poetry and love of letters; and they encouraged one another in their studies and aim after improvement. The friendship then begun, continued unbroken for eighty years; it was founded on mutual respect, and on similarity of tastes; and when William Maltby died in 1854, Samuel Rogers set up a tablet to his memory in Norwood Cemetery.

When too old for the school at Hackney, Samuel studied for a short time under Mr. Burgh, the author of a work on education, self improvement and a wise aim in life, which he entitled a Treatise on the Dignity of Human Nature: the author also of two volumes of Political Disquisitions. Mr. Burgh kept a school at the south-east corner of Newington Green; but when ill health led him to give it up, he removed to Colebrook Row, Islington. There Samuel and his brothers went every day to read with him as their private tutor, and with very great advantage to themselves. Mr. Burgh was a man of an enlarged mind, of great reading, and good observation. His manner of teaching was thoroughly agreeable to his pupils; and for the excellence of the matter we may take the evidence of his printed works. He had a high aim in his views of education. He did not limit his pupils' studies to languages and mathematics. He did not set them to write essays or verses in Latin, nor perhaps give them a very exact knowledge of the dead languages. But he taught them to perceive the beauties of the great authors that they were studying, and to admire excellence as well in conduct as in writing. He had strong opinions in politics. He wrote in favour of

the liberty of the press at a time when it was very much shackled by prosecutions, and in favour of a Reform in Parliament, when members were too often returned by close boroughs and by bribery; and he thought the American Colonies had not been treated with justice, when the nation was rushing into the American war. Such was the very able man under whom Samuel Rogers finished his school studies, and who sent him forth at the age of sixteen or seventeen with a knowledge that his education was thenceforth to be carried on by himself. In the Treatise of the tutor, we find thoughts which we again meet with in the early writings of the pupil.

While living as a boy at Newington Green, Samuel and his brothers and sisters were taken from time to time to pay a visit to their grandfather and aunts at the Hill near Stourbridge. And these two houses,

his grandfather's near Stourbridge, and his father's on Newington Green, most likely together supplied him with the scenery that his Poem on the 'Pleasures of Memory' opens with. The house at the Hill, from which the aunts removed soon after their father's death, may have been

'Yon old mansion frowning thro' the trees;'

and have given him

'The garden's desert paths,'

and

'That hall where once, in antiquated state,
'The chair of justice held the grave debate.'

On the other hand,

'The village green'

may have been that in front of his father's house where he was within the sound of Mr. Burgh's schoolbell, which he describes as

'Quickening my truant feet across the lawn.'

The Hill is in the parish of Old Swinford; and there in the churchyard are the tombstones of the Rogers family. There he had thoughtfully traced the name of Rogers

'On yon grey stone, that fronts the chancel-door,
'Worn smooth by busy feet now seen no more.'

This churchyard the Poet had in his mind when he
said-

'Here alone

'I search the record of each mouldering stone.'

The visits to the Hill also sometimes led him to the Leasowes, lately the picturesque seat of the Poet Shenstone, who had been intimate with his father. At that time Shenstone's artificial additions to the natural beauties of the place had not fallen to decay; and the visits to Worcestershire gave the following couplet to the Pleasures of Memory,'

'Thus, thro' the gloom of Shenstone's fairy-grove
'Maria's urn still breathes the voice of love.'

In 1776, his excellent mother died. Through her the dissenting principles and strong feelings of religion

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had been brought into the family. In her last illness she called her children round her, and told them that it mattered little what happened to them when she was gone, provided they were good. She left eight, of whom one died in a few months; and the others, four sons amd three daughters, all grew up to do honour to the good principles in which they were educated. On their mother's death they fell to the care of her friend and cousin, Mary Mitchell, who had lived with her from childhood, and continued with her on her marriage, and who now took the management of Thomas Rogers's house at Newington Green.

The eldest son Daniel, was sent to Cambridge, and intended for a barrister; the second, Thomas, was taken as a clerk into the banking-house; and Samuel, on leaving school, wished to be sent to the Dissenting College at Warrington, and to be a Dissenting Minister. He was led to this choice by his admiration of Dr. Price, who lived next door but one to his father, and preached at the Meeting House on the Green. But his father wished for him in his business, and took him as a clerk to Cornhill with his brother Thomas.

Samuel's health at this time was not good; he was troubled with weak eyes. Hence he was sent every summer to spend rather a long holiday at the sea-side, sometimes at Margate, and sometimes at Brighton, for the benefit of sea-bathing. These visits gave him time for reading. Goldsmith's poems were among those upon which he formed his taste. Johnson's writings were always in his hands. Gray's poems received his warm admiration. He had not gained much classical

C

knowledge at school. He had a moderate acquaintance with Latin and French, with little or none of Greek or Mathematics. But he had read most of the English authors; he had gained an early taste for Poetry, and for the beauties of style in Prose writing; and it was not long before he made his first attempts at authorship.

In 1780 his father was engaged in the political whirl of a contested election at Coventry, and afterwards in Parliament to retain his seat on a petition against his return. Samuel was then on his duties as a clerk in the banking-house; but he was at the same time putting down some of his thoughts upon paper, and making up his mind to offer them to a publisher. In the beginning of 1781, when eighteen years old, in admiration of Johnson's Rambler, he sent a short literary essay to the Gentleman's Magazine. It was entitled The Scribbler, and printed with his initials S. R. at foot. It was followed in the same year by seven others. They had no great merit, but they mark the early date of his ambition to be an author. They mark also that he had already learned the highest use of writing, that it was to bring about a love of goodness. A man may devote his whole life,' says the Scribbler, 'to the attainment of knowledge, he may read all the books that have ever been written, 'study all the systems that have ever been formed; 'yet all his reading and all his study will amount to no more than this-that Virtue alone is productive ' of true felicity.' And he closes the series with these words: A man's happiness does not depend on his

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