be tempted to return them an answer.

"The love of learning and poetry made him not the less fit for
business, and nobody applied himself closer to it when it required
his attendance. The late Duke of Queensberry, when he was Secretary
of State, made him his secretary for public affairs; and when that
truly great man came to know him well, he was never so pleased as
when Mr. Rowe was in his company. After the duke's death, all
avenues were stopped to his preferment; and during the rest of that
reign he passed his time with the Muses and his books, and sometimes
the conversation of his friends. When he had just got to be easy in
his fortune, and was in a fair way to make it better, death swept
him away, and in him deprived the world of one of the best men, as
well as one of the best geniuses, of the age. He died like a
Christian and a philosopher, in charity with all mankind, and with
an absolute resignation to the will of God. He kept up his good-
humour to the last; and took leave of his wife and friends,
immediately before his last agony, with the same tranquillity of
mind, and the same indifference for life, as though he had been upon
taking but a short journey. He was twice married--first to a
daughter of Mr. Parsons, one of the auditors of the revenue; and
afterwards to a daughter of Mr. Devenish, of a good family in
Dorsetshire. By the first he had a son; and by the second a
daughter, married afterwards to Mr. Fane. He died 6th December,
1718, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and was buried on the 19th
of the same month in Westminster Abbey, in the aisle where many of
our English poets are interred, over against Chaucer, his body being
attended by a select number of his friends, and the dean and choir
officiating at the funeral."