210 Memoi?' of William Roscoe, Esq, 



1809, he presented to the Linnean Society his valuable paper 

 " On a new arrangement of the Scitaminean order of plants^ 

 which appeared in their Transactions, and established his claim 

 to the character of an original thinker in this elegant depart- 

 ment of natural history. His reputation, still more than the 

 claims of private friendship, led Sir James Edward Smith to 

 institute the genus Hoscoea, which now contains many species of 

 that beautiful order. 



A similarity of political principles, and congeniality of taste 

 for agricultural improvements, had for some time made Roscoe 

 acquainted with Mr Coke of Norfolk. In 1814, he was in- 

 vited to visit Holkham, the splendid seat of that eminent agri- 

 culturist. There he found ample employment in the magni> 

 ficent library, collected by the late Lord Leicester, uncle to 

 the present possessor, a nobleman who, with vast wealth, pos- 

 sessed a highly cultivated mind, and a passion for collecting 

 books and manuscripts. It was well known that the collection 

 was immensely rich in classical manuscripts and unpublished 

 works on Italian history. Mr Roscoe readily undertook the 

 examination of this superb collection, which had afforded to 

 Drakenborck the manuscript copies of Livy employed in his 

 valuable edition of the Roman Historian, and which, among 

 600 manuscript volumes of ecclesiastical annals and Italian civil 

 history, was discovered by Mr Roscoe to contain one of the lost 

 volumes of Leonardo da Vinci's Treatises on Meclianics, and 

 the long deplored and precious volume in which Raffaello, at 

 the desire of the Pontiff, had made pe?i drawings of the re- 

 mains of ancient Roman magnificence, illustrated by short de- 

 scriptions in his own handwriting. Mr Roscoe undertook to 

 make a catalogue raisonnee of the manuscripts of the collection 

 —a task which he some years afterwards, with the assistance of 

 Mr Madden, now one of the librarians of the British Museum, 

 fully accomplished. This catalogue (of which a short account 

 was given to this Society a few years ago) extends to four or 

 five thick folio volumes, and is enriched with engraved ^c 

 similes and illuminated ornaments. 



The manuscripts had been little attended to for many years. 

 Most of them were in the original coarse paper covers, and 



