Author: Rough, William
Biography:
ROUGH, William (1772-1838: ancestry.com)
The poet was born in London on 21 Aug. 1772 (not 1773) the son of William Rough and his wife, Mary Tytler (married, St Anne, Soho, 31 Dec. 1768). On 13 Sept. he was baptized at St James, Piccadilly. He is remembered in part as the friend of Robert Southey and of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and as the acquaintance of other notables, Charles Valentine Le Grice, Charles Lamb, Walter Savage Landor (qq.v), Lord Lyndhurst, Crabb Robinson, and the Rev. William Frend. As a poet, he was undistinguished. In a copy of his Lorenzino di Medici, and Other Poems, he wrote in 1809, “It … does not err from being outrageous or extravagant—but it, I fear[,] more than borders upon ‘chill and lifeless imbecility’ and this too in thought still more than in diction. … [I]n striving to be natural [I] out-simpled simplicity.” (Echoing Dr. Johnson on Addison and Chevy Chase, the Critical reviewer of Lorenzino di Medici, had written: “The coldness, the imbecility … of this poem, would discredit even the powers of a boarding-school miss.”) From Westminster School, he proceeded to Cambridge (BA 1796, MA 1799). Then, having attended Gray’s Inn in 1797, in 1801 he was called to the bar at Inner Temple. His friend Christopher Wordsworth officiated at his 26 June 1802 marriage to Harriet (1778-1820), by whom he had four children. She was the illegitimate daughter of John Wilkes (q.v.)—radical MP and founder of the North Briton—and his mistress, Amelia Arnold (1757-1802). While practicing on the Midland Circuit, in May 1808 he was called to the degree of Serjeant at Law. He struggled financially until in 1816 he was appointed president of the Court of Criminal and Civil Justice of the United Colony of Demerara and Essequibo, for which he drew a salary of £3,000. In 1821, the colony’s acting governor, John Murray, dismissed him for, allegedly, exceeding his authority. The Privy Council concluded that while his suspension was unjustified his conduct was indiscreet. He was unemployed until 1833 when Earl Bathurst appointed him puisne judge at Ceylon (Sri Lanka). In 1836, he was promoted chief justice of the Supreme Court there. In the following year, he was knighted. He died at Nuwara Eliya on 19 May 1838. (ancestry.com 9 Sept. 2024; ODNB 9 Sept. 2024; PROB 11/1375; A. H. Cash, John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty [2006], 392) JC