Although a diligent student of law, he continued to read the classics, and made the acquaintance with the language and literature of Italy which was to dominate his life.

Roscoe had the courage to denounce the trans-Atlantic slave trade in his native town, where, at that time, a significant amount of the wealth came from slavery.

He also succeeded in restoring to good order the affairs of a banking house in which his friend William Clark, then resident in Italy, was a partner.

[2] Around this time Roscoe was asked to investigate the claims of the blind girl Margaret M'Avoy, who was said to be able to read using her fingers, at the request of Sir Joseph Banks.

[2] Roscoe was also closely associated with the formation of the Liverpool Royal Institution in Colquitt Street, first as chairman of the General Committee and subsequently as its first President.

[9] Having now resigned commercial pursuits entirely, he found a pleasant task in the arrangement of the great library at Holkham Hall, the property of his friend Thomas Coke.

The Scitamineaen order (nowadays Zingiberales), almost exclusively tropical in origin, includes the canna lilies, arrowroot, ginger, and turmeric.

Posterity is not likely to endorse the verdict of Horace Walpole, who thought Roscoe the best of our historians, but his books on Lorenzo de' Medici and Pope Leo X remained important contributions to historical literature.

[2] He wrote a long poem published in two parts called The Wrongs of Africa (1787–1788), and entered into a controversy with an ex-Roman Catholic priest called Fr Raymond Harris, who tried to justify the slave trade through the Bible (and was generously paid for his efforts by Liverpool businessmen involved with the slave trade).

[2] Meanwhile, he had pursued his Italian studies, and had carried out research, which resulted in his Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, which appeared in 1796, and gained him a reputation among contemporary historians.

Angelo Fabroni, who had intended to translate his own Latin life of Lorenzo, abandoned the idea and persuaded Gaetano Mecherini to undertake an Italian version of Roscoe's work.

It was frequently reprinted, and the insertion of the Italian translation in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum did not prevent its circulation even in the Papal States.

The year 1824 was memorable for the death of his wife and the publication of his edition of the works of Alexander Pope, which involved him in a controversy with William Lisle Bowles.

The first collected edition of his Poetical Works was published in 1857, and is sadly incomplete, omitting, with other verses known to be from his pen, the Butterfly's Ball, a fantasy, which has charmed thousands of children since it appeared in 1807.