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 introducing 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 Shakespear'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 particularly 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

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 useful.

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. 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

This

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 political friends were Priestley, the theological writer and chemist; and Gilbert Wakefield, the classical scholar; and Horne 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. Horne 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, Cranmer, More,
'Or into twilight within walls of stone,

'Then to the place of trial.'

There Mr. Rogers was present as a spectator; and

with every friend of liberty he rejoiced heartily at his acquittal.

He often visited Horne 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 Horne 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 mine to listen.'

In return for the compliment of these verses Horne 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 treasonable if he stopped the first friend he met in the street to talk about them.