He compiled very early Arabic-English and Persian-English dictionaries, and translated and printed the first English-language editions of several important Arabic and Persian works.
[7] Samuel Rousseau's brother James was also a printer, and in his later years oversaw the printing of the Votes and Proceedings of the House of Commons.
[13] Here, he contributed to a number of scholarly works on Middle-Eastern languages, including the expanded edition of John Richardson's Arabic and Persian Dictionary.
He commissioned the making of Persian type by Vincent Figgins[13][14] and set about translating and printing several classic works of Middle-Eastern literature.
[15] This was the first work to be printed in nastaliq script in England,[16] and was intended as a companion to Sir William Jones' Grammar of the Persian Language.
Rousseau's obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine said that "they have, however, proved generally successful to the publishers, as their objects were useful; and nothing ever appeared in them contrary to good morals, or the established religion and government".
[7] An obituary in Hone's Year Book reported that 'His researches distracted his attention from the "main chance;" he lost it too late in life to regain it; suffered much mental affliction under great privations; and perished in obscurity from want.
[5][4] In 2022, Taymaz Pour Mohammad of Northwestern University presented a paper entitled The Scent of Adab’s Rose: On the Olfactory Aesthetics of Samuel Rousseau's "The Flowers of the Persian Language" at the annual conference of the American Comparative Literature Association.