Broadcloth without and a warm heart within,
who also was ruined by the failure of a Liverpool bank. Her maternal grandfather, Dr. William Enfield, author of a “History of Liverpool” and of the well-known “Speaker,” a man distinguished for elegance of taste and sound literary judgment, was the last rector of the famous Warrington Academy, where he had as colleagues at one time or another, Joseph Priestley, the chemist; Taylor of Norwich; Aikin, the father of Mrs. Barbauld; John Reinhold Forster, the naturalist to one of Cook’s expeditions; and Gilbert Wakefield, the editor of “Lucretius.”
CHAPTER II
HENRY ENFIELD ROSCOE—BIRTH AND EDUCATION
Henry Roscoe brought his young wife to 10 Powis Place, Great Ormond Street, London, and here on January 7, 1833, his only son, Henry Enfield Roscoe, first saw the light. A daughter, Harriet, was born in 1836.
The young judge had little opportunity of making provision for his family, and on his death they were left with very straitened means. His widow moved with her children into a small cottage at Gateacre, and as she had considerable artistic gifts sought to add to her slender income by teaching water-colour painting at a girls’ school in the vicinity. She also possessed some of the literary power of her distinguished grandfather, and in 1868 published a “Life of Vittoria Colonna,” with admirable translations of the sonnets. She was a strong, vigorous character, devotedly attached to her son and proud of his success in life. Her Manchester friends used playfully to refer to her as “the Mother of Owens College,” and the allusion to her association with its fortunes gave her pleasure. She was always deeply interested in its progress and rejoiced in its success. She died at the age of eighty-seven, falling “like autumn fruit that mellowed long.”
Young Roscoe went for a few years to a preparatory school in the neighbourhood of his home. In 1842 his mother moved her small charges to Liverpool, when he was sent to the High School of the Liverpool Institute, among the earliest of the so-called “modern” schools. He remained here seven years, taking the usual English subjects—mathematics, French, a little Latin and less Greek, and some elementary physical science. The school was furnished with a chemical laboratory—a very unusual provision in those days—and in it he obtained his first lessons in chemical manipulation from William H. Balmain, the discoverer of “luminous paint” and of boron nitride. Balmain, who was one of the early contributors to the then newly founded Chemical Society, in his published account of the latter substance apologizes for his inability to state its exact composition, as he was unable to obtain a better balance than such as he could construct himself “of wood and paper”—a circumstance which throws some light upon the means of instruction in the laboratory which introduced Roscoe to the study of practical chemistry. He always had a grateful recollection of his first instructor, whom he described as a genial fellow, and a stimulating and original teacher. The boy also came under the influence of Hugo Reid—a noteworthy man, and of some reputation at the time as a writer and teacher of natural philosophy—and of W. B. Hodgson, an excellent teacher of English, who afterwards became Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh.
Years afterwards, when the “old boy” had become a person of some consequence in the world, he was invited to distribute the prizes at his school, and told his auditors, in the course of a short address, that he had come across one of his school reports, addressed to his mother, in which it was stated: “Roscoe is a nice boy, but he looks about him too much, and does not know his irregular verbs.” He added that he thought this early habit of looking about him, which had persistently clung to him through life, had possibly done more for him than the irregular verbs.