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 Cambridge 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 happines3 below;
If thy blessed nature now unites above
An angel's pity with a brother's love,
Still o'er my life preserve thy mild control,
Correct my views, and elevate my soul;
Grant me thy peace and purity of mind,
Devout yet cheerful, active yet resigned;

Grant me like thee, whose heart knew no disguise,
Whose blameless wishes never aimed to rise,
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 hopes 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

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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 whom 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 his follies and by neglect to become an officer in 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. 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. At Amiens he was not able to hear mass in the cathedral, as the chapels had been sealed up and were to remain so till the priests had taken the civic oath. The Church roperty had been seized by the State; and the priests were the

object alike of hatred and of ridicule. He found that 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 as yet 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 was 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.”

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. He wrote it while closely engaged in the banking-house during the day, and returning in the evening to the quiet circle of his father, his three sisters, and their mother's cousin, Mrs. Mitchell, who lived with them as a mother. 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 successful and has ever since continued 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 then the 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!"

After the death of his father, Mr. Rogers took chambers in Paper Buildings, in the Temple, and tried what it was to have two homes. But he in part left the house at Newington Green to his younger brother Henry and his sisters, finding that two houses did not give the comfort of one, and remarking that

"Who boasts of more (believe the serious strain)

Sighs for a home, and sighs, alas! in vain."

He was then thirty years of age, and master of a large fortune; and by introducing his brother Henry two years afterwards into the bankinghouse 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.

Of his brothers and sisters two had already, before the father's death, left Newington Green for homes of their own, and a third was soon to leave. Daniel settled with his family on his estate in Worcestershire. Martha also was married, and Maria was soon to marry. Sarah and Henry remained single, and as long as they both lived they dwelt together. They were all alive to the excellence of their brother's poetry, and able to encourage him in writing by showing that they valued it. Daniel, the country squire, was a man of delightfully simple mind, a great reader, and throughout life an earnest student of the ancient and Eastern languages. Sir E. Brydges, in his Autobiography, speaks of him most highly. Henry also, the man of business, though less of a scholar than Daniel, and moving in a smaller circle of friends than the Poet, was the beloved and admired centre of that circle; and later in life he followed his brother in forming a choice collection of pictures. When the eldest of the three brothers died, in 1829, Charles Lamb mourned him in a sonnet beginning:

"Rogers, of all the men whom I have known

But slightly, who have died, your brother's loss
Touched me most sensibly."

The marriage of his sister Maria, in 1795, was not without some influence on Mr. Rogers's tastes. Sutton Sharpe, his new brother-inlaw, 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.

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 Shakespeare'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.

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, and a good critic. He had published an Essay on English Style, and was 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 letter 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 ends by small It is a picture of his mind at the age of thirty-five, as the former poem, the "Pleasures of Memory," shows his mind at the age of twentynine. 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

means.