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Fox he often visited in the country, where he describes

him

'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,

'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,

'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 Horne Tooke, Erskine, Fox, and Grattan, to which he afterwards 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-inlaw Lord Valencia, the father of the traveller. But though such society had been cultivated by the grandfather 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

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the lines addressed to her youngest daughter Harriet, on the coming 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 Dorchester 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 improvement, 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 Faërie Queen, both the first editions of those poems.

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 regard 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 Fox in his poem, he ends,—

"Thy bell has tolled !

'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

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

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