Author: Rose, William Stewart
Biography:
ROSE, William Stewart (1775-1843: ODNB)
A son of a prominent Pittitie politician, George Rose (1744-1818), and Theodora Duer Rose (1743-1834), he was born at his parents’ country estate, Cuffnells, Hampshire. His brother, George Henry Rose (1771-1855), became a notable MP and diplomat. Educated at a local school and, from 1783, at Winchester, in 1791 he went over to Eton. He matriculated at St John’s, Cambridge, in 1794; he took no degree. In 1796 he gained admission to Lincoln’s Inn and in the same year was elected MP for Christchurch. In subsequent years, he held several well-paying sinecure posts in the parliamentary administration. Politics held little interest for him; languages and continental literature were his main preoccupations. Commencing in 1803, he began a long acquaintance with Walter Scott. In ER (3:5, Oct. 1803, 109-36), Scott treated his verse translation of de Heberay’s French version of Amadis de Gaul with a gentle hand. His other major translations were of le Grand’s Partenopex de Blois, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and Casti’s Gil Animale Parlanti. The latter volume, which appeared in two slightly different editions, 1816 and 1819, influenced Byron’s adoption of ottava rima. With John Hookham Frere and John Herman Merivale (qq.v.), he helped introduce English readers to burlesque Italian poetry. John Murray published several of his works, including his two-volume Letters from the North of Italy. He contributed articles to Murray’s QR, notably a review of Ugo Foscolo’s Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis (8:16, Dec. 1812, 438-45). On 14 Jan. 1835 at Saint Nicholas church, Brighton, he married Marcella Maria Condlmer Zorai (1772-1862), a woman he first met at Venice during his 1814-17 Continental tour. They had no children. Having suffered a stroke in 1818, he auctioned his extensive library in 1820 and then largely retired from society. He died at Brighton on 30 Apr. 1843. (NLS, John Murray Archive; ODNB 7 Mar. 2023; ACAD 7 Mar. 2023; ancestry.com 7 Mar. 2023; C. Townsend, “Memoir”, in Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, trans. W. S. Rose, 2 vols. [1858]. W. Keach, Arbitrary Power: Romanticism, Language, Politics [2004]. British Romanticism and Italian Literature: Translating, Reviewing, Rewriting, ed. L. Bandiera [2005]) JC