Rose, Samuel

, a learned barrister, and a very amiable man, was born June 20, 1767, at Chiswick in Middlesex, where his father Dr. William Rose, a native of Scotland, conducted an academy during many years, with considerable emolument and unblemished reputation. Dr. Rose was known in the literary world as one of the earliest writers in the Monthly Review, and as the author of a very elegant translation of Sallust. He had originally been an assistant to Dr. Doddridge at Northampton, and married a daughter of Dr. Samuel Clark, of St. Alban’s, a divine of | talents and eminence among the dissenters. She bore him many children; but Samuel was his only surviving son, and after a successful education under his father, was sent in 1784 to the university of Glasgow. There he resided in the house of the late professor Richardson, a philosopher and poet, between whom and his pupil, a friendship and correspondence commenced which terminated only with the life of the latter. Mr. Rose also gained the esteem of several other learned men in Scotland, with whom he afterwards maintained a correspondence. Nor was this wonderful, for his manners were uncommonly amiable and attractive, and his studies amply justified the respect paid to him. He gained every prize, except one, for which he. contended as a student of the university.

After passing three winters at Glasgow, he attended thecourts of law in Edinburgh, and here obtained an introduction to the celebrated Dr. Adam Smith, who was so highly pleased with him, that as long as he resided in Edinburgh,, Mr. Rose was constantly invited to the literary circle of that eminent philosopher. His subsequent intimacy with Cowper appears in Mr. Hayley’s interesting volumes, and perhaps Cowper’s visit to Mr. Rose in Chancery-lane is one of the most affecting incidents in the eventful history of that poet. Mr. Rose had the misfortune to lose his ex* cellent father, while he was pursuing his studies in the North; but a loss so unseasonable did not induce him to shrink from the first irksome labours of an arduous profes^ sion. Having entered his name at LincolnVInn, Nov. 6, 3786, he devoted himself to the law, for which he seemed equally prepared by nature and education. With a mind acute and powerful, with a fund of classical learning, and of general knowledge, with an early command of language, and with manners, as we have already noticed, peculiarly conciliating, he had every thing to hope. Though his spirit was naturally ardent, he submitted to the most tire-r some process of early discipline in his profession, placing himself under a special pleader in 1787, and attending him three years. Being called to the bar in 1796, he attached himself to the home circuit, and to the sessions of Sussex. His first opportunity of displaying professional ability occurred in Chichester, where, having a clergyman for his client, he conciliated the esteem of his audience byexpatiating with propriety, eloquence, and success, on the character of a divine. He was still more admired for the | rare talent of examining a witness with a becoming ture of acuteness and humanity; and upon the whole his friends were persuaded, from this first display of his talents^ that he was destined to rise l>y sure, though slow degrees, to the highest honours of his profession.

In this they were unfortunately disappointed. Though like most men of middling stature, he possessed a considerable portion of bodily strength and agility, his constitution was naturally delicate, and symptoms of decline appeared very visibly in the end of 1803. His complaint was severely aggravated by attending the Sussex sessions in 1804, where he caught a cold so severe that it produced a rheumatic fever in the head, and within a few months his frame and countenance discovered the most alarming appearances of a rapid and incurable decay. In the course of the autumn, he tried the air of the Kentish coast; but returned to London in a state so far from recovery, that his physicians considered his disorder as a confirmed hectic, which after much lingering pain, borne by him with uncommon patience, proved fatal, at his house in Chancery-lane, Dec. 20, 1804, in his thirty-eighth year.

Mr. Rose married in 1791, a. daughter of Dr. Farr, physician to the Royal-hospital, near Plymouth, a lady, who with a moderate portion, brought him the more valuable dower of an elevated understanding. By this lady he had four sons. An ardent love of literature had ever been a characteristic of Mr. Rose, and he gave a signal proof of it in the closing scene of his life. He had been requested to revise the collected works and life of Goldsmith, published in 1801. In the course of his three weeks confinement to the bed of death, he corrected some inaccuracies in that interesting publication, and sent his corrections with the expressive farewell of a dying man to the publishers. In 1792 he produced an improved edition of lord chief baron Corny n’s “Reports,” and in 1800, in a quarto edition, "The Digest of the Laws of England/' by the same eminent lawyer, corrected and continued inscribing the first to lord Thurlow, and the second to lord Lpughborough. ¹