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! '-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 Chantrey, at that time a clever journeyman, and afterwards the celebrated sculptor. 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 years together, buying two or three of the best that were brought into the market. He added a large collection 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 contained 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 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 Horne 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 Westminster 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- 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 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 Cary'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 circulate it privately among his friends, and perhaps to invite criticism. Hence, unlike his former poems which came out unlooked 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. 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 disappoints 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 Americans rivetted 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; 'Untouched shall drop the fetters from the slave.' This last prophecy has not yet been fulfilled; but |