ch facility, and seemed to flow from his imagination, as fast as from
his pen.

His father, who was a Serjeant at Law, designing him for his own
profession, took him from that school when he was about sixteen years of
age, and entered him a student in the Middle Temple, whereof himself
was a member, that he might have him under his immediate care and
instruction. Being capable of any part knowledge, to which he thought
proper to apply, he made very remarkable advances in the study of the
Law, and was not content to know it, as a collection of statutes, or
customs only, but as a system founded upon right reason, and calculated
for the good of mankind. Being afterwards called to the bar, he
promised as fair to make a figure in that profession, as any of his
cotemporaries, if the love of the Belles Lettres, and that of poetry in
particular, had not stopped him in his career. To him there appeared
more charms in Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschilus, than in all the
records of antiquity, and when he came to discern the beauties of
Shakespear and Milton, his soul was captivated beyond recovery, and he
began to think with contempt of all other excellences, when put in the
balance with the enchantments of poetry and genius. Mr. Rowe had the
best opportunities of rising to eminence in the Law, by means of the
patronage of Sir George Treby, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas,
who was fond of him to a very great degree, and had it in his power to
promote him; but being overcome by his propension to poetry, and his
first tragedy, called the Ambitious Step-mother, meeting with universal
applause, he laid aside all thoughts of the Law. The Ambitious
Step-mother was our author's first attempt in the drama, written by him
in the 25th year of his age, and dedicated to the earl of Jersey.
'The purity of the language (says Mr. Welwood) the justness of his
characters, the noble elevation of the sentiments, were all of them
admirably adapted to the plan of the play.'

The Ambitious Step-mother, being the first, is conducted with less
judgment than any other of Rowe's tragedies; it has an infinite deal of
fire in it, the business is precipitate, and the characters active, and
what is somewhat remarkable, the author never after wrote a play with so
much elevation. Critics have complained of the sameness of his poetry;
that he makes all his characters speak equally elegant, and has not
attended sufficiently to the manners. This uniformity