120 coaches-and-six at his funeral, and an epitaph in Latin was prepared; but as no money was forthcoming the proposed monument was not erected.
The earl's second wife, whom he married in November 1674, was Isabella, daughter of Matthew, second son of Sir Matthew Boynton, bart., of Barmston, Yorkshire (Chester, London Marriage Licences, p. 403). She afterwards married Thomas Carter, esq., of Robertstown, co. Meath, and died in September 1721. The earl had no children, and the title consequently devolved on his uncle.
His works are: 1. A translation in blank verse of Horace's ‘Art of Poetry,’ London, 1680, 4to, and again in 1684 and 1709. 2. ‘Essay on Translated Verse,’ London, 1684, 4to, 2nd edit. enlarged 1685, his principal production, to which were prefixed some encomiastic verses by Dryden. A Latin translation of the ‘Essay’ was made by Laurence Eusden, and is printed in the edition of Roscommon's poems which appeared in 1717, together with the poems of the Duke of Buckingham and Richard Duke. 3. Paraphrase on the 148th Psalm. 4. A translation of the sixth eclogue of Virgil and of two odes of Horace. 5. An ode on solitude. 6. ‘A Prospect of Death: a Pindarique Essay,’ London, 1704, fol. 7. Verses on Dryden's ‘Religio Laici.’ 8. The Prayer of Jeremiah paraphrased. 9. A Prologue spoken to the Duke of York at Edinburgh. 10. Translation of part of a scene of Guarini's ‘Pastor Fido.’ 11. Prologue to ‘Pompey,’ a tragedy, translated by Mrs. Catherine Philips from the French of Corneille. 12. Verses on the death of a lady's lapdog. 13. The Dream. 14. A translation of the ‘Dies Iræ.’ 15. Epilogue to ‘Alexander the Great’ when acted at Dublin. 16. ‘Ross's Ghost.’ 17. ‘The Ghost of the old House of Commons to the new one appointed to meet at Oxford.’ 18. ‘Traitté touchant l'obéissance passive,’ London [1685], 8vo. This French translation of Dr. Sherlock's essay was edited by Dr. Knightly Chetwood. Roscommon's poems appeared in a collected form at London in 1701, 1709, and 1719, and at Glasgow in 1753. They are also in various collections of the works of the British poets.
Dr. Johnson, in his ‘Life of Roscommon,’ says that ‘he improved taste, if he did not enlarge knowledge, and may be numbered among the benefactors to English literature.’ Pope has celebrated him as the only moral writer of the reign of Charles II:
Roscommon only boasts unspotted lays.
He was the first critic who publicly praised Milton's ‘Paradise Lost.’ With a noble encomium on that poem, and a rational recommendation of blank verse, he concludes his ‘Essay on Translated Verse,’ though this passage was not in the first edition. His portrait, painted by Carlo Maratti, is in the collection of Earl Spencer. It has been engraved by Clint and Harding.
[MS. Life by Dr. Knightly Chetwood (Baker's MSS. xxxvi. 27); Fenton's Observations on some of Waller's Poems, p. lxxv (appended to Waller's Works), ed. 1729; Biog. Brit. (Kippis); Johnson's Lives of the Poets (Cunningham), i. 199; Gent. Mag. May 1748 (another memoir by Dr. Johnson), and for December 1855, new ser. xliv. 603; Cibber's Lives of the Poets, ii. 344; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland (Archdall), iv. 165; Addit. MS. 5832, f. 224; Nichols's Select Collection of Poems, vi. 53; Luttrell's Hist. Relation of State Affairs, i. 301, 325; Kennett's Funeral Sermon on the Duke of Devonshire, p. 173; Dublin Univ. Mag. lxxxviii. 601; Cat. of MSS. in Univ. Lib. Cambridge, v. 428; Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors (Park), v. 199; Harding's Portraits to illustrate Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors (1803); Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 5th ed. iv. 229; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, i. 297; Hist. MSS. Commission, Rep. i. 70, iii. 429, iv. 551, 559, 560, vi. 773, vii. 125, 127, 782, 784, 789, 801, 803, 804, 807, 818, 826, viii. 501, 537, Append. pt. iii. p. 16, x. 346, Append. pt. v. pp. 49, 89, 94, xi. Append. pt. ii. p. 220.]
DILLON, Sir WILLLAM HENRY (1779–1857), admiral, son of Sir John Talbot Dillon [q. v.], by a daughter of Henry Collins, was born in Birmingham on 8 Aug. 1779. Entering the navy in May 1790, he served as a midshipman under Captain Gambier in the Defence, and was stunned by a splinter in the action of 1 June 1794. He was present in Lord Bridport's action off Ile de Groix on 23 June 1795, and at the reduction of St. Lucie in May 1796, when he carried a flag of truce to take possession of Pigeon Island. Having become an acting-lieutenant in the Glenmore (1798), he co-operated with the army at Wexford during the rebellion, where he succeeded in arresting the Irish chief Skallian. As senior-lieutenant of the Africaine, with a flag of truce from Lord Keith to the Dutch commodore, Valterbach, at Helvoetsluys, he was (20 July 1803) made, most unjustifiably, a prisoner, handed over to the French, and detained in captivity until September 1807. In the meantime (8 April 1805) he had been made a commander, and on obtaining his release he took the command of the sloop Childers, carrying only fourteen 12-pound carronades and sixty-five men, and in her on 14 March 1808, on the coast of Norway, after a long action, drove off a Danish
