Born at Stoke Newington, 30 July 1763. Educated at schools at Stoke Newington and Hackney. Entered his father’s bank about 1775. Contrib. to “Gentleman’s Mag.,” 1781. Visit to Scotland 1789; to Paris 1802. Gained prominent position as poet; also as collector and patron of fine arts. Visits to Italy, 1815 and 1822. Offered Laureateship, but declined it, 1850. Died, in London, 18 Dec. 1855. Buried in Hornsey Churchyard. Unmarried. Works: “An Ode to Superstition” (anon.), 1786; “The Pleasures of Memory” (anon.), 1792; “Epistle to a Friend” (anon.), 1798; “Verses written in Westminster Abbey after the funeral of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox” (anon.), [1806]; “The Voyage of Columbus” (anon.), 1810 (priv. ptd., 1808); “Poems,” 1812; “Miscellaneous Poems” (with E. C. Knight and others; anon.), 1812; “Jacqueline” (anon.), 1814; “Human Life,” 1819; “Italy,” pt. i. (anon.), 1822; pt. ii., 1828; revised edn. of the whole, 1830; “Poems” (2 vols.), 1834. Posthumous: “Poetical Works,” 1856; “Table Talk,” ed. by A. Dyce, 1856; “Recollections,” ed. by W. Sharpe, 1859 (2nd edn. same year). Life: “Early Life,” by P. W. Clayden, 1887; “Rogers and his Contemporaries,” by P. W. Clayden, 1889.

Personal

  He is a good poet, has a refined taste in all the arts, has a select library of the best editions of the best authors in all languages, has very fine pictures, very fine drawings, and the finest collection of Etruscan vases I ever saw; and moreover, he gives the best dinners to the best company of men of talents and genius I know; the best served, and with the best wines, liqueurs, etc…. His books of prints of the greatest engravers from the greatest masters in history, architecture, and antiquities, are of the first class. His house in St. James’s Place, looking into the Green Park, is deliriously situated, and furnished with great taste.

  Rogers is silent,—and, it is said, severe. When he does talk, he talks well; and, on all subjects of taste, his delicacy of expression is pure as his poetry. If you enter his house—his drawing-room—his library—you of yourself say, this is not the dwelling of a common mind. There is not a gem, a coin, a book, thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor. But this very delicacy must be the misery of his existence. Oh the jarrings his disposition must have encountered through life!

  I think you very fortunate in having Rogers at Rome. Show me a more kind and friendly man; secondly, one, from good manners, knowledge, fun, taste, and observation, more agreeable; thirdly, a man of more strict political integrity, and of better character in private life. If I were to choose any Englishman in foreign parts whom I should wish to blunder upon, it should be Rogers.

	Nose and chin would shame a knocker,
	Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker;
	Mouth which marks the envious scorner,
	With a scorpion in each corner,
	Turning its quick tail to sting you
	In the place that most may wring you;
	Eyes of lead-like hue and gummy,
	Carcass pick’d out from some mummy;
	Bowels (but they were forgotten
	Save the liver, and that’s rotten);
	Skin all sallow, flesh all sodden,—
	Form the Devil would fright God in.
	Is’t a corpse stuck up for show,
	Galvanized at times to go?
	With the Scripture in connexion,
	New proof of the resurrection,
	Vampire, ghost, or ghoul, what is it?
	I would walk ten miles to miss it.

  At parting, Rogers gave me a gold-mounted pair of glasses, which I will not part with in a hurry. I really like S. R., and have always found him most friendly.

  What a delightful house it is! It looks out on the Green Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with a delicacy of taste quite unique. Its value does not depend on fashion, but must be the same while the fine arts are held in any esteem. In the drawing-room for example, the chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian forms. The book-case is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccacio. The pictures are not numerous; but every one is excellent. In the dining-room there are also some beautiful paintings. But the three most remarkable objects in that room are, I think, a cast of Pope taken after death by Roubiliac; a noble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he afterwards made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de’ Medici; and, lastly a mahogany table on which stands an antique vase.

  An elegant, politely malignant old lady I think.

  I breakfasted with Mr. Rogers tête-à-tête, staying with him from ten till one o’clock. A very agreeable morning, and I left him with feelings of enhanced respect. There was very little of that severity of remark for which he is reproached. Candour and good sense marked all he said.

  It is a fine thing when a light burns so clear down into the socket, isn’t it? I, who am not a devout admirer of the “Pleasures of Memory,” do admire this perpetual youth and untired energy; it is a fine thing to my mind. Then, there are other noble characteristics about this Rogers. A common friend said the other day to Mr. Kenyon, “Rogers hates me, I know. He is always saying bitter speeches in relation to me, and yesterday he said so and so. But,” he continued, “if I were in distress, there is one man in the world to whom I would go without doubt and without hesitation, at once, and as to a brother, and that man is Rogers.” Not that I would choose to be obliged to a man who hated me; but it is an illustration of the fact that if Rogers is bitter in his words, which we all know he is, he is always benevolent and generous in his deeds. He makes an epigram on a man, and gives him a thousand pounds; and the deed is the truer expression of his own nature. An uncommon development of character, in any case.

  I met Rhymer near your door, and he looked so unusually complacent that I guessed he had been at his old work, endeavouring to make some one dissatisfied…. You must not be disconcerted by his remarks, for, if I may be allowed to parody the observation applied to Charles II., I should say that Rhymer is known never to have said a kind thing, or never to have done an unkind one. He has come to the assistance of many a man of genius in those vicissitudes to which individuals of that class are more than any other liable when they depend on literature for support. Towards artists his good word to would-be patrons, possessed of more gold than taste, has never been wanting; yet, such is his peculiarity that, while ready to serve, he is seldom willing to avoid offending, and evidently finds a pleasure in saying disagreeable things. Even his compliments, and they are few and far between, have something in them which leaves those present in doubt whether they do not admit of another and less kind interpretation, although the individual to whom they are addressed may not be aware of it…. His age and infirmities screen him from the correction which his malice so frequently merits; and, aware of his impunity, he thinks himself privileged to annoy all those with whom he comes in contact. But no, not all; for to the rich and great he is as obsequious as he is insolent to those who are not in a position to gratify his parvenu taste for grandeur.

  Forster called, went with him to Rogers’. Found the old man very cheerful, thinner than when I last saw him, but in very good spirits. He told all his stories “over again.”… Took leave of dear old Rogers once more. I think indeed for the last time. I cannot make out his character. He is surely good-natured, with philanthropic and religious feelings, but his fondness for saying a sharp thing shakes one’s certainty in him: his apparent desire too to produce effect, I think, sometimes awakens doubts of his sincerity in some minds.

  There is something preternatural in the cold, clear, marbly paleness that pervades, and, as it were, penetrates his features to a depth that seems to preclude all change, even that of death itself. Yet there is nothing in the least degree painful or repulsive in the sight, nothing that is suggestive of death.

  It was a curious commentary on his counsel to hear Sydney Smith’s account of Mr. Rogers’s method of comparison. The story is in print, but imperfectly given, and evidently without any consciousness that “the brooding dove” of Shakespeare is concerned in it,—“the brooding dove, ere yet her golden couples are disclosed.” The conversation took place soon after Rogers had given forth his epigram on Lord Dudley:

	“Ward has no heart, they say: but I deny it,
	Ward has a heart;—and gets his speeches by it.”

“Has Rogers written anything lately?” asked somebody; to which another replied,—“No, I believe not. Nothing but a couplet.”
  “Nothing but a couplet!” exclaimed Sydney Smith. Why, what would you have? When Rogers produces a couplet, he goes to bed:

	And the caudle is made:
	And the knocker is tied:
	And straw is laid down:

And when his friends send to inquire,—‘Mr. Rogers is as well as can be expected.’”

  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’s breakfasts were the pleasantest social meetings that can be conceived of. There you met persons of every variety of intellectual and social distinction, eminent men and attractive women, wits, orators, dramatists, travelers, artists, persons remarkable for their powers of conversation, 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 into the lively and graceful flow of conversation of which he gave the example…. Mr. Rogers was of low stature, neither slightly nor sturdily proportioned; his face was rather full and broad than otherwise, and his complexion colorless…. In conversation, Mr. Rogers was one of the most agreeable and interesting of men; he was remarkable for a certain graceful laconism, a neatness and power of selection in telling a story or expressing a thought, with its accessories, which were the envy of the best talkers of his time. His articulation was distinct, just deliberate enough to be listened to with pleasure, and during the last ten to twelve years of his life slightly—and but very slightly—marked with the tremulousness of old age. His ordinary manner was kind and paternal; he delighted to relate anecdotes illustrative of the power of the affections, which he did with great feeling. On occasion, however, he could say caustic things; and a few examples of this kind, which were so epigrammatic as to be entertaining in their repetition, have given rise to the mistake that they were frequent in his conversation.

  Holland House has four-and-twenty youthful pages in it now—twelve for my lord and twelve for my lady; and no clergyman coils his leg up under his chair all dinner-time, and begins to uncurve it when the hostess goes. No wheeled chair runs smoothly in, with that beaming face in it; and ——’s little cotton pocket-handkerchief helped to make (I believe) this very sheet of paper. A half-sad, half-ludicrous story of Rogers, is all I will sully it with. You know, I dare say, that, for a year or so before his death, he wandered and lost himself, like one of the Children in the Wood, grown up there and grown down again. He had Mrs. Procter and Mrs. Carlyle to breakfast with him one morning—only those two. Both excessively talkative, very quick and clever and bent on entertaining him. When Mrs. Carlyle had flashed and shone before him for about three-quarters of an hour on one subject, he turned his poor old eyes on Mrs. Procter, and, pointing to the brilliant discourser with his poor old finger, said (indignantly), “Who is she?” Upon this, Mrs. Procter, cutting in, delivered—(it is her own story)—a neat oration on the life and writings of Carlyle, and enlightened him in her happiest and airiest manner; all of which he heard, staring in the dreariest silence, and then said (indignantly as before), “And who are you?”

  Rogers was unceasingly at war with the late Lady Davy. One day at dinner she called across the table: “Now, Mr. Rogers, I am sure you are talking about me” (not attacking, as the current version runs). “Lady Davy,” was the retort, “I pass my life in defending you.”

  My uncle’s conversation could hardly be called brilliant. He seldom aimed at wit, though he enjoyed it in others. He often told anecdotes of his early recollections and of the distinguished persons with whom he had been acquainted. These he told with great neatness and fitness in the choice of words, as may be understood by an examination of the prose notes of his poems. But the valuable part of his conversation was his good sense joined with knowledge of literature and art, and yet more particularly his constant aim at improvement, and the care that he took to lead his friends to what was worth talking about.

  Whatever place may be assigned to Samuel Rogers among poets, he deserves to hold the highest place among men of taste; not merely of taste for this or that, but of general good taste in all things. He was the only man I have ever known (not an artist) who felt the beauties of art like an artist. He was too quiet to exercise the influence he should have maintained among the patrons of art; but, as far as his own patronage extended, it was most useful. He employed, and always spoke his mind in favor of Flaxman, Stothard, and Turner, when they were little appreciated by their countrymen. The proof of his superior judgment to that of any contemporary collector of art or vertu is to be found in the fact that there was nothing in his house that was not valuable.

  His personal appearance was extraordinary, or rather, his countenance was unique. His skull and facial expression bore so striking a likeness to the skeleton pictures which we sometimes see of Death, that the facetious Sydney Smith (at one of the dressed evening parties …) entitled him the “Death-dandy!” And it was told (probably with truth) that the same satirical wag inscribed upon the capital portrait in his breakfast-room, “Painted in his lifetime.”

  Spedding (of course) used to deny that R. deserved his ill Reputation: but I never heard any one else deny it. All his little malignities, unless the epigram on Ward be his, are dead along with his little sentimentalities; while Byron’s Scourge hangs over his Memory. The only one who, so far as I have seen, has given any idea of his little cavilling style, is Mrs. Trench in her Letters.

  It has been rumored that he was a sayer of bitter things. I know that he was a giver of good things—a kind and amiable patron, where a patron was wanted; never ostentatious or oppressive, and always a friend in need. He was ready with his counsel; ready with his money. I never put his generosity to the test, but I know enough to testify that it existed, and was often exercised in a delicate manner, and on the slightest hint.

  Innumerable were the jokes on the tête morte of Rogers. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, asked him how it was, since he was so well off, he did not set up his hearse; Mackintosh wondered why, when at an election time he could not find accommodation at any hotel in a country town, he did not seek a snug lie down in the churchyard; a French valet, mistaking him for Tom Moore, threw the company into consternation by announcing him as “M. Le Mort;” Scott advised him to try his fortune in medicine in which he would be sure to succeed, if there was any truth in physiognomy, on the strength of his having a perpetual facies Hippocratica; Hook, meeting him at Lord Byron’s funeral, gave him the friendly caution to keep out of the sight of the undertaker lest that functionary should claim him as one of his old customers; but the story which caps all is that in the John Bull, to the effect that when Rogers one night hailed a coach in St. Paul’s churchyard, the jarvey cried—“Ho, ho, my man; I’m not going to be had in that way: go back to your grave!”

  His head was very fine, and I never could quite understand the satirical sayings about his personal appearance which have crept into the literary gossip of his time. He was by no means the vivacious spectre some of his contemporaries have represented him. His dome of brain was one of the amplest and most perfectly shaped I ever saw, and his countenance was very far from unpleasant. His turn of thought was characteristic, and in the main just, for he loved the best, and was naturally impatient of what was low and mean in conduct and intellect.

  My first look at the poet then in his seventy-eighth year, was an agreeable surprise, and a protest in my mind against the malignant injustice which had been done him. As a young man he might have been uncomely if not as ugly as his revilers had painted him, but as an old man there was an intellectual charm in his countenance and a fascination in his manner which more than atoned for any deficiency of personal beauty.

  When I used to go and sit with Mr. Rogers, I never asked him what I should read to him without his putting into my hands his own poems, which always lay by him on his table.

  You could not fancy, when you looked upon him, that you saw a good man. It was a repulsive countenance; to say it was ugly would be to pay it a compliment, and I verily believe it was indicative of a naturally shrivelled heart and contracted soul…. With enormous power to do good, how did Rogers use it? If he lent—and it was seldom he did—to a distressed brother of the pen, he required the return of a loan with interest—when it could be had; if he gave, it was grudgingly and with a shrug. He was prudence personified; some one said of him: “I am sure that as a baby he never fell down unless he was pushed, but walked from chair to chair in the drawing-room, steadily and quietly, till he reached a place where the sunbeams fell on the carpet.”

  Rogers had now [1804] cut himself entirely free from business. His youngest brother Henry had become the active partner and working head of the banking firm, and there was no occasion for the chief partner to trouble himself with its concerns. His income, though not large, was sufficient for one who had only a bachelor’s establishment to maintain, and who “led the life of satisfied desires.” He had no expensive habits beyond those which sprang from a determination to make his house the ideal abode of the man of taste and the man of letters. He had not even the ambition to become the patron of poor authors, though circumstances were continually forcing that duty on him. His wish was to surround himself with what was best, and he chose his friends as he chose his pictures and his furniture,—for their quality in this noblest sense. It soon became known that the charming house in St. James’s Place, about which society was talking, was open to all who had claim to be regarded as men of letters, or artists, or wits, or statesmen: though of the latter, it was chiefly the whigs who found themselves at home.

  He was willing to take great pains and trouble for his friends, his friends’ friends, and even for people who had no claim upon him—whether it were simply providing for their amusement, in obtaining them places in the British Museum, or under the Government (as with Cary, the translator of Dante, and others), or in negotiating with publishers for the publication of their works (as with Wordsworth).

The Pleasures of Memory, 1792

  “The Pleasures of Memory,” by Mr. Rogers, is another effort of the modern muses which calls for admiration; the subject is happily chosen, and its polished flow of verse and tender sentiment have justly made it a favorite with the public.

  It is not uninteresting, even as a matter of speculation, to observe the fortune of a poem which, like the “Pleasures of Memory,” appeared at the commencement of this literary revolution, without paying court to the revolutionary tastes, or seeking distinction by resistance to them…. No production, so popular, was probably ever so little censured by criticism. It was approved by the critics, as much as read and applauded by the people; and thus seemed to combine the applause of contemporaries with the suffrage of the representatives of Posterity.

  He is a very lady-like poet. He is an elegant but feeble writer. He wraps up obvious thoughts in a glittering cover of fine words; it is full of enigmas with no meaning to them; is scrupulously inverted, and scrupulously far-fetched; and his verses are poetry chiefly because no particle, line, or syllable of them reads like prose…. You cannot see the thought for ambiguity of the language, the figure for the finery, the picture for the varnish. The whole is refined and frittered away into an appearance of the most evanescent brilliancy and tremulous imbecility. There is no other fault to be found with the “Pleasures of Memory” than a want of taste and genius.

  The name of Mr. Rogers will naturally awaken the recollection of the delight experienced from the perusal of his “Pleasures of Memory”: thus making this very reminiscence illustrative of the propriety of the title of the poem. That poem, conceived with so much delicacy and truth, and executed with so much care and polish, will maintain the reputation which it has acquired. It is a happy union of the sweetness of Goldsmith with the finish of Pope. It has gone through countless editions, and equally charms the young on the coming, and the aged on the parting, year. ’Tis a sort of staple commodity in the market of booksellers.

  In the “Pleasures of Memory” we are forcibly reminded of Goldsmith and the “Deserted Village.” We feel how deeply the genius of that exquisite writer had affected the mind of Rogers in his youth. There is a striking similarity of style, of imagery, and of subject…. Out of the “Pleasures of Memory” sprung the “Pleasures of Hope.” The direct imitation of both style, manner, subject and cast of subject, by Campbell, is one of the most striking things in the language; the peculiarities of the style and phraseology only, as was natural by an enthusiastic youth, much exaggerated.

  Although its highest passages are not so high as the finest in “The Pleasures or Hope,” it is freer from traces of juvenility, and, with less of ardent enthusiasm, may be said to be better sustained throughout. Yet it also has its more prominent passages; and these, as it strikes me, are the twilight landscape with which it opens; the introduction to the tale of Derwent Lake; the allusion to the Savoyard Boy leaving the Alps; the apostrophe to the Bee, as illustrative of the powers of memory; the affecting reference to a deceased brother; and the lines on Greenwich Hospital.

  “The Pleasures of Memory” is an excellent specimen of what Wordsworth calls “the accomplishment of verse;” and it was well worthy to attract attention and admiration at the time when it appeared; for at that time poetry, with few exceptions, was to be distinguished from prose by versification and little else. “The Pleasures of Memory” is an essay in verse, not wanting in tender sentiment and just reflection, expressed, graceful no doubt, but with a formal and elaborate grace, and in studiously pointed and carefully poised diction, such as the heroic couplet had been trained to assume since the days of Pope.

  Rogers’s “Pleasures of Memory” was not only better than any other imitation of Akenside, but it was better than Akenside. There was a simpler and truer grace of style, due partly to change of literary fashion; a theme pleasant to every reader; and the ease of a man of taste who could give and take refined pleasure, but “whose sails were never to the tempest given.” Samuel Rogers might have become an English author of great mark if, at some time before he was forty years old, his bank had broken.

  The secret of Rogers’ poetical reputation, which lasted for many years, is not easy to understand. The utmost that can be said in favour of the “Pleasures of Memory,” to which he owed his fame, is that it has somewhat of Goldsmith’s sweetness though without his strength, and that the sentiment of the poem claims the reader’s sympathy. But if we seek in poetry for high imaginations, for rare fancy, for an exquisitely felicitous use of language, we shall not find them in the smooth lines of Rogers.

Human Life, 1819

	“I’m told, dear Moore, your lays are sung
	(Can it be true, you lucky man?)
	By moonlight, in the Persian tongue,
	Along the streets of Ispahan.
	“’Tis hard; but one reflection cures,
	At once, a jealous poet’s smart:
	The Persians have translated yours,
	But Lauderdale has mine by heart.”

  These are very sweet verses. They do not, indeed, stir the spirit like the strong lines of Byron, nor make our hearts dance within us, like the inspiring strains of Scott; but they come over us with a bewitching softness that, in certain moods, is still more delightful—and soothe the troubled spirits with a refreshing sense of truth, purity, and elegance. They are pensive rather than passionate; and more full of wisdom and tenderness than of high flights of fancy, or overwhelming bursts of emotion—while they are moulded into grace, at least as much by the effect of the moral beauties they disclose, as by the taste and judgment with which they are constructed.

  The poem itself is one of the most beautiful things in any language. It is human life from the cradle to the tomb, with all its pleasures, aspirations, trials, and triumphs…. Never, either, were the varied scenes of English life more sweetly described.

Italy, 1822–28

  A poem full of moral and descriptive sweetness, and written in the chastened tone of fine taste.

  “Italy,” to our mind, is the freshest and finest of all the compositions of its author—the one most unequivocally his own, and the one whose passages most frequently recur to mind, from their peculiar graces of style and language…. Whatever portion of the writings of Samuel Rogers may die, this tale cannot.

  After the passionate melancholy and intense ideality of “Childe Harold,” the tone of “Italy” will seem languid and its colors faint, especially to the young; but it wears well to the end. Men who have lived through the Byron age, in their own lives, are a little shy of the poetry which is so strongly associated with past conflicts and spent storms; but the mellow wisdom, the genial sympathy, the graceful pictures, and the perfect taste of Rogers, are not fully appreciated till our shadows have begun to lengthen. It is, indeed, a delightful poem; a work of such perfect art that the art is nowhere seen; with just the right amount of personal feeling; with a warm sense of all that is attractive to a poet and a scholar in Italy, a generous judgment of all that is distasteful to an Englishman and a Protestant, and full of charming pictures which seem to demand those exquisite illustrations of Stothard and Turner with which they are so inseparably united in our minds.

  Save on this solitary occasion, however, the amiable Muse of Rogers never forgot what was due to her self-respect, and clung close to the manner of Goldsmith, slowly and faintly relaxing the rigour of versification in a blank verse “Italy,” but never, in a single graceful line, quite reaching the point of poetry.

General

  I can visit the justly-admired author of “The Pleasures of Memory,” and find myself with a friend, who together with the brightest genius possesses elegance of manners and excellence of heart. He tells me he remembers the day of our first meeting at Mr. Dilly’s; I also remember it, and though his modest, unassuming nature held back and shrunk from all appearances of ostentation and display of talents, yet even then I take credit for discovering a promise of good things to come, and suspected him of holding secret commerce with the Muse, before the proof appeared in shape of one of the most beautiful and harmonious poems in our language. I do not say that he has not ornamented the age he lives in, though he were to stop where he is, but I do hope he will not so totally deliver himself over to the arts as to neglect the Muses; and I now publicly call upon Samuel Rogers to answer to his name, and stand forth in the title page of some future work that shall be in substance greater, in dignity of subject more sublime, and in purity of versification not less charming than his poem above mentioned.

  The last Argonaut of Classic English poetry, and the Nestor of our inferior race of living poets.

  I confess that I cannot understand the popularity of his poetry. It is pleasant and flowing enough, less monotonous than most of the imitations of Pope and Goldsmith, and calls up many agreeable images and recollections. But that such men as Lord Granville, Lord Holland, Hobhouse, Lord Byron, and others of high rank in intellect, should place Rogers, as they do, above Southey, Moore, and even Scott himself, is what I cannot conceive. But this comes of being in the highest society in London. What Lady Jane Granville called the Patronage of Fashion can do as much for a middling poet as for a plain girl like Miss Arabella Falconer.

  One of our greatest poets and finest prose writers; who to this unstable fame adds the more imperishable renown of being one of the most honourable men, and most uncompromising friends of civil and religious liberty, who have appeared in any age.

  Professional authors are apt either to sneer at a banker or merchant who obtains applause for transient literary offerings, or to attempt to lure him by lying idealities into their own Slough of Despond. There is hardly a hack in Great Britain, who has not, either in penny newspaper or sentimental magazine, directed his popgun of wit against Samuel Rogers, the banker and poet.

  Rogers is the poet of home; his charm consists in painting the scenes of infancy—portraying the endearments of youth; and he is read by all with such pleasure in mature life, because he recalls ideas and revives images which all have known, but which have been almost forgotten though not destroyed by the cares and anxieties of life.

  Rogers was a poet of culture. His workmanship is artistic in a high degree, his diction as clear and polished as art can make it, and his versification everywhere elegant, refined, and graceful. He paints us finely-finished pictures, suffused with soft and mellow light, and exhibits them in carefully carven frames—pictures that awaken gentle sympathy and stimulate quiet thought—pictures that please without moving us. He is often tender in sentiment and wise in reflection; but he lacks force and originality, and is altogether destitute of passion. He never annoys us with the faults of taste and style which disfigure the writings of some greater poets; but, on the other hand, he never thrills our emotions nor fires our imaginations as they do. He manipulates the heroic couplet with skill and grace.

  Rogers’s title to a place among the representatives of the most brilliant age—the drama apart—of English poetry cannot now be challenged, but his rank is lower than that of any of his contemporaries, and his position is due in great measure to two fortunate accidents: the establishment of his reputation before the advent, or at least the recognition, of more potent spirits, and the intimate association of his name with that of greater men. He has, however, one peculiar distinction, that of exemplifying beyond almost any other poet what a moderate poetical endowment can effect when prompted by ardent ambition and guided by refined taste. Among the countless examples of splendid gifts marred or wasted, it is pleasing to find one of mediocrity elevated to something like distinction by fastidious care and severe toil. It must also be allowed that his inspiration was genuine as far as it went, and that it emanated from a store of sweetness and tenderness actually existing in the poet’s nature.