

 and that country have some claims to commendation in which 

 the force of genius can overcome the obstacles of birth and for- 

 tune, and elevate its possessor to the society of the noblest and 

 wisest of the land. 



William Roscob was born on the 8th of March 1753, in 

 the Old Bowling-green House, which still exists in Mount 

 Pleasant *, and is well known to many persons by the engra- 

 ving from a drawing by Austin. His parents, in humble but 

 comfortable circumstances, were little able to advance his edu- 

 cation ; yet anxious for his improvement, at the age of six they 

 sent him to a school, kept by a Mr Martin, for the elementary 

 instruction of children ; whence, in about two years, he was re- 

 moved to the seminary of Mr Sykes, at that time a considerable 

 private school in Liverpool. 



The instruction which young Roscoe here received was con- 

 fined to English reading, writing, arithmetic, and the elements 

 of geometry. At the age of twelve years he left school, from 

 which period he may be said to have been, in a great measure, 

 his own instructor, until about the age of sixteen, when he was 

 articled as clerk to Mr John Eyes, a respectable attorney in this 

 town. During the four years that elapsed between his leaving 

 school and entering Mr Eyes'*s office, he occupied himself with 

 desultory English reading, in cultivating some fields rented by 

 his father, and in frequenting the painting-room of a porcelain 

 manufactory in the neighbourhood, where he amused himself 

 with painting on china. 



At that period of his life his English reading appears to have 

 been rather confined. His favourite authors were Shakspeare, 

 Shenstone, the poems of Mrs Catharine Philips, and the Spec- 

 tator. From the former he imbibed a decided predilection for 

 poetry, and his taste for English composition was probably mo- 

 delled on the elegant examples contained in the latter. It is 

 curious to trace his attachment to botany and the fine arts to this 

 early period. The phenomena of vegetation, and the cultiva- 

 tion of plants, appear to have made a deep impression on his 

 youthful mind ; and in the Httle cultivator of his father'*s fields, 

 • A street in Liverpool. 



