'situation; it depends on himself; and he who has 'reduced his passions to obedience may fear no reverse of fortune; prosperity cannot intoxicate, adversity " cannot depress him; he resembles the oak that con'tinues firm and erect, whether the sun shines or the storm batters.' He looked forward every month to the day of these papers appearing, with boyish eagerness. As the Magazine reached him in the morning, it was brought into his bedroom before he was out of bed; and month by month, as he cut its wet pages and found that the publisher had decided that his essay was deserving of publication, he was more and more fixed in his purpose to be an author.

His enthusiasm for literature and his respect for authors were such that he wished to call upon Dr. Johnson, who was then an old man, and at the height of his reputation. Accordingly he and his friend William Maltby entered Bolt Court, Fleet Street, for that purpose. One of them had his hand upon the great man's knocker. But their courage failed them, and the young admirers of literary genius returned home without venturing to ask for an interview. Dr. Johnson died in 1785.

In 1786 Mr. Rogers printed his first volume of poetry, entitled 'An Ode to Superstition, with some other Poems.' The other poems were-To a Lady on the Death of her Lover,' 'The Sailor,' 'A Sketch of the Alps at Daybreak,' and 'A Wish.' In the Ode the powers and evils of Superstition are pointed out calmly and philosophically. The examples are all drawn from distant lands or bygone times. The Poet only hints

at the intolerance of his own day, when he adds at the close his hope for the future, and his belief that Reason will at last triumph over the rack and wheel of her old enemy:

'Canst thou, with all thy terrors crowned,
'Hope to obscure that latent spark,

'Destined to shine when suns are dark?'

Truth will at last give us the blessings of piety and

peace:

'Her touch unlocks the day-spring from above,

'And lo! it visits man with gleams of light and love.

He had written other verses before these, but he did not think them good enough to be made public. This small volume he published without his name, from a natural doubt whether it would be favourably received. The longer Poem, the Ode, would be put in comparison with those of Collins and Gray. But his fears were groundless. His poems were at once noticed with praise in the Monthly Review; he had no further anxiety about their fate, and he owned himself the author among his literary friends. The Critic begins : In these pieces we perceive the hand of an able 'master' and adds: 'He has exhibited the striking 'historical facts with the fire and energy proper to 'Lyric poetry;' and 'The rest of the pieces have the same character of chaste and classical elegance.' Such praise was most encouraging and most useful to a young author in his twenty-third year. He did not know the writer of the Review, nor was he known to

the writer. But he afterwards learnt that it was Dr. Enfield who had held out the helping hand to his little volume; and fifty years later he had the pleasure of hearing from Mrs. Kinder, Dr. Enfield's daughter, the manner in which the admiring critic read the Ode to his family.

In 1788 his brother Thomas died. Thomas was eighteen months older than himself. They were daily companions both at home and in the Banking-house, where they were in partnership with Mr. Welch and their 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 happiness below;

'I thy blessed nature now unites above
'An angel's pity with a brother's love,
'Still o'er my life preserve thy mild controul,
'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 hope 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 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 that he did not 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 hist 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 neglect to become an officer of 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.

see.

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.

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