Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/378

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Ross
Rossetti

Ross, Colonel Sir Ronald, K.C.B., LL.D., D.Sc., M.D., F.E.S., medical discoverer. B. May 13, 1857. Ed. St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He entered the Indian Medical Service in 1881, and in 1892 he began the special study of malaria which has enabled him to reach such brilliant and beneficent results. In 1895 he won the Parke's Gold Medal. In 1897 and 1898 he traced the life history of the malaria parasite in the mosquito, and he led the expedition which discovered the malaria-bearing mosquitoes in Africa in 1899. For this incalculable service in reducing disease Ross received the Nobel Prize in 1902, as well as the title of C.B. He was knighted in 1911. Sir Ronald has been, at various times, Vice-President of the Royal Society, President of the Society of Tropical Medicine, and Physician for Tropical Diseases to King's College Hospital; and he is a corresponding member of the Paris, Turin, and Upsala Academies of Science. He edits Science Progress. Apart from his medical works, he has published a small volume of poems (Philosophies, 1910) and a small volume of literary plays (Psychologies, 1919) in which he expounds his very serious and idealist views of life. In the former there is a poem entitled "Dogma," which puts in a few lines the very strong dissent from the creeds which pervades both works. He is a Theist, and he imagines God saying:—

I gave, not awe,
But Praise; no church but God's; no form, no

creeds;
No priest but conscience, and no lord but law.


Ross, William Stewart ("Saladin"), writer. B. Mar. 20, 1844. Ed. New Abbey parish school, Hutton Hall Academy, and Glasgow University. Son of a Scottish farm servant, Ross spent two years as usher at Hutton Hall, and then went to Glasgow University to prepare for the ministry. He became a Rationalist, abandoned theological study, and began to write stories and poems for the Scottish press. His Mildred Merloch, a novel, ran serially in the Glasgow Weekly Mail. Laurie invited him to London to assist in publishing educational works, and in 1872 he set up a publishing business of his own in Farringdon Street under the name of W. Stewart and Co. For some years he published educational works and magazines, and he edited the School Magazine; but he gradually became absorbed in Rationalist propaganda. In 1880 he was joint editor with C. Watts of the Secular Review, and four years later he became sole editor and proprietor. He changed its name in 1889 to The Agnostic Journal and Secular Review, and contributed weekly to it under the name of "Saladin." His best works are God and His Book (1887) and Woman: Her Glory and Her Shame (2 vols., 1894). He also wrote several volumes of poetry; and he won a gold medal for the best poem on Robert Burns at the unveiling of a statue in 1879, and another for a poem describing the visit of Kossuth to the grave of Burns. D. Nov. 30, 1906.


Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, poet and painter. B. May 12, 1828. Ed. King's College, London, Cary's Drawing Academy, and Royal Academy. Rossetti's father was a refugee from the "white terror" at Naples. Dante Gabriel was a very precocious boy, and learned much at home. He wrote drama at the age of six, and poetry at the age of twelve; and he was at King's College only from nine to thirteen. He seemed at first more successful in translating Dante and writing verse than in art; as early as 1847 he wrote The Blessed Damozel and other fine poems. He joined the Pre-Raphaelites for a time, and between 1850 and 1860 made great progress in painting. He again gave more attention to poetry after 1860, when his reputation as an artist was established, and in 1870 published his {cite|Collected Poems}}. In his later years the state of his health compelled him to use chloral, and his life was unhappy; but he continued to produce such exquisite verse as The White Ship and The King's Tragedy. Rossetti was

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