written down on the spur of the moment are better than those whic have been clothed with words more carefully. Wordsworth one day remarked to him that Southey, as he got old, had very much left off reading, and that he probably read his own works more than any others. "Why, it is very natural that he should do so," said Mr. Rogers; "I read my works oftener than any others, and I dare say that you do the same." "Yes, that he does," said Mrs. Wordsworth; "you know you do, William."

When Mr. Wordsworth died, in 1850, Mr. Rogers, at the age of eightyseven, remained the last survivor of that bright cluster of poets that had ornamented the first half of this century. He had lived in friendship with most of them-Crabbe, Scott, Coleridge, Southey, Campbell, Byron, Moore, and Wordsworth. And he now mourned the last of them. Upon this Prince Albert wrote to him by the Queen's command to offer him the post of Poet Laureate. But he refused it, making his age his excuse, saying that he was only the shadow of his former self. A second reason which also moved him to refuse it he did not think proper to give; namely, that an honour accompanied by a salary was a very doubtful honour to a man in independent circumstances; and that as he had no need of the money, he did not wish for the character of withholding the one hundred pounds a year from some poet to whom it might be more useful. Prince Albert had before offered him an honorary degree in the University of Cambridge; but this he had also refused. He held, however, three unpaid and untitled offices under the Crown, given to him because of his knowledge of works of Art: he was one of the trustees of the National Gallery, one of the Commissioners for the encouragement of the Fine Arts in building the new Houses of Parliament, and one of the Commissioners for inquiring into the management of the British Museum.

During these years, for almost half a century, from when he built his house in St. James's Place till the day that he met with an accident and broke his leg, Mr. Rogers's rooms formed one of the centres of literary society. They were hung around with a collection of pictures which received the approval of all the best judges. Almost every author and artist, on coming before the world, was there invited by him and welcomed as a friend. Perhaps no man not in some public profession, not in a political office, not in Parliament, was ever so much before the eyes of the public. His circle of acquaintance was boundless. Scarcely a biography of author or artist has been published during the latter end of his life without frequent mention of Mr. Rogers; few foreigners have written their travels in England without describing his house, his pictures, and his conversation. A list of his social gatherings would contain the names of most of the eminent men of his day; but the only list that he himself kept was of the half-dozen occasions when he had been successful in

healing quarrels, when friends who had parted in anger had again met and shaken hands with one another in his house.

He welcomed to St. James's Place those who had achieved eminence by their talents, hardly more than those who were endeavouring to achieve eminence. It was his delight to hold forth the helping hand to merit. Many a young man, striving in the path of letters or art, feeling as yet unable to make his works known, has breakfasted with Mr. Rogers, and been by him introduced to men of eminence in the same path, whom he had perhaps heard of or read of, and has walked home after breakfast an altered man, with stronger resolves to take pains, with renewed trust in his own powers, and encouraged with the thought that he was no longer quite unknown. In this way, while cultivating his own tastes, he enjoyed the pleasure of being useful and of guiding the tastes of others; and at the same time the pleasure of the celebrity which he gained therefrom.

Moreover, authors and artists are sometimes in want of money, and so also are those who are aiming at becoming authors and artists. In such cases they found Mr. Rogers a kind friend, ready not only with his advice, but with his purse. The same generous feelings led him also to find a place in his poems, or in the Notes at the end, to mention with honour each of those poets and friends whom he might feel his equals, and whom the world might think his rivals. Byron he speaks of both in " Human Life" and in "Italy." Crabbe's power of describing he praises in " Italy.” Moore he calls "a poet of such singular felicity as to give a lustre to all he touches." Of Wordsworth he quotes “a noble sonnet." Of Scott he gives us some lines not elsewhere published. He quotes Dante from his friend Cary's Translation. Luttrell's little known but clever "Letters to Julia" he speaks of as admirably written; and to his early friend Richard Sharp, who late in life published some Epistles in Verse, he kindly gives the title of a poet. With the same wish to please he mentions Eastlake the painter, and Herschell the astronomer; he quotes Lord John Russell's definition of a proverb; and in the edition of his works which is ornamented with the designs of Stothard and Turner, he styles them two artists who would have done honour to any age or country.

In his later years he usually spent some weeks every autumn at Broadstairs, where he lived at the hotel with his old friend Mr. Maltby. He went down with his own horses, and slept at Rochester and Canterbury to break the journey. At Canterbury, he always went into the Cathedral to hear the service chanted. One year he was recognised by the clergyman in authority, who to show his respect to the Poet sent a verger to ask him which chant he would like to have performed. And this marked civility was repeated every year as he passed through that city. He was, of course, gratified by the attention; but his pleasure in the music was sadly lessened by it. It broke the charm to find that the clergymen were thinking of him, while he had been willing to fancy that they

were at their devotions. During his last few years he spent the three winter months at Brighton, in the same house with his sister Sarah who died only a year before himself. She had followed him in his love for literature and art, and had inherited a valuable collection of pictures from her brother Henry.

My uncle's conversation could hardly be called brilliant. He seldom aimed at wit, though he enjoyed it in others. He often told anecdotes of his early recollections and of the distinguished persons with whom he had been acquainted. These he told with great neatness and fitness in the choice of words, as may be understood by an examination of the prose notes to his poems. But the valuable part of his conversation was his good sense joined with knowledge of literature and art, and yet more particularly his constant aim at improvement, and the care that he took to lead his friends to what was worth talking about. I never left his company without feeling my zeal for knowledge strengthened, my wish to read quickened, and a fresh determination to take pains and do my best in everything that I was about. He trained his mind to look for the beautiful and the good in all that came before him. His mixing in the higher circles of fashionable life did not lower his taste for simplicity and true greatness. He had endeavoured to acquire the "habit of looking everywhere for excellences, and not for faults, whether in art or nature, whether in a picture, a poem, or a character." He describes himself as having

"A passionate love for music, sculpture, painting,
For poetry, the language of the gods,

For all things here, or grand or beautiful,

A setting sun, a lake among the mountains,

The light of an ingenuous countenance,

And what transcends them all, a noble action."

In his old age, as is usual, he returned to the recollections of his youth. He talked much of Mrs. Barbauld, of Dr. Price who had lived next door to his father at Newington Green, and of Dr. Enfield's review of his first poem. He then very much cultivated the society of the younger members of his family, and his conversation was never better than when he was speaking to children. They listened with equal delight and improvement. His words were as winning as they were wise

"Praising each highly, from a wish to raise
Their merits to the level of his praise.”

He then regretted that he had not married and taken upon himself the duties of a husband and a father. He would quote Goldsmith's description of the Vicar of Wakefield, who united in himself the three greatest characters in the world; he was a priest, a husbandman, and

the father of a family. My uncle wished that to his character of a man of letters and a man of business, he could himself have added that he had educated a family of children. The very last addition to his poems were the lines advising young men to marry, beginning —

"Hence to the Altar."

In early life he had been of a weak constitution, which showed itself in a pale and sickly countenance

"From his cheek, ere yet the down was there,
Health fled."

This made him more than usually careful in his manner of living; and he grew stronger as he grew older. He was zealous in practising, as in praising, the use of the flesh-brush, which he called the art of living for ever. He was active in his habits; and when advanced in years was still a great walker. He was not easily tired. He had no sofa or arm-chair in that room of his house in which he for the most part lived, and he never made use of either till he broke his leg at the age of eightysix. When that misfortune befell him, nothing could be better than the manner in which he bore it. He was henceforth, for what remained of life, to be confined to the bed or chair. But he never murmured, and he spoke of his accident with regret only for the trouble that he gave to others. He often used the words of Galileo: "If it has pleased God that I should be lame, ought not I to be pleased?" He died at his house, No. 22, St. James's Place, on the 18th of December, 1855, full of years and honour. His memory had latterly rather failed him; but it was only during the last eighteen months, when he was more than ninety years of age, that life began to be a burden to him, and the visits of his friends troublesome. Till then he had lived alone; but when his health failed, a niece devoted herself to him, to supply that watchful care which his sinking powers required, but were unable to ask for. He was buried agreeably to his own wish in Hornsey churchyard, in the same grave with his unmarried brother and sister.

After his death his valuable works of art, pictures, drawings, engravings, vases, sculpture, coins, and books, were sold by auction, at a sale which lasted twenty-two days, and produced a large sum, making the property that he left behind him about what he used to wish it to be, not much more nor less than what he inherited. But the proportions into which it was divided were very remarkable; the house and its contents produced a sum equal to three times that portion of his property which had brought him an income.

In religion and politics Mr. Rogers ended life with nearly the same opinions that he began with; opinions which in his youth were frowned upon by the worldly and the timid, and which shut out their owners from many social advantages, but were less unpopular in his later life. When

a young man, he had followed Charles Grey in signing an address to the nation in favour of a Reform in Parliament; and when an old man, he congratulated the same statesman, in a copy of verses, on his services to the cause of liberty, when that great measure became law. When young he had given his help to Allen and Fox, the benevolent Quakers, in establishing the Borough Road School, for the education of the poor of every sect; and in after-life he joined in the establishment of London University College, for the education of those whose fathers thought the oaths at Oxford and Cambridge a snare to their sons' consciences on entering those Universities. He had been brought up as a hearer of the Arian Dr. Price, and a friend of the Unitarian Dr. Priestley; and in 1844, when the Unitarians were in danger of being turned out of their places of worship by the orthodox Dissenters, he signed the petition in favour of the Dissenters' Chapel Bill, as a trustee to the old Meeting House on Newington Green. He continued through life unshaken in his disapproval of requiring a belief in Creeds and Articles of religion, and in his disbelief of the orthodox doctrines of the Atonement and Trinity; though, after the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, he did not refuse to take the Sacrament froin clergymen of the Church of England.

These unfashionable opinions Mr. Rogers took no pains to conceal. He did not thrust them forward; but an anecdote or two will show that they were generally known to his wider circle of friends. Once when walking in York Minster with Mr. Wordsworth, and praising the religious solemnity of the building, Mr. Wordsworth would not allow that Mr. Rogers could possibly admire it equally with himself, because of his Presbyterian education. When walking along George Street, Hanover Square, with his witty friend Mr. Luttrell, he complained, as many had done before, of the inconvenience of being thrust off the pavement by the projecting steps of St. George's Church. "That," said Mr. Luttrell, “is one of your dissenting prejudices." When the petition in favour of the Dissenters' Chapel Bill from the descendants of Philip Henry, the ejected clergyman, was taken to Mr. Macaulay to be presented to the House of Commons, Mr. Macaulay asked: "Has my friend Rogers signed it?" And when dining with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and sitting next to the son of an old schoolfellow, then a county member and a Churchman, Mr. Rogers startled him with the remark, "You and I are probably the only Dissenters here."

Every poet, indeed every author who writes on human nature and the feelings and doings of his fellow-creatures, leaves his heart and character laid open before the reader; and thus in Mr. Rogers's poems we find

"His mind unfolded in his page."

In the Preface to the "Pleasures of Memory," he tells us that his aim

was to

f