Talk:Nicholas Rowe (writer)

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on December 6, 2018 and December 6, 2023.

Untitled

Haha! - I'm a descendant of Nicholas Rowe. No fooling. Genealogy and all that. I have nothing to add however. --- Ben Rowe

Pope's Epitaph for Rowe

Did Alexander Pope write '

'Peace to the gentle Shade'

or

'Peace to thy gentle Shade'

The web gives sanction for either Linuxlad 23:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Later - the following article,

Pope's Epitaphs on Nicholas Rowe, Alfred Jackson, The Review of English Studies, Vol. 7, No. 25 (Jan., 1931), pp. 76-79 Says there are in fact two epitaphs, only one of which is definitely by Pope. The shorter one (8 lines) says 'thy', the one on Rowe's tomb says 'the' Linuxlad 20:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Age at death

Infobox and dates seem to suggest he was 44 years old, yet his tomb inscription says "45 years old", this doesn't appear to have been addressed anywhere. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:58, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@The Rambling Man: I can find no good modern secondary source on Rowe. Older secondary sources are not of sufficient scholarly standard (and do not in any case address this issue: Dr. Johnson, for example, takes the epitaph at face value and actually calculates an incorrect date of birth in 1793 from it!). And all the modern ternary sources (biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias) either do not cover the epitaph or they give it as is without addressing the discrepancy. There are yet some older secondary sources I can check, who might possibly address it, but I don't hold out much hope.

However, the explanation is very likely a typo on the part of the epitaph's author: it was most likely intended to say that Rowe died "in his 45th year" (as it does for his daughter). The dates of baptism and death appear well documented (I haven't checked the primary sources here, but the ternary sources give me confidence in the dates), so there would seem to be no real question that he was 44 when he died.

Absent sources that address the issue, I'm not sure how we can deal with it here apart from passing it over in silence. --Xover (talk) 14:17, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Xover thanks for getting back to me about this, I agree it looks impossible to resolve elegantly. Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]