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'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 acquainted 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 engaged in politics; and in 1789 he made a visit to Scotland. He travelled on horseback, with a boy

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 Playfair, the mathematician. He heard Dr. Blair and Dr. Robertson preach. At Edinburgh also he made acquaintance with Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Piozzi, who was there with her husband and younger daughters. 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 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.

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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.

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 Dissenters 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 published 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,

'to observe so many thousands beating, as it were, 'with one pulse in the cause of liberty and their 'country, 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, indeed, only the month before he started for Paris, he had heard Sir Joshua Reynolds 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.'

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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.' 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

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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, Wm. 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 indeed 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 !'

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