The King happens along, displaces the boots, and a duel follows. The play was anonymously produced in 1810, and had an extended run. It was preceded by the publication of a collection of epigrams and a metrical translation of Juvenal by the same author. In 1823 our bank clerk was promoted to the position of chief teller in the Bank of England. In that capacity he served until his death in 1826.

W

VI

WILLIAM ROSCOE

1753-1831

ILLIAM ROSCOE, author of a standard biography of Lorenzo de' Medici, and of other historical biographies, also poet, translator, scientist and statesman, became a banker through sympathy. Born in 1753, in a suburb of Liverpool, he was given a liberal education and in due time became an attorney. At the age of forty-six, to save two friends from financial disaster, he yielded to solicitation and became a partner and the general manager of the banking house of J. & W. Clark, Liverpool. At fifty-six, he entered Parliament as the member from Liverpool. His one term in that body was so successful that on his return at the close of the session he was given a very flattering ovation by his constituents. In 1816 occurred a disastrous run on his bank. The funds of the house were mainly locked up in mining and landed property, and a suspension was inevitable. As the assets seemed ample, at the creditors' request Roscoe retained active management and the bank resumed.

To satisfy claims so far as he alone was able, Roscoe sold at auction his library of rare books, also his famous collection of paintings and sculpture. His friends bought in, at £600, a selection of his rarest works and tendered them to him as a gift; but he felt he could not conscientiously accept them so long as there remained a single unsatisfied creditor of the bank. These works now constitute the Roscoe collection in the Liverpool Athenæum.

Though his bank made large payments to its creditors, it failed to recover its lost standing, and in 1820 it was declared bankrupt. Dr. Trail! and others raised £2,500 for the relief of Roscoe's family, and at the age of sixty-one the banker-by-accident retired from business and gave himself up to literary pursuits too long postponed.

Roscoe's literary career began at twenty, when he printed an "Ode on the Foundation of a Society for the Encouragement of the Art of Painting and Design." The title not wholly weighing down his muse, he wrote another ode, entitled "Mount Pleasant," which he published four years later. At thirty-four he attacked, in blank verse, the iniquities of the African slave trade. At forty-three, he published "The Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent," a two-volume