EDWIN -WILKINS-FI ELD H7\MPSTE7VD U UUM X- & Czfcx- ^f -^ X xS. <23. >^r u^,^ ^ LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS, BY HIS NEPHEW SAMUEL SHARPE. THE following short notice is by no means offered to the reader as a complete Life of my uncle, Samuel Rogers, the poet. I neither feel equal to the task of -writing such, nor called upon to undertake it. A near relation is not likely to possess, or wish to possess, the required impartiality ; but these few pages may be useful as a preface to his published works. In the life of an author we wish to be told, in the first place, the order in which he wrote his several works, that we may be enabled to study in them the growth of his mind and the progress of his thoughts. We wish also to be told the manner in which he wrote them, whether carefully, or hastily ; whether by the help of observation in the world, or of study in books. And we further wish to be told the particulars of his family, of his childhood, and of his education, and the other out- ward circumstances which helped to form his mind, and V1U SOME PARTICULARS OP THE guide his tastes, and which were some of the causes that produced the writings that we admire. This information I have endeavoured to supply, so far as my knowledge reaches ; but I have not ventured further. Mr. Rogers was not only a poet. His society was as much valued as his writings. He was for the last fifty years of his life the possessor of a choice collection of pictures and antiquities, an acknowledged judge in matters of art, the friend of all authors and artists, and the patron of many who needed his help. In these characters, and for his latter years, the materials for his Life are open to all in numerous published works ; and they may perhaps be made use of in due time by some who can perform the task better than I can hope to do. For though I am now one of his nearest relations, and for many years enjoyed his full and intimate confidence as his partner in business, yet my opportunities of listening to his conversation have not been more frequent than those of many others. I never lived in the same house with him ; my engagements in business and at home did not allow me to visit him so often as he kindly wished ; and I was separated from him by a wide difference in our ages. HIGHBURY PLACE. July, 1859. IN the year 1763, Thomas Rogers the elder, the Poet's grandfather, was a wealthy glass manufacturer at Stourbridge in Worcestershire, and lived at a large LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. IX house called the Hill, near that town. His wife Martha, a daughter of Richard Knight of Downton, was dead. His family at the Hill consisted of himself and five unmarried daughters. Without giving up his business at Stourbridge he had entered into partnership with Daniel Radford, who was a large warehouseman in Cheapside ; and his only son, Thomas Rogers the younger, had left Worcestershire to join this London partnership. This led to an intimacy with Daniel Radford's only child, Mary, whom Thomas Rogers the younger married in the year 1760. He thereupon became an inmate in Daniel Radford's family; and they lived together in Daniel Radford's house in Newington Green, Middlesex, till the death of the latter in 1767. The house stands on the Southgate road, on the west side of the green, and is the house nearest to London on that side. Here Samuel Rogers was born on the 30th of July, 1763. The last hundred years have made fewer changes in Newington Green than in most other spots in the neighbourhood of London. Modern stucco has made the old red-brick house white, as indeed the Poet took the liberty of describing it. It still has a row of elms in front of it, and a large field on the side, though the road into which the gate opens from the field no longer deserves the name of the ' Green Lanes,' by which it was once known. In other respects it is much the same as when he claimed to ' Point out the Green Lane rough with fern and flowers ; ' The sheltered gate that opens to my field, ' And the white front, thro' mingling elms revealed.' 6 Daniel Radford, the Poet's grandfather on his mother's side, by careful attention to business, had been the maker of his own fortune. He was the son of Samuel Radford, a linendraper in Chester, and of Eleanor, a daughter of the Rev. Philip Henry, once incumbent of Worthenbury, in Flintshire, but after- wards one of that noble band of two thousand clergy- men, who, on the passing of the Act of Uniformity in the beginning of Charles the Second's reign, left their churches and livings for conscience sake, arid became the founders of the sect of English Presbyterians. Daniel and his three sisters were early left as orphans, and they very much fell to the care of their uncle, the Rev. Matthew Henry, the eminent dissenting minister, and author of the Exposition of the Bible. Daniel Radford left Chester, and established himself in business in London, about the same time that his uncle, Matthew Henry, left the Presbyterian congregation at Chester to take charge of that at Hackney. Daniel Radford, about the year 1731, married Mary Harris of Newington Green, whose father, Samuel Harris, was an East India merchant, and had married a daughter of Dr. Coxe, physician to Queen Mary. This marriage probably led to Daniel Radford's settling at Newington Green, as his daughter Mary's marriage was afterwards the cause of Thomas Rogers the younger's settling there. Thomas Rogers the younger, soon after his marriage with Mary Radford, formed a new partnership with two gentlemen of the name of Welch, as bankers, first in Cornhill, and afterwards in Freeman's Court, Cornhill. LIFE OP SAMUEL ROGERS. XI Both the houses have since been pulled down to make way for Exchange Buildings. Thomas Rogers the younger was, on his mother's side, cousin to Richard Payne Knight, the well known \vriter on Art and collector of Greek antiquities, and to Andrew Knight the writer on Horticulture ; while his wife, Mary Radford, was cousin to William Coxe, the traveller and historian, and to Peter Coxe, the auctioneer, who had the honoxir of selling that portion of the Orleans Gallery of Pictures which its illustrious importers disposed of in London. These two literary and active-minded families may have had some share in moulding the character of the family in Newington Green. But we do not inherit our tastes and opinions from all our forefathers in an equal degree ; and the opinions most firmly cherished in the house on Newington Green were those which came down to them from the teacher of religion, who had felt called upon to leave his pulpit and throw up his income for conscience sake, and to change his home under the cruel enactments of the Five Mile Act. These opinions were an earnest piety, a strict attention to religious observances, accompanied with a freedom of inquiry in matters of religion, and a rejection of all creeds and articles of faith as fetters upon the mind and snares to the conscience. The Rev. Philip Henry's practice of keeping a religious journal to remind him of his short- comings, and to encourage him in his good resolutions, was imitated by his daughter Eleanor Radford, by his grandson Daniel Radford, and by his great grand- daughter Mary Rogers ; and when her sons were of a Xll SOME PARTICULARS OF THE suitable age, Samuel or one of his brothers in turn read prayers to the family every morning and evening, from forms of prayer prepared by Dr. Richard Price. The Poet mentions his Dissenting parentage with just pride in the following lines : ' What though his ancestors, early or late, 1 Were not ennobled by the breath of kings ; ' Yet in his veins was running at his birth ' The blood of those most eminent of old 'For wisdom, virtue, those who could renounce ' The things of this world for their conscience-sake, ' And die like blessed martyrs.' The elder Mr. Rogers at the Hill in Worcestershire, had been a strong Tory ; but as Thomas Rogers the younger became after his marriage a Dissenter in religion, so he was naturally a firm Whig in politics. His children were brought up to watch with interest the Dissenters' unsuccessful struggles in Parliament for the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and to point to the new Mansion House in the City, as built by fines levied upon the Dissenters, who were chosen to the office of Sheriff, one after another, to the number of forty-five, and paid <400 a-piece, to escape taking the Church Sacrament on serving. Samuel was the third son ; and when the American revolution began with riots in Boston, in 1774, he was eleven years old. He then received a lesson which he never forgot, when his father one night after reading the Bible to his family, closed the book and explained to his children the cause of the rebellion, adding, that our nation was in the wrong, and that it LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. xili was not right to wish the Americans should be con- quered. He remembered also the Recorder of London in the following year, putting on mourning for the battle of Lexington, and Granville Sharp giving up, or refusing an office in the Tower, because he did not think it right to ship war-like stores against the Colonists. He attended public worship with his father's family in the old Presbyterian Meeting House, on Newington Green, where Dr. Joseph Towers preached in the morning, and Dr. Richard Price in the afternoon, where his grandfather Radford, and his great-grand- father Hams, had attended before him. He sat in the south-east corner of the chapel, in the pew facing and furthest from the minister on his left-hand side. The chapel is not without other literary claims to notice. In the next pew to him on the east side, sat a young lady, afterwards eminent in letters, Mary Wollstonecraft ; Daniel Defoe had attended worship there a century earlier ; and a few years after Mr. Rogers had left Newington Green, Mrs. Barbauld was a member of the congregation, while her husband occupied the pulpit. Samuel's first school was at Hackney, under a Mr. Cockburn, and perhaps afterwards under a Mr. Pick- burn, who kept a school a few years later in the same village. At the first Hackney school in 1773, he became acquainted with William Maltby, a boy two years younger than himseif, who was afterwards Librarian to the London Institution. As boys and afterwards as men they were alike in their taste for XIV SOME PARTICULARS OF THE poetry and love of letters ; arid they encouraged one another in their studies and aim after improvement. The friendship then begun, continued unbroken for eighty years ; it was founded on mutual respect, and on similarity of tastes ; and when William Maltby died in 1854, Samuel Rogers set up a tablet to his memory in Norwood Cemetery. When too old for the school at Hackney, Samuel studied for a short time under Mr. Burgh, the author of a work on education, self improvement and a wise aim in life, which he entitled a Treatise" on the Dignity of Human Nature : the author also of two volumes of Political Disquisitions. Mr. Burgh kept a school at the south-east corner of Newington Green ; but when ill health led him to give it up, he removed to Colebrook Row, Islington. There Samuel and his brothers went every day to read with him as their private tutor, and with very great advantage to them- selves. Mr. Burgh was a man of an enlarged mind, of great reading, and good observation. His manner of teaching was thoroughly agreeable to his pupils ; and for the excellence of the matter we may take the evidence of his printed works. He had a high aim in his views of education. He did not limit his pupils' studies to languages and mathematics. He did not set them to write essays or verses in Latin, nor perhaps give them a very exact knowledge of the dead lan- guages. But he taught them to perceive the beauties of the great authors that they were studying, and to admire excellence as well in conduct as in writing. He had strong opinions in politics. He wrote in favour of LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. XV the liberty of the press at a time when it was very much shackled by prosecutions, and in favour of a Reform in Parliament, when members were too often returned by close boroughs and by bribery ; and he thought the American Colonies had not been treated with justice, when the nation was rushing into the American war. Such was the very able man under whom Samuel Rogers finished his school studies, and who sent him forth at the age of sixteen or seventeen with a knowledge that his education was thenceforth to be carried on by himself. In the Treatise of the tutor, we find thoughts which we again meet with in the early writings of the pupil. While living as a boy at Newington Green, Samuel and his brothers and sisters were taken from time to time to pay a visit to their grandfather and aunts at the Hill near Stourbridge. And these two houses, his grandfather's near Stourbridge, and his father's on Newington Green, most likely together supplied him with the scenery that his Poem on the ' Pleasures of Memory' opens with. The house at the Hill, from which the aunts removed soon after their father's death, may have been 1 Yon old mansion frowning thro' the trees ; ' and have given him ' The garden's desert paths,' and ' That hall where once, in antiquated slate, ' The chair of justice held the grave debate.' Xvi SOME PARTICULARS OF THE On the other hand, ' The village green ' may have been that in front of his father's house where he was within the sound of Mr. Burgh's school- bell, which he describes as ' Quickening my truant feet across the lawn.' The Hill is in the parish of Old Swinford ; and there in the churchyard are the tombstones of the Rogers family. There he had thoughtfully traced the name of Rogers ' On yon grey stone, that fronts the chancel-door, ' Worn smooth by busy feet now seen no more.' This churchyard the Poet had in his mind when he said ' Here alone ' I search the record of each mouldering stone.' The visits to the Hill also sometimes led him to the Leasowes, lately the picturesque seat of the Poet Shenstone, who had been intimate with his father. At that time Shenstone' s artificial additions to the natural beauties of the place had not fallen to decay ; and the visits to Worcestershire gave the following couplet to the ' Pleasures of Memory,' ' Thus, thro' the gloom of Shenstone's fairy -grove ' Maria's urn still breathes the voice of love.' In 1776, his excellent mother died. Through her the dissenting principles and strong feelings of religion LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. XV11 had been brought into the family. In her last illness she called her children round her, and told them that it mattered little what happened to them when she was gone, provided they were good. She left eight, of whom one v died in a few months; and the others, four sons amd three daughters, all grew up to do honour to the good principles in which they were educated. On their mother's death they fell to the care of her friend and cousin, Mary Mitchell, who had lived with her from childhood, and continued with her on her marriage, and who now took the manage- ment of Thomas Rogers' s house at Newington Green. The eldest son Daniel, was sent to Cambridge, and intended for a barrister ; the second, Thomas, was taken as a clerk into the banking-house ; and Samuel, on leaving school, wished to be sent to the Dissenting College at Wamngton, and to be a Dissenting Minister. He was led to this choice by his admiration of Dr. Price, who lived next door but one to his father, and preached at the Meeting House on the Green. But his father wished for him in his business, and took him as a clerk to Cornhill with his brother Thomas. Samuel's health at this time was not good ; he was troubled with weak eyes. Hence he was sent every summer to spend rather a long holiday at the sea-side, sometimes at Margate, and sometimes at Brighton, for the benefit of sea-bathing. These visits gave him time for reading. Goldsmith's poems were among those upon which he formed his taste. Johnson's writings were always in his hands. Gray's poems received his warm admiration. He had not gained much classical XVUl SOME PARTICULARS OF THE knowledge at school. He had a moderate acquaint- ance with Latin and French, with little or none of Greek or Mathematics. But he had read most of the English authors ; he had gained an early taste for Poetry, and for the beauties of style in Prose writing ; and it was not long before he made his first attempts at authorship. In 1780 his father was engaged in the political whirl of a contested election at Coventry, and afterwards in Parliament to retain his seat on a petition against his return. Samuel was then on his duties as a clerk in the banking-house ; but he was at the same time putting down some of his thoughts upon paper, and making up his mind to offer them to a publisher. In the beginning of 1781, when eighteen years old, in admi- ration of Johnson's Rambler, he sent a short literary essay to the Gentleman's Magazine. It was entitled The Scribbler, and printed with his initials S. R. at foot. It was followed in the same year by seven others. They had no great merit, but they mark the early date of his ambition to be an author. They mark also that he had already learned the highest use of writing, that it was to bring about a love of goodness. 'A man may devote his whole life,' says the Scribbler, ' to the attainment of knowledge, he ' may read all the books that have ever been written, ' study all the systems that have ever been formed ; ' yet all his reading and all his study will amount to ' no more than this that Virtue alone is productive ' of true felicity.' And he closes the series with these words : ' A man's happiness does not depend on his LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. XIX ' situation ; it depends on himself ; and he who has ' reduced his passions to obedience may fear no reverse ' of fortune ; prosperity cannot intoxicate, adversity ' cannot depress him ; he resembles the oak that con- ' tinues firm and erect, whether the sun shines or the ' storm batters.' He looked forward every month to the day of these papers appearing, with boyish eager- ness. As the Magazine reached him in the morning, it was brought into his bedroom before he was out of bed ; and month by month, as he cut its wet pages and found that the publisher had decided that his essay was deserving of publication, he was more and more fixed in his purpose to be an author. His enthusiasm for literature and his respect for authors were such that he wished to call upon Dr. Johnson, who was then an old man, and at the height of his reputation. Accordingly he and his friend William Maltby entered Bolt Court, Fleet Street, for that purpose. One of them had his hand upon the great man's knocker. But their courage failed them, and the young admirers of literary genius returned home without venturing to ask for an interview. Dr. Johnson died in 1785. In 1786 Mr. Rogers printed his first volume of poetry, entitled 'An Ode to Superstition, with some other Poems.' The other poems were- ' To a Lady on the Death of her Lover,' ' The Sailor,' ' A Sketch of the Alps at Daybreak,' and ' A Wish.' In the Ode the powers and evils of Superstition are pointed out calmly and philosophically. The examples are all drawn from distant lands or bygone times. The Poet only hints XX SOME PARTICULARS OF THE at the intolerance of his own day, when he adds at the close his hope for the future, and his belief that Reason will at last triumph over the rack and wheel of her old enemy : ' Canst thou, with all thy terrors crowned, ' Hope to obscure that latent spark, ' Destined to shine when suns are dark ?' Truth will at last give us the blessings of piety and peace : 'Her touch unlocks the day-spring from above, ' And lo ! it visits man with gleams of light and love. He had written other verses before these, but he did not think them good enough to be made public. This small volume he published without his name, from a natural doubt whether it would be favourably received. The longer Poem, the Ode, would be put in comparison with those of Collins and Gray. But his fears were groundless. His poems were at once noticed with praise in the Monthly Review ; he had no further anxiety about their fate, and he owned himself the author among his literary friends. The Critic begins : ' In these pieces we perceive the hand of an able ' master ;' and adds : ' He has exhibited the striking ' historical facts with the fire and energy proper to ' Lyric poetry / and ' The rest of the pieces have the ' same character of chaste and classical elegance.' Such praise was most encouraging and most useful to a young author in his twenty-third year. He did not know the writer of the Review, nor was he known to LIFE OP SAMUEL ROGERS. XXI the writer. But he afterwards learnt that it was Dr. Enfield who had held out the helping hand to his little volume ; and fifty years later he had the pleasure of hearing from Mrs. Kinder, Dr. Enfield's daughter, the manner in which the admiring critic read the Ode to his family. In 1788 his brother Thomas died. Thomas was eighteen months older than himself. They were daily companions both at home and in the Banking-house, where they were in partnership with Mr. Welch and their father, and they dined every day together at the table of Mr. Olding, who lived over the business. Their elder brother, Daniel, had left home for Cam- bridge and Lincoln's Inn; their younger brother, Henry, was a boy at school. Hence the death of Thomas made a great change in the daily life of Samuel the survivor, and he became the friend and adviser upon whom the father relied for help in all matters of business. He thus speaks of Thomas's death, and describes his character in the ' Pleasures of Memory ' : ' Oh thou ! with whom my heart was wont to share ' From reason's dawn each pleasure and each care ; ' With whom, alas ! I fondly hoped to know ' The humble walks of happiness below ; ' I thy blessed nature now unites above 'An angel's pity with a brother's love, ' Still o'er my life preserve thy mild controul, ' Correct my views, and elevate my soul ; ' Grant me thy peace and purity of mind, ' Devout yet cheerful, active yet resigned ; 1 Grant me like thee, whose heart knew no disguise, ' Whose blameless wishes never aimed to rise, XXil SOME PARTICULARS OF THE ' To meet the changes Time and Chance present, 'With modest dignity and calm content. ' When thy last breath, ere Nature sunk to rest, ' Thy meek submission to thy God expressed ; 'When thy last look, ere thought and feeling fled, 'A mingled gleam of hope and triumph shed ; ' What to thy soul its glad assurance gave, ' Its hope in death, its triumph o'er the grave ? ' The sweet Remembrance of unblemished youth, ' The still inspiring voice of Innocence and Truth ! ' The publication of his little volume of poems, the favourable way in which it was received in the world, and his marked literary ambition, gained him respect with his family, and made him important in his father's eyes. He seized every opportunity of becoming ac- quainted with men of letters; and in this wish his father was glad to help him. His literary friends at this time were chiefly among the Presbyterians ; such as his next-door neighbour, Dr. Price, whose simple prose style gained his early admiration, and Dr. Towers, who succeeded Dr. Price as preacher on the Green, whose conversation was always on literature. With Mrs. Barbauld, who was then living at Hampstead, he became acquainted by sending her a copy of his Ode to Superstition. The establishment of the Dissenting College at Hackney, of which Mr. Thomas Rogers was chairman, brought Dr. Kippis, who was one of the tutors there, as a visitor to the Green. But Edinburgh was now the chief seat, if not of literature, at least of literary society ; society in London was too much en- gaged in politics; and in 1789 he made a visit to Scotland. He travelled on horseback, with a boy LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. 2X111 behind him on a second horse. At Edinburgh, by the help of letters from Dr. Kippis, he became acquainted with Dr. Robertson, the historian ; with Mr. Mackenzie, the author of The Man of Feeling; and with Mr. Adam Smith, the author of The Wealth of Nations. He met in company Dr. Black, the chemist, and Play- fair, the mathematician. He heard Dr. Blair and Dr. Robertson preach. At Edinburgh also he made ac- quaintance with Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Piozzi, who was there with her husband and younger daugh- ters. But in after years, when looking back upon this visit to Scotland, Mr. Rogers hardly thought with more pleasure of seeing these men of literary eminence, than with regret that there was one that he did not see. Robert Burns had already published the best of his poems ; but so little were they then thought of, that our traveller, though asking advice from his Edinburgh friends as to his future route, was never told to call upon the author of the Cotter's Saturday Night. Burns was driven by neglect to become an officer of the Excise in the very year that Mr. Rogers, with whom poetry was the uppermost thought in his mind, was asking to be introduced to the literary men of Scotland. The political hopes and fears of the nation were at this time raised to the highest pitch by what was going forward in Paris. The French revolution had begun : the many, rising against the tyranny of the government and the nobles, had broken their chains, but had not yet run into such excesses as to alarm the friends of liberty in England. The Bastille had been taken by the mob. XXIV SOME PARTICULARS OP THE The king had surrendered his unlimited power after the massacre of his Swiss guards at Versailles, and had been brought to Paris almost a prisoner. Hereditary titles had been abolished, and a new constitution had been proclaimed. The English Tories were frightened, lest the revolutionary spirit should spread to England ; while the friends of reform gained courage, and thought that it was then the time to get many abuses and corruptions removed from our constitution. The Dis- senters took the side of hope ; and Dr. Price, in his Discourse on the Love of our Country, congratulated his hearers on the prospect of an improvement in human affairs, when the dominion of kings and priests would give way to the dominion of laws and conscience. Burke, on the side of the king, had pub- lished his Reflections on the French Revolution, and Paine, on the side of the people, his Rights of Man. Mr. Rogers felt warmly with the Whigs and Dissenters ; and in January, 1791, he made a short visit to Paris, led by his wish to witness a great nation's first steps in the path of freedom, after it had been enchained for so many generations. The Church property had been seized by the State ; and the priests were the object alike of hatred and of ridicule. At Amiens he was not able to hear mass in the cathedral, as the chapels were sealed up till the priests had taken the civic oath. Some of the French, to whom he had letters of introduction, were already alarmed at the excesses which threatened to follow upon the removal of the old restraints. But Mr. Rogers saw more reason to hope than to fear. He was delighted, he wrote home, LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. XXV ' to observe so many thousands beating, as it were, ' with one pulse in the cause of liberty and their ' countiy, and crowding every public walk to speak ' openly those noble sentiments which before they ' hardly dared to think of.' During this short visit, and in the midst of this political excitement, he took only a hasty view of the Orleans Gallery of pictures, which a few years later were brought to England. He had not as yet had his attention much turned to works of art ; though, in- deed, only the month before he started for Paris, he had heard Sir Joshua Keynolds deliver his last lecture in the Royal Academy, and heard Burke compliment him, when he sat down, with the words of Milton : ' The angel ended, and in Adam's ear ' So charming left his voice, that he a while ' Thought him still speaking, still stood fix'd to hear.' In the beginning of the next year, 1792, Mr. Rogers published his 'Pleasures of Memory.' He had been busy upon this poem for six years ; but he thought it safest not to put his name to it, and he described it as by the author of the ' Ode to Superstition.' It was at once most favourably received and universally admired. The Monthly Review, which was still the chief organ of literary praise and blame, praised it highly, saying, that ' correctness of thought, delicacy ' of sentiment, variety of imagery, and harmony of ' versification are the characters which distinguish this ' beautiful poem in a degree that cannot fail to ensure ' its success.' The poem indeed was at once most d XXVI SOME PARTICULARS OF THE successful, and has ever since continued most popular. No secret was made of who was the author. He was acknowledged to be a true poet, and he held his rank unquestioned when, in the next half century, men arose better than any that bore the name of poet when he began to publish. It was a favourable moment for a young candidate for public notice. Poetry was then at a very low ebb ; Mason, Joseph Wharton, Win. Whitehead, Cambridge, Beattie, Cowper, and Hayley, were the then living poets ; Crabbe indeed had begun to write, but his poems had not yet made him known. Of these no one but Cowper could bear any comparison with the author of ' Pleasures of Memory.' The sale of this new poem was most rapid. A second, third, and fourth edition, in various-sized volumes were published before the end of the next year, 1793. To the principal poem in the volume were added two shorter poems, the beautiful lines ' On a Tear,' and 'An Italian Song.' He also added to this volume the ' Ode to Superstition,' and the other contents of the former volume ; except in- deed that he omitted the lines 'To a Lady on the death of her Lover,' which he thought not good enough to be joined with his later and better works. In 1793 his father died; and it was during the anxiety of his last illness that Mr. Rogers wrote the lines ' In a Sick Chamber,' beginning, ' There, in that bed so closely curtained round, 'Worn to a shade, and wan with slow decay, 'A father sleeps !' LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. XXVli After the death of his father Mr. Rogers took chambers in Paper Buildings, in the Temple, and in part left the house at Newington Green to his younger brother Henry and his sisters. He was then thirty years of age, and master of a large fortune ; and by intro- ducing his brother Henry two years afterwards into the banking-house to manage it for him, he soon became master also of ample leisure for literature and society. He continued in the same business till his death, sixty years later ; but he always left the management of it to his several partners who one after the other joined him in the firm during that long period. In 1795, having become acquainted with Mrs. Siddons, he wrote for her an Epilogue to be spoken on her benefit-night after a tragedy. It playfully describes the life of a fashionable lady, in the style of Shake- spear's Seven Ages of Man. Mrs. Siddons was much pleased with it, but took the liberty, when she spoke it, of curtailing it and a little altering it, as she said for stage effect. The marriage of his sister Maria in 1795 was not without some influence on Mr. Rogers' s tastes. Sutton Sharpe, his new brother-in-law, though brought up to trade and always engaged in business, was par- ticularly fond of the fine arts. He had when young drawn from the antique and from the life in the Royal Academy, and was intimate with Stothard, Flaxman, Shee, Opie, Fuseli, Bewick, Holloway, and other artists. To these artists and in a great measure to these tastes he introduced Mr. Rogers ; and Mr. Rogers then ornamented his rooms with a number of XXV111 SOME PARTICULARS OF THE casts and drawings from the best ancient statues and with engravings from Raphael's pictures in the Vatican. His love of art also now showed itself in his works ; and the volume of his poems was ornamented with engravings after drawings by Westall and Stothard, to both of which artists his patronage was most kind and iiseful. A few years before this time he had become acquainted with Richard Sharp to whom he was introduced by his friend William Maltby. Richard Sharp was a man of industry and ambition, fond of reading, of great memory and sound judgment, a good critic, and a valuable friend to a young author. In later life he became a wealthy West India merchant, and a Member of Parliament. His society was much courted, and he often went by the name of Conversation Sharp. While Samuel Rogers was living at Newington Green, his friend Conversation Sharp was mixing in literary and fashionable circles at the West End of London, and recommending him to follow in the same path. This circumstance gave rise to the ' Epistle to a Friend.' In the same spirit Horace had before addressed a poem to his city friend Fuscus, and Petrarch a sonnet to Colonna. His friend Dr. Aikin had also just translated the Epistle of Frascatorius to Turrianus, in praise of a country life for a man of letters. To this latter Mr. Rogers's ' Epistle ' is most allied. He published it in 1798. It is one of the most pleasing of his poems. In it he explains the principles of true taste, as being founded on simplicity, and as bringing about great effects by small means. It is a picture of his mind LIFE OP SAMUEL ROGERS. at the age of thirty-five, as the former poem, the ' Pleasures of Memory,' shows his mind at the age of twenty-nine. The ' Epistle to a Friend ' describes his views of life and his feelings on art, on literature, and on society, as one who valued cheap pleasures, who had lived out of town, and was separated thereby from London's round of gaiety and glitter. But it shows some change in his habits and tastes since he published the ' Pleasures of Memory.' In that earlier poem the Portrait is almost the only work of art spoken of. It was almost the only one known in his father's house. In this later poem, on the other hand, we find that he had gained a knowledge and love of art of the highest class, and understood the beauties of Greek sculpture and Italian painting. But he cultivated art as yet only as a student and with economy. He had not begun to form his own valuable collection ; and the works therein recommended to our purchase are not pictures and marbles, but copies from the antique in plaster and sulphur, and engravings after the Italian painters. He had not then taken a house in St. James's 'Amid the buzz of crowds, the whirl of wheels,' and ornamented with original pictures and costly ancient vases and marbles. But his tastes were changing in favour of a town life ; and in the same year in which he published this ' Epistle ' with its apology for a literary life in the country, he sold the house at Newington Green and for the future lived in London. While his father lived, Mr. Rogers' s friends had been as much chosen for their politics as for their literature. In the year 1792, when a society was formed for obtaining a reform in Parliament, under the name of the Friends of the People, Mr. Rogers and his father both belonged to it, together with his brother-in-law, Mr. John Towgood, and they signed the address to the nation which was then put forth by Charles Grey, James Mackintosh, Samuel Whitbread, Philip Francis, Thomas Erskine, R. B. Sheridan, and others, who all thought that the way to save our constitution was to reform its abuses, and that a violent revolution, like that in France, was more likely to be brought on than avoided by the obstinacy of the Tories. Among his poli- tical friends were Priestley, the theological writer and chemist ; and Gilbert Wakefield, the classical scholar ; and Home Tooke, who wrote on language ; and W. Stone, at whose house in Hackney he met Charles Fox ; and Erskine, the barrister who defended Stone and Tooke on their trials for treason. Dr. Priestley paid him a visit at Newington Green, when on his way to America, after his house at Birmingham had been burnt down by the Tory mob. Home Tooke's more violent politics did not frighten him ; and he felt warmly for him when in 1794 he was carried prisoner to the Tower ' thro' that gate misnamed, thro' which before, ' Went Sidney, Russell, Raleigh, Cranraer, More, ' Or into twilight within walls of stone, ' Then to the place of trial.' There Mr. Rogers was present as a spectator; and LIFE OP SAMUEL KOGERS. XXXI with eveiy friend of liberty he rejoiced heartily at his acquittal. He often visited Home Tooke at his house at Wimbledon, where the old man, while digging in his garden, would talk about the peculiarities of language as described in his ' Diversions of Purley,' and about the political changes then hoped for and demanded by the reformers. Of all the able men whom Mr. Rogers had the good fortune to know, he thought Home Tooke in conversation the most able. His wish he tells us in the following lines : ' When He, who best interprets to mankind 'The "Winged Messengers" from mind to mind, ' Leans on his spade, and, playful as profound, ' His genius sheds its evening-sunshine round, ' Be miue to listen.' In return for the compliment of these verses Home Tooke afterwards gave him his copy of Chaucer's Works in black letter, full of manuscript notes, and with an account of his being arrested and taken to the Tower written in the margin. In 1796, Mr. Rogers was summoned before the Privy Council, and afterwards as a witness in the Court of King's Bench, on the trial of Stone for treason, in consequence of a few words that passed between them in Cheapside. He was called against the prisoner, but his evidence told in his favour ; for it was justly argued that Stone's doings or designs could not be very trea- sonable if he stopped the first friend he met in the street to talk about them. xxxii SOME PARTICULARS OF THE Fox he often visited in the country, where he describes him 1 at St. Anne's so soon of care beguiled, ' Playful, sincere, and artless as a child ! ' How oft from grove to grove, from seat to seat, ' With thee conversing in thy loved retreat, ' I saw the sun go down ! Ah, then 't -was thine ' Ne'er to forget some volume half divine, 'Shakspeare's or Dryden's, thro' the chequered shade ' Borne in thy hand behind thee as we strayed ; ' And when we sate (and many a halt we made) ' To read there with a fervour all thy own, ' And in thy grand and melancholy tone, ' Some splendid passage not to thee unknown, ' Fit theme for long discourse ' With Grattan he became acquainted on a visit to Tonbridge Wells, where took place the walks with him under the trees on Bishop's Down, that he has described in his poem : 'A walk in Spring Grattan, like those with thee ' By the heath-side (who had not envied me ?) ' When the sweet limes, so full of bees in June, ' Led us to meet beneath their boughs at noon ; 'And thou didst say which of the Great and Wise, ' Could they but hear and at thy bidding rise, 1 Thou wouldst call up and question.' In his ' Epistle to a Friend ' Mr. Rogers describes his feelings at this period of his life, the value which he set upon the society of men rich in knowledge and in the powers of conversation, and at the same time his own fixed purpose to gain a rank for himself and to make himself both worthy and thought worthy to associate with them, LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGEES. XXX111 ' pleased, yet not elate, ' Ever too modest or too proud to rate 'Myself by my companions ; self-compelled ' To earn the station that in life I held.' After an hour or two spent in the company of these able and distinguished men, Mr. Rogers on his return home often noted down in his journal those opinions and remarks which he had heard that were best worth remembering. In this way he left behind him a few pages, chosen out of many, of his conversations with Home Tooke, Erskine, Fox, and Grattan, to which he after- wards added some others. In after-life he used often to read these notes aloud to his friends ; and they have since his death been published by my brother William. His circle of acquaintance was much enlarged since he fixed his abode wholly in London. His society was eagerly sought for by ladies of fashion as well as by men of letters. His father when young and living in Worcestershire had mixed with the men of rank in his own neighbourhood. He had been intimate with the Earl of Stamford and Warrington, and that excellent man the first Lord Lyttelton, the poet, and his son-iii- law Lord Valencia, the father of the traveller. Bnt though such society had been cultivated by the grand- father at the Hill, it was by no means to the father's taste. When speaking of the aristocracy he had given his son the strong advice, ' Never go near them, Sam.' But their doors were now open to the young and wealthy poet ; and he did not refuse to enter. At Lady Jersey's parties he was a frequent visitor ; and with his 'Epistle to a Friend,' in 1798, he published XXXIV SOME PARTICULARS OP THE the lines addressed to her youngest daughter Harriet, on the coining marriage of an elder sister. At the same time were published the lines ' To a Friend on his Marriage,' those entitled ' A Farewell,' and those ' To a Gnat,' all written some few years earlier. As his health was still delicate he was advised by his friend Dr. Moore, the physician, and author of Zeluco, to spend the winter of 1799-1800 in Devonshire. On his journey either there or back, he paid a visit to Gilbert Wakefield, who was then a prisoner in Dor- chester gaol for a political libel. He thereby indulged his kind feelings for a literary friend, and at the same time marked his disapproval of the harsh laws and of the Tory government which could so treat a learned man of spotless character, who was respected by all who knew him. While in Devonshire he took up his abode at Exmouth, and spent his time diligently in reading, chiefly English translations of the Greek authors. The extracts which appear in his note-book are striking passages from Thucydides, Herodotus, and Euripides. But he sadly missed the society which he had left at home, and he remarked that he fancied himself growing wiser every day, not by his own im- provement, but from finding how little activity of mind there was around him. One valuable friend, however, he there made, namely, William Jackson of Exeter, the well-known musical composer and author, whose love of literature he admired, and by whose conversation he profited. Jackson on his death left Mr. Rogers his copies of Paradise Lost and the Faerie Queen, both the first editions of those poems. LIFE OP SAMUEL ROGEES. XXXV He soon afterwards formed an acquaintance with Lord and Lady Holland, which grew into a warm friendship. In after years he passed much time at Holland House, Kensington, where Lady Holland was most successful in gathering together a brilliant circle of authors and wits, Whig statesmen and Edinburgh reviewers, aided as she was by the manly good sense and warmth of heart of her husband. Mr. Rogers had a great regai'd for Lord Holland, in whom he found a kindred love of letters, of civil and religious liberty, and of his uncle Charles Fox ; and when he addresses Pox in his poem, he ends, ' Thy bell has tolled I ' But in thy place among us we behold ' One who resembles thee.' In 1802, on the Peace of Amiens, Mr. Rogers again visited Paris. Since he was there last time France had been closed against the English, first by the violence of the Revolution, and afterwards by the war. The king and queen whom he saw at mass had been beheaded, the nobility had been driven to emigrate, and Buonaparte was the military and popular sovereign, under the name of the First Consul. The galleries of the Louvre were at this time full of all the choicest pictures and statues of Europe. Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, and Flanders, had been rifled by the French ; and the finest works of art, the pride of these several countries, were now to be seen in the Louvre. Even before the newly appointed English ambassador had been received in Paris, the principal artists had rushed XXX VI SOME PARTICULARS OF THE there to see this wonderful collection. Mr. Rogers soon followed them. There he found West the president of the Academy, with his son, also Fuseli, Farrington, Opie with Mrs. Opie, Flaxman, and Shee, as also Townley and Champernown the collectors, his brother-in-law Sutton Sharpe, and Millingen the antiquary, all warm admirers of painting and sculpture. He made acquaintance with many French artists, Denon, Gerard, and Maskerier, and with Canova the Italian. While surrounded by such company his thoughts were chiefly turned to the works of art. He stayed three months in Paris, remaining there after his English friends had all returned home ; and he spent the greater part of that time in the Louvre, where he cultivated his taste and formed his judgment upon the best models. At Paris, and while engaged upon these studies, he wrote his lines addressed to the broken trunk of a statue of Hercules, called the Torso. They describe the feelings with which the student of art and history looked upon that grand statue, which ignorance had wilfully knocked to pieces and left a headless and limbless trunk, and which yet in that broken state the artists studied with wonder, while they acknowledged that it was the most breathing mass of stone, and the most glorious model they possessed ; for the works of Phidias had not then been brought away from the Turkish dominions by Lord Elgin. These fourteen lines are the only approach to the sonnet that Mr. Rogers ever made. In 1803 he made a second tour in Scotland in company with his sister Sarah, where they fell in with LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. XXXV11 the poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott. This second tour he speaks of in the lines ' Written in the Highlands,' on a third visit in 1812 ; when, on again seeing the grey sundial in the kirkyard at Luss, he says : ' That dial so well known to me ! 1 Tho' many a shadow it had shed, ' Beloved Sister, since with thee ' The legend on the stone was read.' In the year 1800 Mr. Rogers, tired of the Temple, sold his chambers, and for two or three years lived in lodgings. He then, in 1803, removed to St. James's Place, Westminster, to a house which he built for himself, and where he dwelt till his death, fifty-three years afterwards. This house he fitted up with great attention to taste, by the help of the best artists. The large bow-windows looked upon the Green Park. The drawing-room mantelpiece was made by Flaxman, as were the ornaments around and upon the ceiling. A cabinet for small antiquities was designed by Stothard, and ornamented with paintings by his hand. The sideboard and a cabinet in the dining-room were carved by Chan trey, at that time a clever journeyman, and afterwards the celebrated sciilptor. The furniture of the rooms was made very much upon the Greek model, and in part after the drawings in Hope's work on furniture. Round the staircase was added a frieze, taken from the Panathenaic procession among the Elgin marbles. He then began to form his valuable collection of pictures. He bought with great care and judgment, watching the sales as they arose, every year, for thirty XXXV1H SOME PARTICULARS OF THE years together, buying two or three of the best that were brought into the market. He added a large col- lection of painted Greek vases. All these works of art were so well chosen, that while placed as ornaments to a dwelling-house, they were at the same time the best models from which an artist might copy, and a student of art form his taste. His portfolios con- tained numerous drawings by the great masters, and engravings almost as rare and highly prized as the drawings. In these rooms, with these beauties offered to the eye, and with these tastes in the host, it was Mr. Rogers's aim to gather around him, not only poets and artists, who were more particularly "welcome, because their pursuits were those in which he was best able to give encouragement, and in which he took most pleasure, but all men of eminence, and all men aiming at eminence. He usually invited his friends to breakfast. He had in 1796 received admission into the Royal Society, which he had asked for as an introduction to men of science; and in 1805 he offered himself as a candidate for admission into the Literary Club, which had been established fifty years before by Johnson and Reynolds, and which still contained many who had been fellow members with those eminent men. But here the Poet was black-balled when proposed, and he believed that he owed this slight chiefly to Mr. Malone, the editor of Shakespear. At that time the anger of politics ran very high ; the fever which followed upon the French Revolution was by no means cooled ; and Mr. Rogers's Whig opinions were thought to be a very LIFE OP SAMUEL ROGERS. XXXIX good reason for not admitting him into a club which consisted chiefly of Tories. His earnest attention, however, to literature and art, had for some years very much turned his thoughts away from politics. Nine years before this he had voted for his friend Home Tooke, at the Westminster hustings; and then for twenty-two years together, he never took the trouble to vote on a contested election till another friend, Sir Samuel Romilly, was proposed as member for West- minster in 1818. In 1806, his sister Maria Sharpe died; and in his ' Human Life,' he describes what all feel on such a loss in the following beautiful lines : ' Such grief was ours it seems but yesterday ' When in thy prime, wishing so much to stay, "Twas thine, Maria, thine without a sigh, ' At midnight in a sister's arms to die ! ' Oh thou wert lovely lovely was thy frame, 'And pure thy spirit as from Heaven it came ! ' And when recalled to join the blest above, ' Thou diedst a victim to exceeding love, ' Nursing the young to health.' The child here spoken of was my youngest brother Daniel, the Geologist, whom we lost in 1856, a few months after he had been chosen President of the Geological Society. In 1806 also, after the funeral of his friend Charles James Fox, he wrote the ' Lines in Westminster Abbey,' in full admiration of Fox as a Whig statesman, and as a man of letters. He admired his speeches in favour of peace when we were at war with France, and he admired his love of Homer and Virgil. Nor xl SOME PARTICULARS OF THE did he less like his taste in English poetry, and his love for Dryden's versification. The Statesman had also valued the friendship of the Poet ; and when Mr. Rogers finished his house in St. James's Place, Mr. Fox begged to be invited to the first dinner party. In 1809, when the Quarterly Review was set on foot, Hopner the painter, who had been engaged to write a Review of Shee's Elements of Art, applied to Mr. Rogers to join him in the task, saying that he had the authority of the editor to ask him. But he declined doing so. He did not like the promoters of the Quarterly Review, and he did not like anonymous writing. He never wrote more than part of one Review, which was that of Gary's Dante, in the Edinburgh. He used to say that nobody could write a severe article against another, under the shelter of a mask, without becoming the worse man for it. In 1812, Mr. Rogers published his ' Columbus,' not separately, but in the volume with his other poems. He had printed it two years before, in order to cir- culate it privately among his friends, and perhaps to invite criticism. Hence, unlike his former poems which came out unlocked for and without a name, this had been much talked about, even by those who had not seen it. When published it did not fulfil the expectations raised ; and he always spoke of it as the least valued among his poems. It was the poem least valued by himself. It aimed at a style very different from his earlier works, which with correctness and delicacy of expression, were marked with accuracy almost minute, and with most careful versification. LIFE OP SAMUEL ROGERS. xli The ' Pleasures of Memory,' and the ' Epistle to a Friend,' are pictures of the Poet's mind, polished and refined in all its parts. ' Columbus,' on the other hand, with versification less regular, and with pauses which do not fall on the rhymes, aims at greater boldness and at loftier thoughts of creative fancy. To these heights of grandeur it often successfully reaches ; but not always. It is an unfinished fragment, and does not please us equally throughout. It sometimes dis- appoints us, which is never the case with the earlier poems. The Edinburgh Review praised it cordially ; but the Quarterly Review praised it rather faintly, and saw much to blame in it, as an attempt to enter upon a style new to the author, and one in which he was not likely to succeed. When the poem of ' Columbus' was being written, America was still the land of hope with the friends of civilisation, while England had been frightened away from the very name of reform by the violence of the French Revolution. The English had not then given freedom to the Negro slave, nor had the Ame- ricans ri vetted his chains tighter. Mr. Rogers had seen Dr. Priestley and other friends set sail for America, to escape from the oppression of the ruling class at home ; and he speaks of it as a place of refuge for all who were oppressed in Europe : ' Assembling here all nations shall be blest ; ' The sad be comforted ; the weary rest ; ' Untouched shall drop the fetters from the slave.' This last prophecy has not yet been fulfilled ; but Xlii SOME PARTICULARS OF THE among the visitors to his house none received a more cordial welcome than the Americans. In Europe, nothing was then heard of but the glories and miseries of war. Napoleon had defeated the Austrians and Prussians, and had conquered Holland, Italy, and Spain. In Portugal our army under Wellington, was struggling with masterly skill and courage, though with yet doubtful success against the French. At home we had been increasing our militia, illuminating our windows for supposed victories on the Continent, and filling St. Paul's cathedral with statues in honour of those who had been slain in battle, whether on the ocean or in Spain and Portugal. Such was the state of the nation's mind, when Mr. Rogers, true to his principles, wrote that fine opening to Canto VI. : ' War and the great in war let others sing, ' Havoc and spoil, and tears and triumphing ; ' The morning-march that flashes to the sun, ' The feast of vultures when the day is done, ' And the strange tale of many slain for one ! * I sing a man, amidst his sufferings here, ' Who watched and served in humbleness and fear, 'Gentle to others, to himself severe.' It waa only many years later, after peace was established, after, I believe, that he had become acquainted with the Duke of Wellington, that he added the Note to these lines beginning with the words, ' Not but that in the profession of arms there ' are, at all times, many noble natures.' LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. xliii The poem of ' Columbus ' begins with an introduc- tion and ends with a postscript, both written in short lines, with rhymes returning irregularly ; and this year on a third visit -to the Highlands of Scotland, he wrote a short poem, which we have before quoted, which is also in lines of eight syllables, and with the same irregularity in the rhymes. He had lost his fondness for the regular couplet of the 'Pleasures of Memory,' and 'Epistle to a Friend,' in which the only irregularity allowed is an occasional triplet. In 1814, he published 'Jacqueline,' in the same volume with Lord Byron's Lara. To these poems neither author added his name, though no secret was made of the authorship. Jacqueline is a playful little piece with exquisite versification. Like the Introduc- tion to 'Columbus,' it is in lines of eight syllables with irregular rhymes, but with all the careful accuracy of the earlier poems. Mr. Murray the publisher paid to the authors the large sum of half-a-guinea a line for leave to print the first edition of Lara and Jac- queline, and instead of complaining of the bargain, had the generosity to own afterwards, that it had been very profitable to him. This was the only occa- sion on which Mr. Rogers did not take upon himself the charge of his own publications. In the spring of this year, peace was made with France, on the retirement of the Emperor Napoleon to the island of Elba and the return of the Bourbons. Upon this the Continent was again open to English travellers ; and Mr. Rogers, in the course of the autumn, set out for Italy with his sister Sarah. He xliv SOME PARTICULARS OF THE went by Paris and Switzerland. He crossed the Alps by the Pass of the Simplon. He visited Milan, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and Naples where Murat was reigning as king. From Naples he turned home- ward, and had reached Florence in the beginning of April 1815, when news met him that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and had returned to France, and that Europe was again plunged into war. He there- upon hurried home through the Tyrol and Germany, in the rear of the allied armies, which were then pre- paring for a great battle with the French. He passed through Brussels while it was occupied by Wellington's army, and through Ghent while it was the residence of Louis XVIII. ; and he reached England six weeks before the battle of Waterloo. While in Italy Mr. Rogers observed everything with the eye of a painter and a poet. He noted carefully in his journal the picturesque appearances of the country, the climate, and the people ; and he put on paper the thoughts which arise in a refined and educated mind on visiting spots ennobled by great deeds. This careful journal was in preparation for a future work; but it was laid aside for the present, as he had a poem already half written which was first to be attended to. This poem he published in 1819. It was entitled ' Human Life,' and is full of generous sentiments and true wisdom. He therein teaches us to look upon our fellow-creatures with respect, and so pictures our trials and our enjoyments as to encourage us to aim after excellence, by showing us that it is within our LIFE OP SAMUEL ROGERS. xlv reach. By most readers this will probably be con- sidered his best work ; he considered it so himself. He was fifty-six years of age, and full of experience helped by reading and reflection. He does not task his imagination, as in ' Columbus ;' but, like a thought- ful man, points out, as to those younger than himself, the good actions that they ought to imitate. The versification is free, and, like that of 'Columbus' and ' Jacqueline,' has not the regularity of his earlier poems ; the pauses do not fall upon the rhymes, nor is the sense bounded by the couplet. Its scenery is wholly English ; it had been begun before the journey to Italy, and it bears very few traces of thoughts gained in that classic country. Those thoughts, as before remarked, were to be made use of in a poem by themselves. Seven and twenty years had now passed since Mr. Rogers, on the publication of the 'Pleasures of Memory,' took his place among the English poets. Since that time all who had before him been successful in their efforts to gain the ear and favour of the public by poetry, had ceased from their labours and gone to rest. A new race of poets had arisen, with new tastes and new canons of criticism. Crabbe, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Campbell, Moore, and Byron had taken their place beside him. He admired their ge- nius, and welcomed them as friends, although they did not follow the lights which had guided him. Crabbe and Campbell alone could be called of the old school of Pope, with whom shortness and neatness of expression was a marked aim. The others had xlvi SOME PARTICULARS OP THE rebelled, some against the regularity and careful finish which used to be required in verse, and some against the neatness and compactness of the sentences. Byron would have belonged to the old school, if he had followed his own judgment. As the readers were de- lighted with Childe Harold, he wrote accordingly ; but for himself he valued most his Hints from Horace. 'We are all,' he writes in 1820, 'on a wrong revolu- ' tionary system (or no system) from which Rogers ' and Crabbe are alone free. It is all Horace then ' and Claudian now among us.' Thus, whether for better or for worse, the poetical taste of the nation, both writers and readers, had undergone a change ; and Mr. Rogers' s later poems, 'Columbus' and ' Human Life,' show that his taste had in part undergone the same change. He lived, indeed, to see a yet further change come over the public taste in poetry, when clearness and order in the thoughts were no longer required by the reader. But he strongly blamed all such cloudiness and want of ease in style ; and he used to say of the writer who now-a-days takes pains to make his style simple, and to set forth his thoughts in the order most plain to the reader's understanding, that he is one of the most disinterested of men. So many readers now prefer obscurity, that an author is often less valued in proportion as he has taken care to make himself understood. In the same volume with ' Human Life,' Mr. Rogers published the lines entitled ' The Boy of Egremond,' which are, perhaps, the least valuable of his poetry ; and also the ' Lines written at Psestum.' These latter LIFE OP SAMUEL ROGERS. xlvii were the first fruits of his journey to Italy, and are warm with the enthusiasm of a visit to the land of Horace and Virgil, of Dante and Petrarch, of Raphael and Michael Angelo. The solemn temples of Psestum had been mvich in his mind before starting on his journey ; the copy of a Doric column from one of those buildings, stood every day before his eyes in the corner of his room ; hence he naturally greeted them as an old acquaintance : ' From my youth upward have I longed to tread ' This classic ground. And am I here at last ? ' Wandering at will through the long porticoes, 'And catching, as through some majestic grove, ' Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like, 'Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up, ' Towns like the living rock from which they grew ?' These lines are almost the first that he wrote in blank verse ; and they mark the continued change of his taste from the more careful structure of his early verses to a looser and freer style. They were the fore- runners of his larger poem on Italy, which he was at that time employed upon. Three years afterwards, in 1822, he published in a small volume by itself, another portion of the thoughts gained on his journey, under the title of ' Italy, a Poem ; Part the First.' To this volume he did not put his name, nor did he allow himself to be known as the author even by his friends. To make the con- cealment more certain, he had the secret kept from the bookseller, and took the trouble to be out of Xlviii SOME PARTICULARS OF THE England at the time that it was published. Moreover, he leads the reader into Italy by the Great St. Ber- nard, while he himself had entered by the Simplon. The poem is in blank verse, and the same in style as the ' Lines written at Psestum.' This First Part stopped at Florence ; the rest of the journey was to follow in Part the Second. It was not discovered who wrote it till he returned home and thought proper to own it. One of the reviewers thought it was certainly the work of Southey. But had they remembered the ' Lines written at Psestum,' they could have had no difficulty in recognising the author of ' Italy ;' though, certainly, it is very unlike any of the former poems by Mr. Rogers. While the First Part of ' Italy ' was being published at home, Mr. Rogers was on his route to visit the same country a second time, to examine with renewed pleasure spots that he had seen nine years before, and to see towns that he had before left unvisited. He again crossed the Alps by the Simplon pass, and went as far as Naples, and he returned home by Pisa, Genoa, Turin, and Paris. On this journey he fell in with Byron and Shelley, who were then living in Italy. In 1828 he published the Second Part of 'Italy ;' and by putting his name to it he acknowledged himself as the author of both parts. The sale of this poem was at first small. It was never reviewed by either of the two chief reviews. It addresses itself only to the few, to those who have travelled in Italy, and to those who by study are acquainted with its works of art and the deeds of its great men. It describes not so LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS. xlix. much what he saw on his travels, as the feelings with which every man of education and refinement would wish to view a land ennobled by great actions, and familiar to us by classic recollections, and one to which ourselves owe so much of our civilisation. Mr. Rogers fancied that the cool manner in which this poem was at first received amounted to an unfavour- able verdict. He was not disposed to question the taste of the public in the case of a work which was meant to please the public. So he made a bonfire, as he described it, of the unsold copies, and set himself to the task of making it better. He at the same time engaged the services of several artists to ornament it with plates descriptive of the places mentioned. In 1830 he published a large edition of 'Italy,' beautifully illustrated with engravings after drawings made for the purpose by Stothard, Turner, and others. In 1834 he published his earlier poems hi another volume, illustrated in the same manner. Each of these volumes engaged his attention for two or three years, while he directed the artists, watched the pro- gress of their designs, pointed out changes that he wished made, and then gave the same care to the engravers to see that they faithfully represented the original drawings. When finished, he was fully rewarded by the success of the work. The volumes equalled his expectations, and were acknowledged to be the two most beautiful ever published. Their sale was very- large. He had spent about seven thousand pounds upon the two ; and the whole money returned to him in due time. 9 1 SOME PARTICULARS OF TUB In the chapter entitled The Bag of Gold, he men- tions dining with an old Italian prelate, the Archbishop of Toronto, who placed his cats beside him on the dinner-table ; and the last addition which Mr. Rogers made to his collection of pictures was a portrait of one of these cats. When the archbishop died, his pictures were sent to England to be sold, and Mr. Rogers, for old recollection's sake, gave a trifle for a portrait of the favourite cat. We have already traced Mr. Rogers' s change of taste from the regular couplet to freer versification and irregular rhymes, and then to blank verse ; and now we note a final change in favour of prose. Several chapters in the ' Italy' are written in prose, and they are by no means the least valuable in the volume. After this time he wrote very few lines of poetry. They may be summed up in a short piece addressed to Lord Grenville, ' on his visiting Dropmore in 1831 ;' another