and the poet of the Ancient Mariner (as yet unwritten) has published his little booklet with Mr. Cottle, of Bristol, in which are some modest verses signed C. L. And Charles Lamb (for whom those initials stand) is just now in his twenty-first year, and is living in humble lodgings in Little Queen Street, London, from which he writes to Coleridge, saying that "Burns was a God of my idolatry." And in that very year (1796) the dismalest of tragedies is to overshadow those humble lodgings of Little Queen Street. Of this and of Coleridge and of Wordsworth, we shall have somewhat to say in the chapter we open upon next.

CHAPTER VIII

E have still in our mind's eye, and very

WE

pleasantly, that quaint old clergyman of Hampshire, who wrote about the daws, and the swallows, and the fern-owl, in a way that has kept the name of Gilbert White alive, for a great many years. And who that has read them can ever forget the stories of that winning Hampshire lady, whose fame takes on new greenness with every spring-time? Following upon our talk of this charming authoress, we had a little discursive mention, in our last chapter, of certain books which at the close of the last century, or early in this, were written for boys and girls; chiefest among these we noted those written by that excellent woman, Miss Edgeworth. We spoke of Miss Roche, who gushed over in the loves of Amanda and Mortimer-those fond and sentimental Chil

dren of the Abbey; and of Miss Porter, with her gorgeous heroics about Poland and Scotland, and of Mrs. Radcliffe's stunning Mysteries of Udolpho. We had a glimpse of the strange work and life of William Beckford son of the rich Lord Mayor Beckford; and we closed our chapter over the grave of that brilliant poet and wrecked man Robert Burns.

That grewsome death of the great Scotch singer occurred in a miserable house of a disorderly street in Dumfries, within four years of the close of the last century; his children — without any mastership to control, and the love that should have guided dumb — wandering in and out; no home comforts about them; the very necessities of life uncertain and precarious; all hopes narrowed for them, and all memories of theirs full of wildest alternations of joyousness and fright.

A Banker Poet.

You have perhaps read and enjoyed a poem called The Pleasures of Memory. It has tender passages in it; it has an easy, melodious swing:

"Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village green,
With magic tints to harmonize the scene;
Stilled is the hum that thro' the hamlet broke,
When round the ruins of their ancient oak
The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play
And games and carols closed the busy day.

Up springs, at every step to claim a tear,

Some little friendship formed and cherished here;
And not the lightest leaf, but trembling teems
With golden visions and romantic dreams.

This poem, with echoes of Goldsmith in it, with echoes of Dryden, with echoes of Cowper all caught together by a hand that was most deft, and by a taste that was most fastidious

was written

and published in London, four years before Burns died, by the poet-banker Samuel Rogers.* It is not a name that I feel inclined to glorify very much, or that should be honored with any large reverence; but it is brought specially to the reader's notice here, because the life, career, and accomplishment of the man offers so striking a contrast to that of the Scottish poet who was his contemporary. They were born within four years

*Samuel Rogers, b. 1763; d. 1855. His Pleasures of Memory, published 1792; Italy, 1822-28.

of each other. One under the bare roof of an Ayrshire cottage, the other amid the luxuries of a banker's home in London; one caught inspiration amongst the hills and the woods; the other was taught melody in the drawing-rooms and libraries of London; one wrested his conquests in the kingdom of song, single-handed; and the other, his lesser and feebler ones, bolstered with all the appliances that wealth could give, or long culture suggest. The poetry of the one is rich, individual, and spirited, with sources in nature and in the passions of the man; the poetry of the other has only those congruous and tamer harmonies, whose sources lie in the utterance of deeper and stronger singers before him. Yet the life of that Ayrshire poet was a miserable failure; and the life of this other, Samuel Rogers, was-as the world counts things

a complete success. No half-starved hildren pulled at his skirts for bread. All luxuries were about him, and from the beginning life flowed with him as calmly as a river.

Of his early history there is not much to be said. We know that he was born at Newington Greenan old suburb lying directly north of the city, tow