to London, he was made Master of the Horse to the Duchess of York. His reputation as a didactic writer and critic rests on his blank verse translation of Horace's Ars Poetica (1680) and his Essay on Translated Verse (1684). The essay contained the first definite enunciation of the principles of poetic diction, which were to be fully developed in the reign of Queen Anne. Roscommon, who was fastidious in his notions of dignified writing, was himself a very correct writer, and quite free from the indecencies of his contemporaries. Alexander Pope, who seems to have learnt something from his carefully balanced phrases and the regular cadence of his verse, says that "In all Charles's days, Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays"; in his An Essay on Criticism, when Pope lists poets he admires, beginning from the classical age, Roscommon is one of two British poets he includes (William Walsh is the other). Roscommon believed that a low code of morals was necessarily followed by a corresponding degradation in literature, and he insists that sincerity and sympathy with the subject in hand are essential qualities in the poet. This elevated conception of his art is in itself no small merit. He has, moreover, the distinction of having been the first critic to avow his admiration for Milton's Paradise Lost. Roscommon formed a small literary society that he hoped to develop into an academy with authority to formulate rules on language and style, but its influence only extended to a limited circle, although it included such men of distinction as John Dryden and George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, the scheme fell through after its promoter's death. Death, succession, and timeline Roscommon died on 18 January 1685 in his house at St James, Westminster and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The title passed to his uncle, Carey Dillon, 5th Earl of Roscommon (1627–1689), the "Colonel Dillon" of the Diary of Samuel Pepys. In 1746, on the death of James, the 8th earl, it passed to Robert Dillon (died 1770), a descendant of the first earl. His family became extinct in 1816, and in 1828 Michael James Robert Dillon, another descendant of the 1st Earl, established his right to the earldom before the House of Lords. When he died in May 1850, the title became extinct. Works Horace’s Art of Poetry (1680). Traitté touchant l'obéissance passive (1686). Roscommon's poems were collected in 1701,