Volume 1
The life & experiences of Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe ... / written by himself.
- Henry Enfield Roscoe
- Date:
- 1906
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The life & experiences of Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe ... / written by himself. Source: Wellcome Collection.
30/480 page 8
![gives a lively picture of Creevey’s feelings towards Mr. Roscoe. Mr. Creevey to Miss Ord (his step-daughter) :1 — Denbies, July i$tk, 1833. I am in the second volume of poor Roscoe’s Lorenzo de Medici. I read his Leo three or four years ago with great pleasure, and the present book with increased delight. I can scarcely conceive a greater miracle than Roscoe’s history— that a man whose dialect was that of a barbarian, and from whom in years of familiar intercourse I never heard above an average observation, whose parents were servants (I well remember them keeping a public-house), whose profession was that of an attorney, who had never been out of England and scarcely out of Liverpool—that such a man should under¬ take to write the history of the 14th and 15th centuries, the revival of Italian [illegible]—that such a history should be to the full as polished in style as that of Gibbon, and much more simple and perspicuous—that the facts of this history should all be substantiated by references to authorities in other languages, with frequent and beautiful translations from them by himself—is really too ! Then the subject is to my mind the most captivating possible ; one’s only regret is that poor Roscoe, after writing this beautiful history of his brother bankers the Medici, should not have imitated their prudence, and by such means have escaped appearing in that profane literary work, the Gazette ! Oh dear ! what a winding-up for his fame at last! Roscoe’s life was a singularly fruitful and interesting one, and he lived long enough to see the justice of almost all the leading principles he had advo¬ cated acknowledged. Thus he was permitted to partake of the triumph which the friends of liberty obtained in the abolition of the slave-trade. He saw the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and of the laws of Roman Catholic disability. His views respecting penal jurisdiction were becoming generally acknowledged ; and, lastly, he survived to witness all 1 The Creevey Papers, Vol. II. p. 256.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31347885_0001_0032.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
