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Rollin s astronomy at Copenhagen, and employed him in re- 

 Charles. f orm i n g the coin and the architecture of the kingdom, 

 v ~" ""Y~ -^ i n regulating the weights and measures, and in sur- 

 veying the roads. 



In 1687, he travelled at the king's desire through 

 England, France, Holland, and Germany, to collect 

 useful information, and on his return in 1688 he was 

 made counsellor of the chancellerie, and in l6'93 asses- 

 sor of the supreme tribunal of justice. From Frede- 

 rick IV. he received additional dignities. In 1705 he 

 appointed him burgomaster of Copenhagen, and in 

 1706 he gave him the dignity of councillor of state. 



When Roemer was preparing to publish the results 

 of his observations, he was seized with an illness which 

 carried him off on the 19th September 1710, in the 

 6'6th year of his age. Most of his observations, how- 

 ever, were published by his pupil Peter Horrebow, 

 professor of astronomy at Copenhagen, in his Basis 

 Astronomic. An account of Roemer's method of gra- 

 duating astronomical instruments will be found in our 

 article GRADUATION, Vol. X. p. 362. 



ROLLIN CHARLES, a well-known French historian, 

 was born at Paris on the 30th January, 1661. He 

 was intended for his father's profession of a cutler, but 

 a Benedictine having observed his turn for literature, 

 induced his mother to give him a liberal education. 

 Jn the college of Du Plessis the good Benedictine ob- 

 tained a pension for the boy, who distinguished him- 

 self by his diligence and talents, and thus became 

 known to the minister Pelletier, whose two eldest sons 

 were his schoolfellows. In 1683, M. Hersa made him 

 his assistant in the rhetoric chair, and in 1687 here- 

 signed it to him altogether. In 1688 he obtained the 

 chair of eloquence in the Royal College, of which he 

 was chosen rector in l694<, an office which led him to 

 deliver the annual panegyric on Louis XIV. In this 

 situation he revived the study of Greek literature, 

 which had fallen into neglect. When his office of rec- 

 tor expired, Cardinal Noailles engaged him to super- 

 intend the studies of his nephews at the college of 

 Laon, but he was, against his inclination, appointed in 

 16'99 coadjutor to the principal of the college of Beau- 



vais, an establishment without discipline and without 

 students. Here ha remained till 1713, when he fell a 

 sacrifice to the contests of tfie Jesuits and the Jansen- 

 ists. By the influence of the former he was deprived 

 of his situation, but with the decent competency which 

 he enjoyed, he felt that he had lost nothing. Under 

 these circumstances he prepared his edition of Quiti* 

 tilian with notes, which appeared in 1715, in two vo- 

 lume?, 12mo. 



In 1720, he was again chosen rector of tire univer-i 

 sity of Paris. The university had protested against 

 taking any part in the prevailing contentions, and be- 

 ing congratulated on this step in a public oration by 

 Ilollin, he was displaced in about two months by a 

 Lettre de cachet. 



Being now master of his own time he began his 

 work, I)e la mttnicrc d'cludier el d'enseigner les Belies 

 Letlres, which appeared in 1726 and 1728, in four 

 volumes. The success of this work encouraged him 

 to undertake his Hislolre Aucienne des Egyptiens, den 

 Carthagiiiiens, des Assyriens, des Babyionicus, which he 

 completed in thirteen volumes octavo, and published be- 

 tween the years 1730 and 1738. He now undertook 

 his last work, entitled Hisloire Romaine depuis la 

 fondation de Rome jusqu'a la BataiUe d'Actium, in 

 eigh.t volumes, 12mo. This work was continued by 

 his disciple Crevier, from the Cimbrian war to the 

 battle of Actium, and was afterwards completed in six- 

 teen volumes, the original plan of Rollin, which was to 

 bring it down to the reign of Constantine. Rollin died 

 on the 14th September, 174-1, in the 81st year of his 

 age. 



The works of Rollin have been translated into vari- 

 ous languages, and from the useful moral reflections 

 which they contain, and the constant regard which he 

 pays to the great interests of religion and morality, 

 they have obtained a high degree of popularity, and 

 have even received the praises of Voltaire and Kous- 

 seau. 



ROLLING MILL. See our article COINING MA* 

 CHINEUV, Vol. VI. p. 722, and IRON, Vol. XII. p. 313. 

 See also the article MINT, Vol. XLV. p. 576. 



ftolHn: 



31 ill." 



R 6 M A N C E. 



Romance. ROMANCE is defined by Dr. Johnson " a military 

 > v-*' fable of the middle ages; a tale of wild adventures in 

 Proposed ] ove an( j chivalry." A distinguished author of our 

 definitions Qwn time* considers this definition as not sufficiently 

 ol the word. , , . . . . J 



comprehensive, and substitutes "a fictitious narrative 



in prose or verse, the interest of which turns on mar- 

 vellous and uncommon incidents ;" considering ro- 

 mance as thus opposed to novel, which he defines " a 

 fictitious narrative differing from the romance, because 

 accommodated to the ordinary train of human events 

 and the modern state of society." But, if the defini- 

 tion of Dr. Johnson be too narrow, that of our contem- 

 porary can scarcely fail to be looked upon as by far 

 too wide. It takes in equally the Iliad, the Batracho- 

 myomachia, Amadis of Gaul, Don Quixote, the Morte 

 Arthur, and the Tales of my Landlord. The novel, 

 moreover, is not distinguished from the romance by 

 being accommodated to the ordinary train of human 

 events. No such novel ever existed. The author of 

 Tom Jones makes demands on our credulity not much 



inferior in reality to those we meet with in the pages Romance* 

 of Gulliver, and at all events differing from them only in ~**~'\r^ m " 

 degree. Nor can we see any good reason why the scene 

 of a novel (taking that word even in its strictest sense) 

 might not be laid in any time or country however re- 

 mote(provided the writer had sufficient knowledgeof the 

 customs and manners of antiquity) as well as in modern 

 France or England. Mrs. Itadcliffe has written many 

 genuine romances without departing from modern 

 times ; and Waverley, though styled a novel on its 

 title page, is far more near of kin to Ivanhoe than to 

 Peregrine Pickle. The touch of genius can invest the 

 most ordinary situations with the deepest and most 

 romantic interest, and as Othello is as genuine a tragedy 

 as Lear, so is Werter as genuine a romance as Tristram. 

 The truth is, that the authors of all fictitious narra- 

 tives (as the very name shows) endeavour to give an. 

 air of reality to their performances ; and so much de- 

 pends on the genius of the artist, and so little on aught 

 besides, that a Swift could give more of the air of 



See Romance in the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, an article understood to be from the pen of Sir Walter Scott. 



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