of St. Catharine.’ Ruskin praised his work, and in 1858 said he had the making of a good landscape-painter, in spite of his ‘artificialness’ (Ruskin, Notes on the Royal Academy, &c., 1858 p. 48, 1859, p. 47).
Rowbotham published in 1875 small volumes of ‘English Lake Scenery’ and ‘Picturesque Scottish Scenery,’ and a series of chromolithographic ‘Views of Wicklow and Killarney,’ with descriptive text by the Rev. W. J. Loftie. He also contributed illustrations to Cassell's ‘Picturesque Europe.’ He published many other chromolithographs; a series entitled ‘T. L. Rowbotham's Sketch Book’ was issued after his death.
[Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878; Bryan's Dictionary, ed. Graves and Armstrong, 1886–9, ii. 420; Algernon Graves's Dictionary of Artists, 1895; Academy, 1875, ii. 101; Art Journal, 1875, p. 280; Catalogues of the Institute of Painters in Water-colours, 1849–75; information from Claude H. Rowbotham, esq.]
ROWE. [See also Row.]
ROWE, Mrs. ELIZABETH (1674–1737), author, born at Ilchester, Somerset, on 11 Sept. 1674, was eldest of the three daughters of Walter Singer, a nonconformist minister, by his wife, Elizabeth Portnell. The father, who had a competent estate in the neighbourhood of Frome, had been in prison at Ilchester in early life for nonconformity, and first met his wife while she was visiting the prisoners as an act of charity. He died on 18 April 1719. Elizabeth, although educated religiously, practised music and drawing with much success, and wrote verse from a youthful age. In 1696 she published ‘Poems on several occasions by Philomela’ (reissued in 1709 and 1737). The effort attracted favourable notice. The family of Lord Weymouth at Longleat patronised her, Henry Thynne, Lord Weymouth's son, taught her French and Italian, and at the request of Lord Weymouth's chaplain, Bishop Ken, she afterwards paraphrased in verse the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Ken paid a weekly visit to her father's house in order to cultivate her society. Matthew Prior was also attracted by her poetry. Not only did he print with his own collected poems her ‘Love and Friendship, a pastoral,’ but appended to it verses declaring himself desperately in love with her. At the same period she became known to Dr. Isaac Watts, who, on 19 July 1706, wrote some lines ‘on her divine poems.’ In 1709 she was introduced, while at Bath, to an accomplished and serious-minded young man, Thomas Rowe, and next year she married him.
Thomas Rowe (1687–1715) was his wife's junior by thirteen years, having been born in London on 25 April 1687. His father, Benoni Rowe, son of John Rowe (1626–1677) [q. v.], and brother of Thomas Rowe (1657–1705) [q. v.], was a nonconformist minister of Devonshire origin. Thomas had studied classics first at Epsom, afterwards under Dr. Walker, master of the Charterhouse, and finally at the university of Leyden. He combined with his scholarship an ardent love of political and religious liberty, and, to gratify simultaneously his literary and political predilections, he designed a series of lives of classical heroes who had been overlooked by Plutarch. He completed eight biographies (Æneas, Tullus Hostilius, Aristomenes, Tarquin the elder and Junius Brutus, Gelo, Cyrus, and Jason), and his work was published, with a preface by Samuel Chandler, in 1728, after his death. A life of Thrasybulus, which he sent for revision to Sir Richard Steele, was never heard of again. A French translation of his lives by Abbé Bellenger was appended to Dacier's French translation of Plutarch in 1734, and was frequently republished with it. Rowe also wrote some English poems, both original and translated from the classics. The former included some frigid ‘Odes to Delia.’ Rowe's verse was published in the collected edition of his wife's works in 1739. He died of consumption at Hampstead on 13 May 1715, and was buried in Bunhill Fields.
Mrs. Rowe wrote an elegy on her husband which was at the time credited with almost infinite pathos, although the rhyming heroics in which it is penned give it in modern ears a somewhat conventional ring. Pope did Mrs. Rowe the honour not only of imitating some lines in his own poems, but of printing the elegy in 1720 as an appendix to his ‘Eloisa and Abelard’ (2nd edit.). Mrs. Rowe never completely recovered from the grief of her bereavement. Retiring to Frome, where she inherited a small property from her father, she devoted herself to pious exercises, occasionally varied by literary work or sketching. She seldom left home except to visit her friend, the Countess of Hertford, afterwards Duchess of Somerset, at Marlborough (the daughter of her early patron, Henry Thynne of Longleat), but she maintained intimate relations with many other friends and acquaintances through a voluminous correspondence. Her correspondents included the Earl of Orrery, James Theobald, and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter. She died of apoplexy on 20 Feb. 1736–7, and was buried in the meeting-house at Frome. Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, among others, wrote eulogistic verses to her memory.
