Sam Rogers

London. Published in the New Monthly Mag: by Colburn & Rentley. Nov.1.1831.

LIVING LITERARY CHARACTERS, NO. XI.

Samuel Rogers.

(With an engraved Likeness.).

In an article in the Edinburgh Review, written some time ago, we believe by Mr. Jeffrey, upon the poetry of Mrs. Hemans, it was observed that Rogers and Campbell had suffered a less decay in popular reputation than their more wild and fiery contemporaries. The fact is, that there are some subjects so happily conceived, that the conception alone is almost sufficient to make the work everlastingly pleasing. And of all such subjects what more captivating than the "Pleasures of Memory ?" This is a theme that always comes home to us-to every one, to the passionate man and the callous-the busy man and the idle. It arrests all-it revolts none. Who can say this of the Parasina, or the Giaour? The simple feelings are universal-the violent passions rare. As the celebrity of the hour dies away, the popularity of poems that embody the latter decreases, though not perhaps the fame. But the gentler sentiments are common in every time; they require no extraordinary natures to sympathise with them; no extraordinary genius to understand; they are for the herd, and with the herd for ever. The affection of the dog to Ulysses delights every age. We are willing to find the poetry more beautiful even than it is, for the same picture would have charmed us in prose. But the passion of Myrrha to her father revolts the beings of a civilized period. Wonderfully as the passion is described in Ovid, we never recur but with disgust to the description. The displeasing nature of the sentiment makes us dead to the power of the poet. Nor is this only the case with the poet that inspires horror. The higher and more tragic creations of terror may fill us with admiration, with awe, but they do not make those passages, which we devour again and again—

"The blessed household voices wont to thrill

Our heart's pure depths with unalloyed delight." Sensible of this, the greatest poets, those who hold the darker passions most at their command, always couple the sternest and fiercest with the most tender and subduing emotions. Read the Macbeth, read even the Iliad, the product of so rude an age-how wonderful the union of the terrible and soft! Let us descend lower. Let us, to enforce our meaning, contrast two men of our own day, both of second-rate, but of no inconsiderable, genius-Mackenzie and Maturin. Mackenzie is immortal; can we say as much of Maturin? Yet we question whether "Melmoth" be not a far higher and richer exertion of mind than the "Man of Feeling;" but there is an unpleasing horror created by the one, a grateful melancholy by the other. The one we do not readily forget, the other we are delighted to recur to. Both writers had one great fault-exaggeration. Mackenzie exaggerated sentiment, and Maturin passion. Exaggeration of sentiment is often concealed by a delicacy of taste, exaggeration of passion never.

A subject felicitously chosen and a style that suits the subjectthese confer a popularity that is lasting enough to surprise us; they

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have done so with Campbell-they have done so with Rogers. But this truth is a proof of their genius, no detraction from it. Ordinary men never do chance on subjects fitted for immortality. Conception is the noblest part of genius. And to make what is a merit seem a reproach would a little resemble the caviller, who, denying Queen Elizabeth's powers of reigning, insisted on those of her ministers.— "Her ministers were so happily chosen !"-" True," was the well remembered answer; "and when did you ever hear of foolish princes choosing wise ministers?"

Mr. Rogers' first work, we believe, was an "Ode to Superstition, and other poems." This was followed by his most popular, certainly not his greatest poem, the "Pleasures of Memory." But though not his greatest poem, how beautiful it really is! What simplicity, what grace, what sweetness! Just let us suppose that Lord Byron had written a poem on the same subject: would it have been equally touching?-certainly not. His pleasures of memory would not have been the pleasures that live for all. Here we have the mirror of the Hungarian wizard-it presents to every man an image like his own, but flattered into beauty.

"As o'er the dusky furniture I bend,

Each chair awakes the feelings of a friend."

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Who does not feel those lines to his heart's core ?-an idiot would! But here is a deeper thought.

"On yon grey-stone, that fronts the chancel door,

Worn smooth by busy feet now seen no more;

Each eve we shot the marble through the ring,

When the heart danced and life was on the wing.

(rather too showy a line, by the way, for the simple one preceding it.)

Alas! unconscious of the kindred earth,

That faintly echoed to the voice of mirth;

The glowworm loves her emerald light to shed,
Where now the sexton rests his hoary head;
Oft as he turned the greensward with his spade,
He lectured every youth that round him played."

This is a picture: the gay-hearted urchins playing on the gravestones-the old sexton pausing on his spade beside them. This, too, is nature and there is something of a moral beneath it, a moral sad, and yet utterly void of gloom. And here, touching on a metaphysical point, how delicately are the metaphysics introduced! how utterly the learning is lost in the poetry!—

"Hark! the bee winds her small but mellow horn,
Blithe to salute the sunny smile of morn;
O'er thymy downs she bends her busy course,
And many a stream allures her to its source:
"Tis noon-'tis night, that eye so finely wrought,
Beyond the search of sense, the soar of thought,
Now vainly asks the scenes she left behind,
Its orb so full, its vision so confined.
Who guides the patient pilgrim to her cell-

Who bids her soul with conscious triumph swell, az e
With conscious truth retrace the mazy clue

Of varied scents that charmed her as she flew?

Hail memory-Hail-thy universal reign

Guards the least link of Being's glorious chain.

It is a pity that the last two lines are a failure, an abrupt commonplace; nothing is worse than a sudden generalism, if we may use the term, for the close of an individual picture; it distracts the attention; it disturbs the single image conjured up-you were gazing on a porHotrait, you are now reading a truism.

Pure, in all that is best in poetry, is the allusion to̟—

But

"The blithe son of Savoy journeying round,

With humble wares, and pipe of merry sound."

every one knows those lines-we would not forget them for half our library.

At this day, it would be merely a common-place criticism to point out the peculiar deficiencies and peculiar beauties of the "Pleasures of Memory;" we all know that it is sweet, polished, touching, and correct; we all know that it is not remarkable for passion or vigour that is to say, it is a poem perfect in its kind, and has not acquired imperfections by straining after attributes inharmonious to the subject. To accuse the "Deserted Village" of wanting the dark splendour of the "Night Thoughts," would be just as absurd as to charge the "Night Thoughts" with their deficiency in the soft melancholy of the "Deserted Village." Exactly in the same manner, it is no fault in Rogers not to aim at the beauties of another. All that we have to ask in a poet is, that he be true to his own peculiar genius; it is, therefore, that in some of his subsequent poems we often have a right to blame Mr. Rogers, not because he avoids, but because, on the contrary, he often unsuccessfully attempts the abrupt and vehement style of his contemporaries. From the publication of the "Pleasures of Memory," to that of "Jacqueline," a long lapse of years had taken place, a vast and mighty impetus had been given to English poetry. The "Roderic" of Southey; the "Marmion" of Scott; the "Sonnets" of Wordsworth; the "Gertrude" of Campbell; the "Irish Melodies" of Moore; the "Corsair" of Byron-these great works had nothing in common with the poetical spirit that reigned over the close of the last century. Previous to "Jacqueline," Rogers had published, in 1798, “An Epistle to a Friend, with other Poems," a volume even more promising than the "Pleasures of Memory." Take it altogether, the "Epistle to a Friend" is the best poetical (non-satiric and non-philosophic) epistle in the English language; and the minor poems are the most pure, the most exquisite fragments of verse, which, in its smaller efforts, generally so trite, the Poetry of that day and that school produced: nay, they are infinitely better than the small poems of Scott or of Southey, and are only equalled among the poets of the later time, by the simplest of Moore's songs, the most stirring of Campbell's ballads, and the noblest of Byron's stanzas. The fragments of "Columbus" followed this volume. We do not esteem them very highly; the style does not chime in with the subject; and though the verses are vivid, not so the pictures they would convey: we are pleased with the colouring in itself, but it does not bring out the figures; in short, the whole wants interest

"Grace without warmth, and beauty without life."