Nicholas, was descended of an ancient family in Devonshire, and born in 1673. He acquired a complete taste for the classical authors under Dr Busby in Westminster school; but poetry was his early and darling study. His father, who was a lawyer, entered him a student in the Middle Temple, and he made remarkable advances in the study of the law; but the love of the belles lettres, and of poetry, stopped him in his career. His first tragedy, the Ambitious Stepmother, meeting with universal applause, he laid aside all thoughts of rising by the law, and afterwards composed several tragedies; but that which he valued himself most upon was his Tamerlane. The others were, the Fair Penitent, Ulysses, the Royal Convert, Jane Shore, and Lady Jane Grey. He also wrote a poem called the Biter, and several poems upon different subjects, which have been published under the title of Miscellaneous Works, in one volume, as his dramatic works have been in two. Rowe is chiefly to be considered in the light of a tragic writer and a translator. In his attempt at comedy, he failed so ignominiously that his Biter is not inserted in his works; and his occasional poems and short compositions are rarely worthy either of praise or censure, for they seem to be the casual sports of a mind seeking rather to amuse its leisure than to exercise its powers. In the construction of his dramas there is not much art; and he is not a nice observer of the unities. I know not, says Dr Johnson, that there can be found in his plays any deep search into nature, any accurate discrimination of kindred qualities, or nice display of passion in its progress. All is general and undefin'd. Nor does he much interest or affect the auditor, except in Jane Shore, who is always seen and heard with pity. Alicia is a character of empty noise, with no resemblance to real sorrow or to natural madness. Whence then has Rowe acquired his reputation? From the reasonableness and propriety of some of his scenes, from the elegance of his diction, and from the suavity of his verse. He seldom moves either pity or terror, but he often elevates the sentiment; he seldom pierces the breast, but he always delights the ear, and often improves the understanding. Being a great admirer of Shakspeare, he gave the public an edition of his plays, to which he prefixed an account of his life. But the most considerable of Mr Rowe's performances was a translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, which he just lived to finish, but not to publish; for it did not appear in print till 1728, ten years after his death.

In the meanwhile, the love of poetry and books did not make him unfit for business; for nobody applied closer to it when occasion required. The Duke of Queensberry, when secretary of state, made him secretary for public affairs. But after the duke's death, all avenues to his preferment were stopped; and during the remainder of Queen Anne's reign he passed his time with the Muses and his books. On the accession of George I, however, he was made poet-laureat, and one of the land-surveyors of the customs in the port of London. The Prince of Wales conferred on him the clerkship of his council; and the Lord Chancellor Parker made him his secretary for the presentations. But he did not enjoy these promotions long; for he died on the 6th of December 1718, being then in his forty-fifth year.

Mr Rowe, who was twice married, had a son by his first wife, and a daughter by his second. He was a very hand-

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1 In this he confesses that he liked better to send his children into hospitals destined for orphans, than to take upon himself the charge of their maintenance and education, and endeavours to palliate this offence, which nothing can exculpate. some man; and his mind was as amiable as his person. He lived beloved; and at his death he had the honour to be lamented by Pope, in an epitaph which is printed in Pope's works, although it was not affixed on Mr Rowe's monument in Westminster Abbey, where he was interred, in the poets' corner, opposite to Chaucer.

**Rowe, Elizabeth,** an English lady, eminent for her writings both in prose and verse, was born at Leicester, in Somersetshire, in 1674, being the daughter of worthy parents, Mr Walter Singer and Mrs Elizabeth Portnel. There being a great affinity between painting and poetry, this lady, who had a vein for the one, naturally had a taste for the other. She was also very fond of music, chiefly of the grave and solemn kind, as best suited the grandeur of her sentiments and the sublimity of her devotion. But poetry was her favourite employment, her distinguishing excellence; and so prevalent was her genius this way, that her prose is all poetical. In 1696, a collection of her poems was published at the desire of two friends. Her paraphrase on the thirty-eighth chapter of Job was written at the request of Bishop Ken. She had no other tutor for the French and Italian languages than Mr Thynne, who willingly took the trouble upon himself. Her shining merit, with the charms of her person and conversation, had procured her many admirers. Amongst others, it is said, the famous Mr Prior made his addresses to her; but Mr Thomas Rowe was destined to be the happy man. This gentleman was honourably descended; and his superior genius, and insatiable thirst after knowledge, were conspicuous in his earliest years. He had formed a design to compile the lives of all the illustrious persons in antiquity omitted by Plutarch; which, indeed, he partly executed, and eight lives were published after his decease. They were translated into French by the Abbé Bellenger in 1734. He spoke with ease and fluency, and had a frank and benevolent temper, an inexhaustible fund of wit, and a communicative disposition. Such was the man who, charmed with the person, character, and writings of our authoress, married her in 1710, and made it his study to repay the felicity with which she crowned his life. But too intense an application to study, beyond what the delicacy of his frame would bear, broke his health, and threw him into a consumption, which put a period to his life in May 1715, when he had but just passed the twenty-eighth year of his age. Mrs Rowe wrote a beautiful elegy on his death; and continued to the last moments of her life to express the highest veneration and affection for his memory. As soon after his decease as her affairs would permit, she indulged her inclination for solitude by retiring to Frome, in Somersetshire, in the neighbourhood of which place lay the greatest part of her estate. In this recess it was that she composed the most celebrated of her works, Friendship in Death, and the Letters Moral and Entertaining. In 1736, she published the History of Joseph, a poem which she had written in her younger years. But she did not long survive this publication; for she died of an apoplexy, as was supposed, on the 20th of February 1736–1737. In her cabinet were found letters to several of her friends, which she had ordered to be delivered immediately after her decease. Dr Isaac Watts, agreeably to her request, revised and published, in 1737, her devotions, under the title of Devout Exercises of the Heart in Meditation and Soliloquy, Praise and Prayer; and, in 1789, her Miscellaneous Works, in prose and verse, were published in two volumes 8vo, with an account of her life and writings prefixed.

**Rowel,** amongst farriers, a kind of issue, answering to what in surgery is called a seton.

**Rowley,** a monk who is said to have flourished at Bristol in the fifteenth century. Of the poems attributed to him various opinions have been entertained, which we have noticed under the article on Chatterton.

**Rowley, William,** who stands in the third class of dramatic writers, lived in the reign of King Charles I. and received his education at the University of Cambridge; but whether he took any degree there, is not evident, there being but few particulars preserved in regard to him, except his close intimacy and connection with all the principal wits and poetical geniuses of that age, by whom he was well beloved, and with some of whom he joined in their writings. Wood styles him "the ornament, for wit and ingenuity, of Pembroke Hall in Cambridge." In a word, he was a very great benefactor to the English stage, having, exclusively of his aid lent to Middleton, Day, Heywood, Webster, and others, left us five plays of his own composition, and one in which even the immortal Shakspeare afforded him some assistance.

**Rowley Regis,** a town of the parish of Dudley, in Worcestershire, although within the hundred of Seisdon, in Staffordshire, and chiefly inhabited by nail-makers and other workers in iron. The population amounted in 1801 to 5027, in 1811 to 4974, in 1821 to 6062, and in 1831 to 7438.

**Rowning, John,** an English mathematician and philosopher of considerable ingenuity, was fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and afterwards rector of Anderby in Lincolnshire, in the gift of that society. He constantly attended the meetings of the Spalding Society, and was a man of an extraordinary philosophical habit of mind, whilst at the same time his dispositions were social and cheerful. His genius was peculiarly fitted for mechanical contrivances or inventions. He published a compendious system of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge, in the year 1738, in two volumes 8vo; a work of much ingenuity, which has gone through several editions. He likewise inserted two pieces in the Philosophical Transactions, namely, a description of a barometer, wherein the scale of variation may be increased at pleasure (vol. xxxviii. p. 39); and directions for making a machine for finding the roots of equations universally, together with the manner in which it should be used (vol. lx. p. 240). He died at his lodgings in Carey Street, near Lincoln's-Inn Fields, in the end of November 1771, in the seventy-second year of his age. Though a man both ingenious and pleasant, his external appearance was rather forbidding, being tall, and low in the shoulders, with his countenance down-looking and sallow.

**Roxburghshire,** a county in Scotland, on its south-eastern extremity, where it joins England, situated between 55° 6. and 55° 48. north latitude, and between 2° 12. and 3° 7. west longitude from Greenwich. It is sometimes called Teviotdale, from its principal river the Teviot, but improperly, as it also includes a tract called Liddesdale on the south-west, which is unconnected with the Teviot. Its boundaries are Berwickshire, from which it is separated in part by the river Tweed on the north, Selkirkshire and Dumfriesshire on the west and south-west, and the English counties of Cumberland and Northumberland on the south-east and east. Between Berwickshire and Selkirkshire a small tract touches the county of Mid-Lothian; on the south, between Dumfriesshire and Cumberland, the county terminates almost in a point; on the west it in some places surrounds small portions of Selkirkshire, and in others projects into that county; and it has the Cheviot Hills on the east, the outline being exceedingly irregular on all sides. Its greatest length is nearly forty-one miles, and its greatest breadth about thirty miles. According to the latest authorities, its area is 715 square miles, or 457,600 English acres, containing twenty-nine entire parishes, and part of other four, which properly belong to the counties adjoining. In an agricultural view, it may be considered as divided into arable land and hilly pasture; the pasture land, estimated at about three fifths of the whole, occupying the eastern, southern, and western quarters, and surrounding, in a circular form, the arable, which lies on the north and north-east sides of the county. The arable, pasture, and Except upon the banks of the streams, which are commonly of no great width, there is very little level or flat land in this district; and, compared with the high grounds in other parts of Scotland, hardly any part of it can be said to be mountainous. The cultivated districts are beautifully diversified with narrow valleys, each traversed by its own rivulet, often fringed with wood, and bounded by gentle acclivities; and the hills in pasture are, with few exceptions, clothed in verdure to their very summits. On the confines of Northumberland, the most elevated quarter, the hills seldom reach the height of 2000 feet, but there are many from that height down to 1000 or 800 feet. The most considerable are the Minto and the Eldon Hills, both in the arable division; and Dunion, Ruberslaw, Wisp, Howman Law, Millenwood-Fell, Carter-Fell, and Chilhill, in the pastoral districts. Most of them having a conical form, insulated at their base by streamlets, and not rising in a continuous range, present very conspicuous objects, and at a distance seem higher than they are found to be when approached. The beauties of the natural scenery have been heightened and improved by the wealth and industry of its inhabitants; all this division abounding in gentlemen's seats, comfortable and even elegant farm-houses, the fields enclosed with hedges of thorn, and belts of wood, and many spots covered with young trees. On the skirts of the hills, too, cultivation has of late made considerable progress, as much, perhaps, as could be expected in the natural circumstances of the country; but the interior of the pastoral district is in general naked, without trees or fences, and very thinly inhabited.

The prevailing soil of the arable land, and over most of the hills, is what is called a sandy loam, though of different qualities, excellently adapted to the turnip culture. Tracts of a clayey or more heavy soil, however, occupy a considerable space, especially on the north-west. Clay is also found on the north, near the Tweed, where it is rich and fertile. Moss, marsh, and heath occur in the south-west, and occasionally in other quarters; but altogether they cover but a small proportion of the surface.

No district in Britain is better supplied with streams, though it has only two that deserve the name of rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot. The Tweed, which crosses the northern part of the county, and for part of its course forms the boundary with Berwickshire, enters it from Selkirkshire on the north-west, and leaves it below Redden on the north-east, carrying with it nearly all the waters that pass through or have their source in this district. Its banks, especially near Kelso, where it is crossed by an elegant bridge, built by Rennie between the years 1799 and 1803, are perhaps equal in richness and beauty to those of any river of the same extent in Britain. The Teviot more properly belongs to this county, rising and terminating within its bounds. It has its source in the south-west extremity, near the confines of Dumfriesshire, and flowing north-east almost through the middle of the district, joins the Tweed, in which its name is lost, a little above the town of Kelso. From Hawick downwards it is a considerable stream, and, like the Tweed, flows through a very fertile and well-cultivated country. The principal rivulets that fall into the Teviot from the south are Allen, Slitrick, Rule, Jed, Oxnam, and Kale; and from the north and west Borthwick and Ale. The Liddel and Hermitage, which run on the south-west, and whose united streams retain the name of Liddel, from which this tract is called Liddesdale, soon leave Roxburghshire, and after forming the boundary between Dumfriesshire and Cumberland, fall into the Esk above Longtown. The other streams are the Etterick, which joins the Tweed from the south-west as it enters this county; the Allen and the Leader, which fall into the same river from the north; and the Eden, which, after an Roxburgh-easterly course, partly on the boundary with Berwickshire, enters the Tweed on the north-east, a little before it leaves the county. The Beaumont also rises here amongst the Cheviot Hills on the east, but after a short course passes by Kirk-Yetholm, and enters Northumberland. Of the smaller streams, the Ale, Jed, Rule, and Hermitage are distinguished for their natural scenery, to which we may add the Liddel, celebrated by the late Dr Armstrong, a native of Liddesdale. Tweed is the only river frequented by salmon, except at the time of spawning, when they are found in most of the other streams. Trout abounds in the Ale, Rule, Jed, and Kale; and there are a few small lakes which contain perch and pike.