ROGERS AND POLWHELE 315 sider as the prototype of the first part of The Pleasures of Memory.' Only one of his comparisons need be given. He had written in his 'Epistle to a College Friend' While yet 'tis mine to trace the feeling hour The passage with which Polwhele compares thiswhich he intimates was suggested by it-is this: speaking of childhood's loved group revisiting every scene, the tangled wood-walk and the tufted green,' Rogers proceeds Indulgent Memory wakes, and lo, they live! Clothed with far softer hues than Light can give. When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight steals! The comparison of these passages-and they are put in juxtaposition by Mr. Polwhele himself—not only shows the ridiculous nature of his suggestion of plagiarism, but conclusively and sufficiently exhibits the immense superiority of Rogers's poem to the boasted productions of the poetasters of the time. CHAPTER X. State of the Country in 1795-6-Reaction in Parliament-Westminster election, 1796-Dr. Moore and his sons-Rogers's domestic relations -Correspondence with R. Sharp-Brighton in 1797 -Lady JerseyA romance without a dénouement-Brighton in 1798-Sarah Rogers. THERE are but few signs at this period of that lively interest in public affairs which characterised Rogers in earlier days. Many of his first friends were gone. Dr. Price was dead, Dr. Priestley was in exile, William Stone had only lately been acquitted on a charge of high treason for which he had lain two years in Newgate untried; Horne Tooke was cultivating his garden at Wimbledon, after his defeat in the Westminster election; and Fox, though he had headed the poll in the same election was in a state of discouragement at the gloomy aspect of public affairs; Sheridan was enjoying the temporary relief from pecuniary troubles which his new wife's five thousand pounds had given him; and Sharp, Mackintosh, and others of his political friends and acquaintances were keeping comparatively quiet in the vain hope of better days. In the autumn of 1795 there had been a great agitation in the country for reform in Parliament and peace with France. This agitation had been purely political, but there had gone PUBLIC AFFAIRS IN 1795-6 317 on side by side with it a social movement which had serious results. There was almost a famine in the land, and the utmost distress prevailed among the labouring classes. The papers contained frequent reports of death by starvation, and the populace, with just instinct, regarded the war as the chief cause of their sufferings. There had been a great meeting on Copenhagen Fields on the 26th of October 1795, when a remonstrance to the king had been resolved on, complaining of the neglect and contempt his ministers had shown for an address presented to them some time before. On the 29th an unparalleled multitude, estimated at two hundred thousand, ten times as great, it was said, as had ever been seen before, assembled to see the king go to the House of Lords to open Parliament, which had been called together earlier than usual in consequence of the prevailing distress. While waiting for the king the crowd hissed Lord Chatham and the Duke of Gloucester as they passed, hooted the Duke of Portland, and made hostile demonstrations against other wellknown members of the House of Lords. When the king's carriage appeared a storm of hisses and groans broke forth, mingled with loud cries of Bread, bread!' Peace, peace!' and 'Down with Pitt!' Opposite the Ordnance Office a stone struck one of the windows of the state carriage and broke it, and the king thought he had been fired at. When the king arrived at the House of Lords he exclaimed to the Lord Chancellor : 'My lord, I have been shot at.' Later in the afternoon Lord Westmoreland informed the House of Lords that the king had been treated with insult and outrage by the mob, and that the glass of the carriage had been broken by a shot fired from an air gun from the bow window of a house adjoining the Ordnance Office with the object of assassinating his majesty. These events had most painful results. The fears of the sovereign and his advisers had magnified a bread riot into a rebellion, as Louis XVI. had mistaken a revolution for an émeute. The meeting in Copenhagen Fields on Monday was associated with the riot of the following Thursday, and proclamations were issued offering rewards for the apprehension of the ringleaders of the riot, and urging well-affected people to assist in putting down such gatherings as that of Monday, and in preventing the dissemination of 'seditious writings.' The Marquis of Lansdowne courageously accused the Ministry of intending to seize the opportunity to work on the fears of the public in order to get repressive laws passed, and to increase their own power at the expense of freedom. Two Bills were brought in and passed, one entitled 'An Act for the safety and preservation of his majesty's person and government against treasonable and seditious practices and attempts; and the other for the more effectually preventing seditious meetings and assemblies.' The Whig leaders protested against these Acts, but did not even succeed in shortening their duration, which extended in the first case to the whole life of the king and in the second to three years. The Duke of Norfolk declared that the family of Brunswick owed its possession of the throne to the principle of resistance; the Duke of Bedford said the measures constituted a direct attack on RECOLLECTIONS OF FOX 319 the liberty of Englishmen, and Mr. Fox maintained that the Bills totally annihilated Liberty. They were passed, however, and they were not allowed to remain as a dead letter on the statute-book. The first result was to render the Government intensely unpopular, and the second was to discourage all Liberal political action and movement. To these two measures, and to the prosecutions which followed on them, we may attribute the temporary suspension of political action on the part of Rogers and his friends, though the complete discontinuation of his diary, so far as political persons and movements are concerned, dates from a time just previous to the arrest of his friend William Stone on the charge of high treason in May, 1794. 6 His Recollections of Fox' in the volume edited by Mr. William Sharpe begin with a dinner at Mr. William Smith's on the 19th of March, 1796. There was a great gathering of Whigs: Tierney, Courtenay, Sir Francis Baring, Dr. Aikin, Mackintosh, Sir Philip Francis and Dr. Parr, but the talk seems to have been of everything but politics. At Sergeant Heywood's on the 10th of December, Lord Derby, Lord Stanley, Lord Lauderdale, Lambton, Aikin, Smith, and Brogden were present with Fox, and still the talk seems to have been chiefly literary. It is significant, however, that what Fox is reported by Rogers to have said bearing on the politics of the time was pitched in a key of the most profound despondency. I always say, and always think,' said Fox to Rogers, 'that of all the countries in Europe, England will be the last to be free. Russia will be free before England.' A bad prophecy, but a good indication of the feeling of |