POEMS AND ESSAYS BY THE LATE (8869) WILLIAM CALDWELL ROSCOE. EDITED, WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR, BY HIS BROTHER-IN-LAW, RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. POEMS. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. MDCCCLX. MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. and essays I Do not think that any reader of the poems which these volumes contain can fail to wish for some further insight into the character of their author. I am aware, indeed, that Mr. Roscoe's career was not in any way one to justify a formal biography, or even an extended memoir. For though his intrinsic claims to some permanent, if modest, place in English literature may probably be conceded by most competent judges of his literary remains, there was certainly nothing in his external life to render Mr. Carlyle's most pathetic question in any way inapplicable to his case,— "Why should a Biography be inflicted on this man? why should not No-Biography and the privilege of all the weary be his lot?" But, while an express biography, however succinct, would in the present case be at once inappropriate and impossible, I venture to hope that such a delineation of his character as it may be in my power to give-imperfect, partial, and possibly onesided as it may prove-will both add some little interest to his writings, and derive a real value from them. And I entertain this hope, not merely on the general b |