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which your knowledge of life and materials for art would so enable you to appreciate and put upon record, you will yet, perhaps, excuse the few ideas I try to put together, wishing only that I had your eyes to see, with your taste and judgment to select what were best to note down, and what most worthy to remember.”

After condoling with him on the loss of Lord Holland, whom he had last met in company with Moore and Rogers, Wilkie proceeds: "Could I see you in quiet, as in Brighton and in St. James' Place, and in a suitable frame of mind for lighter subjects, what a deal the journey we have made would suggest for discussion! Mr. William Woodburn, who is with me, frequently speaks of you; and your name was often mentioned, as we passed in review at the Hague, Amsterdam, at Munich and at Vienna, the richest stores of European art; among which we saw in those places two great masters, almost in their greatest triumphs— Rubens and Rembrandt; and we scarcely know any one who could better judge of their splendors than yourself."

It should not be forgotten that Rogers was one of the few who stood by Sheridan in his last days; supplying his pecuniary needs to a great extent, and manifesting a timely sympathy towards him. It was discovered, after Sheridan's death, that sums of money which had been supposed to come from other high quarters to minister to his by no means slender wants were in reality contributed by Rogers. From an article entitled Gore House, published in the New Monthly Magazine, in 1849, we transcribe a passage of gossip, that may pass for what it is worth:

"The number of guests was not yet complete. the following order:

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They arrived in

Slowly, with the foot of age, his head bent forward and his hands extended, came Mr. S— R—, endowed alike with the gifts of Plutus and Apollo, and enjoying, perhaps, a higher reputation for the possession of each than he deserved. If the couplet ascribed to Lady B- be really hers, her ladyship seems to have thought his most celebrated poem somewhat over-praised; it ran thus:

Of R- -s's Italy, Luttrell relates

That it would have been dished were it not for the plates.'

In this opinion I do not, however, coincide, believing some of his Ausonian fragments—above all, those descriptive of Venice - to be the finest he ever wrote, and worthy, of themselves alone, to place him high amongst poets. Of the peculiarities of which I had heard so much, but one was strikingly exemplified - his fondness for female admiration. Other men have been anxious to engross the attention of a beautiful woman, before it fell to the lot of Mr. R to attempt it; but very few, I imagine, have tried to turn it in the same direction. Like a young Frenchman whom I formerly knew in Paris, his motto has been, - not comme je l'aime!' but comme elle m'adore!' Goldsmith is said to have been jealous if a pretty woman attracted more notice than himself; and it was no uncommon thing for R. to sulk for a whole evening, if the prettiest woman in the company failed to make much of him."

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We have the curtain agreeably lifted from the social converse of Rogers, in the following little passage from Mr. Bryant's account of his visit to the veteran bard: "There are not," says Mr. B., more beautiful lines in the English language, - there are certainly none so beautiful in the writings of the author, - as those of Mrs. Barbauld, which the poet Rogers is fond of repeating to his friends, in his fine, deliberate manner, with just enough of tremulousness in that grave voice of his to give his recitation the effect of deep feeling :

Life! we've been long together,

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather.

'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 't will cost a sigh, a tear;

Then steal away, give little warning,

Choose thine own time;

Say not good-night, but, in some happier clime,

Bid me good-morning.'

It makes the thought of death cheerful to represent it thus, as Life looking in upon you with a glad greeting, amidst fresh airs and glorious light. The lines, we infer, were written by Mrs. Barbauld in her late old age, and I do not wonder that the aged poet, who some years since entered upon the fifth score of his years, should find them haunting his memory."

The subject of the preceding sketch died, on the morning of the eighteenth of December, 1855, at his house in St. James' Place, in the presence of Dr. Beattie (the physician and friend of Campbell) and Mr. E. Paine, his attendant. The pen of a brother poet (Bryant) thus announced the event to his readers in the New World, in the columns of the Evening Post, of New York.

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"The death of the poet Rogers seems almost like the extinction of an institution. The world, by his departure, has one object the less of interest and reverence. The elegant hospitality which he dispensed for nearly three-quarters of a century, and in which Americans had a large share, is brought to an end, and a vacuity is created which no Englishman can supply. Rogers loved to speak of his relations with Americans. Three American Presidents,' he used to say, have been entertained under my roof;' and then he would enumerate, in his succinct way, the illustrious men, founders of our republic, or eminent in its later history, who had been his guests. He claimed an hereditary interest in our country. On the news of the battle of Lexington, his father put on mourning. Have you lost a friend?' somebody asked him, who saw this indication of sorrow. 'I have lost a great many,' was the answer, my friends in New England.' "Rogers' breakfasts were the pleasantest social meetings that can be conceived of. Here you met persons of every variety of intellectual and social distinction, eminent men and attractive women, wits, orators, persons remarkable for their powers of conversation, artists, dramatists, travellers—all of whom found themselves on the easiest terms with their venerable host, whose noon of life was reached in the last century. Even bores, in his society, which discouraged all tediousness, and in the respect which his presence inspired, seemed to lose their usual character, and to fall involuntarily to the lively and graceful flow of conversation, of which he gave the example. The following little incident will show with how good a grace he could welcome a stranger to his hospitable dwelling. On one occasion he met an American, for the first time, at a literary breakfast, at the table of Mr. Everett, who, while abroad, was never wanting in obliging and friendly attentions to his countrymen. Where are your lodgings?' he asked of the American. In St. James' Place,' was the answer. 'Come with me,' said Mr. Rogers, and I will show you the nearest way to St. James' Place.' He took his new acquaint

ance into that part of London which is sometimes called Belgravia, and pointed out to him the stately rows of spacious mansions lately erected to embellish the great capital of England: then, passing through the Park of St. James, fresh in the beauty of early June he arrived at the gate of a small garden. Taking a key from his pocket, he opened the gate, and, following a little walk among shrubbery and trees, on which innumerable sparrows were chirping, he entered a house by the back door, and introduced the American to his own home. After he had given him a little time to observe the objects of art which it contained, he dismissed him by the front door, which opened into St. James' Place. 'You see,' said he, 'I have brought you by the nearest way to St. James' Place. Remember the house, and come to breakfast with me to-morrow morning.'

"The mention of sparrows in his garden reminds us of an anecdote of which they were the subject. I once used to feed sparrows,' said Mr. Rogers; but one day, when I was throwing them some crumbs for their breakfast, a gentleman said to me," Do you see those birds on the tree yonder, how they keep aloof, and do not venture down, while these on the ground are feasting at their leisure? Those yonder are the females; these which you are feeding are the gentlemen sparrows: they keep their mates at a distance." Since that day I feed sparrows no more.'

"Rogers began his poetical career early. One of his acquaintances was speaking of the little well-known song of his, familiar to our grandmothers, beginning thus:

'Dear is my little native vale;

The ring-dove builds and warbles there;

Close by my cot she tells her tale

To every passing villager;

The squirrel leaps from tree to tree,

And shells his nuts at liberty.'

"I wrote that song at sixteen years of age,' said Rogers. Yet, though the production of an immature age, it has all the better characteristics of his later poetry, and it shows how remarkably early they were acquired. In his Pleasures of Memory,' very elaborately composed, he adopted the carefully-measured versification in fashion at the time it appeared, with its unvaried periods, its antithetic turns,

and its voluntary renunciation of the power of proportioning the expression to the thought. In his Human Life,' a later and finer poem, he shows that his taste had changed with the taste of the age; he broke loose from the old fetters, indulging in a freer modulation of numbers, though not parting with anything of their harmony and sweetness, and studying a more vigorous and direct phraseology. 'Human Life' is the best of his longer poems, and that in which his genius is seen to the best advantage. It deals with life in its gentler and less stormy moods, whether of pleasure or of sadness, the sunshine and the shadows of common life. The poem is of a kind by which a large class of readers is interested, and contains passages which, once read, are often recurred to, and keep their place in the memory.

"The illustrated edition of his poems is the only work of the kind with which we are perfectly satisfied. To illustrate adequately by the pencil the writings of an eminent poet, is one of the most difficult undertakings in the world. The fine taste of Rogers in the arts, and his intimacy with the greatest artists of his country, gave him a great advantage in this respect, and we have heard that the designs which embellish that edition of his works were selected from a much larger number made for the purpose.

"In approaching the close of a life so much prolonged beyond the usual lot of man, -a life the years of which circumscribed the activity of three generations, he contemplated his departure with the utmost serenity. The state of man after death he called the great subject, and calmly awaited the moment when he should be admitted to contemplate its mysteries. I have found life in this world,' he used to say, 'a happy state; the goodness of God has taken care that none of its functions even the most inconsiderable- should be performed without sensible pleasure; and I am confident that in the world to come the same care for my happiness will accompany me.'

"Mr. Rogers was of low stature, neither slightly nor sturdily proportioned; his face was rather full and broad than otherwise, and his complexion colorless. He always wore a frock-coat. 'I will not go to court,' he used to say, and for one reason among others, that I will not wear any other coat than this.' 'The other day,' he once added, ‘I sent my clothes to the palace, and a man in them.' The man whom he meant was Wordsworth, who came to London as

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