the lines addressed to her youngest daughter Harriet, on the coming marriage of an elder sister. At the same time were published the lines To a Friend on his Marriage,' those entitled 'A Farewell,' and those To a Gnat,' all written some few years earlier.

On

As his health was still delicate he was advised by his friend Dr. Moore, the physician, and author of Zeluco, to spend the winter of 1799-1800 in Devonshire. his journey either there or back, he paid a visit to Gilbert Wakefield, who was then a prisoner in Dorchester gaol for a political libel. He thereby indulged his kind feelings for a literary friend, and at the same time marked his disapproval of the harsh laws and of the Tory government which could so treat a learned man of spotless character, who was respected by all who knew him. While in Devonshire he took up his abode at Exmouth, and spent his time diligently in reading, chiefly English translations of the Greek authors. The extracts which appear in his note-book are striking passages from Thucydides, Herodotus, and Euripides. But he sadly missed the society which he had left at home, and he remarked that he fancied himself growing wiser every day, not by his own improvement, but from finding how little activity of mind there was around him. One valuable friend, however, he there made, namely, William Jackson of Exeter, the well-known musical composer and author, whose love of literature he admired, and by whose conversation he profited. Jackson on his death left Mr. Rogers his copies of Paradise Lost and the Faërie Queen, both the first editions of those poems.

He soon afterwards formed an acquaintance with Lord and Lady Holland, which grew into a warm friendship. In after years he passed much time at Holland House, Kensington, where Lady Holland was most successful in gathering together a brilliant circle of authors and wits, Whig statesmen and Edinburgh reviewers, aided as she was by the manly good sense and warmth of heart of her husband. Mr. Rogers had a great regard for Lord Holland, in whom he found a kindred love of letters, of civil and religious liberty, and of his uncle Charles Fox; and when he addresses Fox in his poem, he ends,

'Thy bell has tolled!

'But in thy place among us we behold

'One who resembles thee.'

The

In 1802, on the Peace of Amiens, Mr. Rogers again visited Paris. Since he was there last time France had been closed against the English, first by the violence of the Revolution, and afterwards by the war. king and queen whom he saw at mass had been beheaded, the nobility had been driven to emigrate, and Buonaparte was the military and popular sovereign, under the name of the First Consul. The galleries of the Louvre were at this time full of all the choicest pictures and statues of Europe. Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, and Flanders, had been rifled by the French; and the finest works of art, the pride of these several countries, were now to be seen in the Louvre. Even before the newly appointed English ambassador had been received in Paris, the principal artists had rushed

there to see this wonderful collection. Mr. Rogers soon followed them. There he found West the president of the Academy, with his son, also Fuseli, Farrington, Opie with Mrs. Opie, Flaxman, and Shee, as also Townley and Champernown the collectors, his brother-in-law Sutton Sharpe, and Millingen the antiquary, all warm admirers of painting and sculpture. He made acquaintance with many French artists, Denon, Gerard, and Maskerier, and with Canova the Italian. While surrounded by such company his thoughts were chiefly turned to the works of art. He stayed three months in Paris, remaining there after his English friends had all returned home; and he spent the greater part of that time in the Louvre, where he cultivated his taste and formed his judgment upon the best models.

At Paris, and while engaged upon these studies, he wrote his lines addressed to the broken trunk of a statue of Hercules, called the Torso. They describe the feelings with which the student of art and history looked upon that grand statue, which ignorance had wilfully knocked to pieces and left a headless and limbless trunk, and which yet in that broken state the artists studied with wonder, while they acknowledged that it was the most breathing mass of stone, and the most glorious model they possessed; for the works of Phidias had not then been brought away from the Turkish dominions by Lord Elgin. These fourteen lines are the only approach to the sonnet that Mr. Rogers ever made.

In 1803 he made a second tour in Scotland in company with his sister Sarah, where they fell in with

6

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