He had formed a design to compile the lives of all the illustrious persons of antiquity, omitted by Plutarch; and for this purpose read the antient historians with great care.  This design he in part executed.  Eight lives were published since his decease, in octavo, by way of Supplement to that admired Biographer; in which though so young a guide, he strikes out a way like one well acquainted with the dark and intricate paths of antiquity.  The stile is perfectly easy, yet concise, and nervous:  The reflections just, and such as might be expected from a lover of truth and of mankind.

Besides these Lives, he had finished for the press, the Life of Thrasybulus, which being put into the hands of Sir Richard Steele, for his revisal, was unhappily lost, and could never since be recovered.

The famous Mr. Dacier, having translated Plutarch’s Lives into French, with Remarks Historical and Critical, the Abbe Bellenger added in 1734 a ninth tome to the other eight, consisting of the Life of Hannibal, and Mr. Rowe’s Lives made French by that learned Abbe:  In the Preface to which version, he transcribes from, the Preface to the English edition, the character of the author with visible approbation; and observes, that the Lives were written with taste; though being a posthumous work, the author had not put his last hand to it.

Such is the character of Mr. Rowe, the husband of this amiable lady; and when so accomplished a pair meet in conjugal bonds, what great expectations may not be formed upon them!  A friend of Mr. Rowe’s upon that occasion wrote the following beautiful Epigram,

  No more proud Gallia, bid the world revere
  Thy learned pair, Le Fevre and Dacier: 
  Britain may boast, this happy day unites,
  Two nobler minds, in Hymen’s sacred rites. 
  What these have sung, while all th’ inspiring nine,
  Exalt the beauties of the verse divine,
  Those (humble critics of th’ immortal strain,)
  Shall bound their fame to comment and explain.

Mr. Rowe being at Bath, in the year 1709, was introduced into the company of Miss Singer, who lived in a retirement not far from the city.  The idea he had conceived of her from report and her writings, charmed him; but when he had seen and conversed with her, he felt another kind of impression, and the esteem of her accomplishments was heightened into the rapture of a lover.  During the courtship, he wrote a poetical Epistle to a friend, who was a neighbour of Mrs. Singer, and acquainted with the family, in which were the following lines.

  Youth’s liveliest bloom, a never-fading grace,
  And more than beauty sparkles in her face. 
  How soon the willing heart, her empire feels? 
  Each look, each air, each melting action kills: 
  Yet the bright form creates no loose desires;
  At once she gives and purifies our fires,
  And passions chaste, as her own soul inspires. 
  Her soul, heav’n’s noblest workmanship design’d,
  To bless the ruined age, and succour lost mankind,
  To prop abandon’d virtue’s sinking cause,
  And snatch from vice its undeserv’d applause.