have a narrative which, to use the expression of Bolingbroke, is nothing but "an authorized romance," and is generally attractive and popular in exact proportion to its faultiness. History at its best is but incomplete and unsatisfying. It tells us something, it makes us wish for more. The figures which move across its page are, after all, but puppets guided and informed by the hand of the showman. We do not recognize in them men of like passions with ourselves; we perceive the outward form and gesture, but we know little of the inner searchings of the heart, of their strivings, ideals, sympathies and sorrows. No one indeed can adequately | reveal these things to us; they must be sought by ourselves. And much, at least, that will interpret to us the spirit of an age, if that age were fortunate in the production of great writers, can be found in the intelligent study of its literature.

made America independent; he was a young man of thirty when Louis XVI. was beheaded; he was comparatively in the prime of life when the battle of Waterloo sent the first Napoleon into exile; and when he died Louis Napoleon was on the throne of France. In his younger days he was the friend of Fox, of Sheridan, and of Adam Smith; later on he was intimate with Moore and Byron, with Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott; and in old age Lord Tennyson, Charles Dickens, and Sir Henry Taylor were welcomed at his table. It is strange to think of Rogers listening in his youth to the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and when the weight of years was on him visiting the famous Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.

There is perhaps no period of our history more pregnant of events than that through which Rogers lived; but although like every intelligent man he paid some Such an age pre-eminently was that attention to politics, the main interest of which we have been considering. The his life was literature. Above all things annals of Holland in the seventeenth cen- he loved poetry, and wished to be regarded tury are strewn thick with the records of as a poet. This was the real business of famous men and famous deeds. Never his life; he did not grudge years to the with smaller means did any people achieve revision and elaboration of a poem, and greater results or win distinction in so the popular success he achieved is as remany ways as did the people of the north-markable as his perseverance. The secret ern Netherlands in the "glorious days of Frederick Henry," and the story of what they did, and still more of how they did it, is extremely instructive, as well as impressive and romantic. Yet it can never be told in its completeness merely by the study of protocols and despatches, or by comparisons of statistics or by researches among musty State documents. These are but the dry bones of history; and he who would lay sinews and flesh upon them, must study likewise, and deeply, the contemporary literature which has come down to us in rich abundance, as a part of the living tissue of the times themselves. GEORGE EDMUNDSON.

From The Leisure Hour.
SAMUEL ROGERS.

IN the literary history of England, the author of "The Pleasures of Memory " occupies a remarkable position.* He was born in 1763 and died in 1855, so that his life was contemporary with the most striking events of modern times. While still in his teens he heard of the revolution that

Rogers and his Contemporaries. By 'P. W. Clay

den. Two vols. Smith, Elder, and Co.

of Rogers's poetical reputation, which lasted for many years, is not easy to understand. The utmost that can be said in favor 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 imagination, for rare fancy, for an exquisitely felicitous use of language, we shall not find them in the smooth lines of Rogers. What we do find is good taste, right feeling, and, in his best poem, " Italy," a power of pictorial representation that makes that volume a pleasant companion in Italian travel. But these gifts will not suffice to sustain a poet in the fight for fame; and if Rogers's poems still engage attention, it is for the sake of their delightful illustrations, upon which his wealth enabled him to expend £15,000.

Circumstances had much to do with Rogers's early fame as a poet and with his after success in life. From early manhood to extreme old age the road was made smooth for him. In 1792, when he published "The Pleasures of Memory," Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott had given no sign of the genius that was des tined to give a new life to English poetry;

Byron was a child in frocks and Shelley | of Rogers as a poet and his verse, an infant in arms. Blake, Cowper, and though never elevated, is far from being Crabbe were indeed at that date the only without merit — there can be little doubt living poets who deserved the name, and that in our time the attraction of his name the erratic genius of Blake was scarcely is due chiefly to the friends and associates recognized. Rogers's condition in life, he gathered round him. We have no too, was in the highest degree prosperous. such record of the talk at his table as we His father was a rich banker, and at the find of Johnson and his associates in the age of thirty Samuel became the senior inimitable pages of Boswell, and Rogers partner of the house, with an income of himself was a small man compared with £5,000 a year. He had a brother in the "the great Cham of letters," but the most firm to whom he was able to confide the distinguished men of the century were his management of the business; and so frequent guests. smoothly did the wheels of life run that he was at leisure to devote his time to the cultivation of verses and to the society of friends.

At the age of forty Rogers took the house in St. James's Place, overlooking the Green Park, which for fifty years was the resort of all that was brightest in intellect and most brilliant in position in London society. No poet, probably, with the exception of Sir Walter Scott, ever welcomed such celebrities under his roof, and Scott's reign in society as the "Monarch of Parnassus" and as the "Great Unknown," while greatly more brilliant, was far shorter than that of Rogers.

The house itself, apart from its host, was a great attraction, and showed in every portion of it the poet's fine taste. Some men who collect beautiful objects make their homes like museums or old curiosity shops, but every account of Rogers's house agrees with that given by the poet's biographer, who observes that "the general impression was one of complete harmony, and that impression was confirmed by the effect of every detail."

What a delightful house it is!" Macaulay wrote to his sister; "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 chimneypieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian forms. The bookcase is painted by Stothard in his very best manner, with groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccaccio. The pictures are not numerous, but every one is excellent. In the diningroom 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 Roubilliac; a noble model in terracotta 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.

Whatever estimate a reader may form

When Coleridge talked of poetry generally, and Wordsworth of his own verse, to him the most attractive of themes, and Scott, the least self-conscious of poets, related his capital stories, and the Duke of Wellington showed his wide experience of affairs, and Sydney Smith set the table in a roar with his wit, wisdom and mirth must have joined in yielding delightful talk. It was something even to see such men as breakfasted or dined with Rogers, but to meet them in the ease of social intercourse was a pleasure long to be remembered.

Rogers gave some of the best dinners in London, but he is better remembered by his ten o'clock breakfasts, an invitation to which was highly coveted. He thought that the art of conversation should be cultivated, and considered that greater knowledge was to be gained from intercourse with able men than from books. It may be so in some cases, but the memory of what is said is apt to grow fainter and fainter, while the recollection of what we read may be strengthened by a second and a third perusal. Much, however, depends upon the individual. Books to some of us afford one of the greatest delights in life, and we prefer the companionship in the study of Shakespeare and Milton, of Wordsworth and Scott, to the best society that London has to offer. On the other hand there are many men full of intelligence and information who owe little to books and much to the living voice. Rogers, we are told, always aimed at improvement, and took care to lead his friends to what was worth talking about. "I never," writes his nephew, “left his Company without feeling my zeal for knowledge strengthened, my wish to read quickened, and a fresh determination to take pains and do my best in everything that I was about."

his biographer writes as follows:-
Of Rogers's tact in entertaining guests

The company at his table was carefully chosen, and men and women who met there

When at Sir William's board sit
you
His claret flows, but not his wit;
There but half a meal we find,

Stuffed in body, starved in mind.
And he carefully avoided providing for his
guests in this sense but half a meal. The in-
tellectual entertainment was as much cared
for as the other part of the food.

66

He

rarely found themselves antipathetically mixed. | Newfoundland dog, called "Portrait of a DisThe table was not too large for the conversation tinguished Member of the Humane Society," to be general; the company was not numerous and he expressed to Rogers his gratification. enough to break up into groups. When the "Yes," said Rogers, "I thought the ring of host spoke, his guests listened. His good the dog's collar well painted." He was one things were not for his next neighbor only, but day looking at the early pages of a presentafor all. So with his chief guests; they had the tion copy of a new book. "Is that the conwhole company for audience. Sharp's acute tents you are looking at?" asked the author, observations, Mackintosh's wonderful talk, who had just given it to him. 'No, the disWordsworth's monologue, Sydney Smith's contents," answered Rogers, pointing to the irrepressible fun, were not confined to their list of subscribers. He was hardest perhaps next neighbors, but were for the whole group. on men who flattered him in order that they People went away, therefore, not merely re- might pose in society as his friends. One of marking what agreeable people sat by them these persisted in trying to walk home with at dinner, but what a pleasant party it was. him one night from an evening party. Rogers Rogers once wrote as an epigram: — had already put his arm into that of Mr. Hay. ward, whom he wished to accompany him, and the sycophant made the excuse for joining them on the plea that he did not like walking alone. "I should have thought, sir," said Rogers, "that no one was so well satisfied with your company as yourself! always regretted that he had never married, and regarded married life as the best and Yet he used Rogers's sharp wit did not even spare fittest for both men and women. his friends, and it is possible that his pro- ried, for he was sure to find the next morning that it mattered little whom a man marpensity to exercise it made him many that he had married somebody else. A memenemies. Carlyle, who knew him in his ber of Parliament had been stopped in Italy old age, writes of his "large blue eyes, by brigands, but was released, and Rogers cruel, scornful," and of his "sardonic used to say he owed his escape to his wife. shelf-chin," and his very unattractive ap-"They wanted to carry off P— to the mounpearance no doubt added acidity to his comments. But, save in cases of ignorance and presumption, Rogers was probably not severe at heart; and if in his earlier years he satirized his friends, so that it is said people sometimes contrived to be the last to leave his house in order that the host might pass no comment upon them, he became gentler and more charitable in his old age.

Turner's biographer tells us that Turner and Rogers got on very well together, though Rogers did not spare him. He was one day admiring a beautiful table in Turner's room. It was wonderful, he said; "but," he added, "how much more wonderful it would be to see any of his friends sitting round it!" He was one of Turner's earliest admirers. "Ah," ," he would say, looking through his telescoped hand, "there's a beautiful thing! And the figures, too, one of them with his hand on the horse's tail not that I can make them out, though." Landseer heard that he had expressed his admiration for the picture of a

to say

tains, but she flung her arms round his neck, and rather than take her with them they let him go.'

It will be seen that some of the remarks

quoted have less of wit than of churlishness. Perhaps one of his smartest sayLord Dudley, who had attacked a poem of ings is an epigram on Ward, afterwards his in the Quarterly Review.

Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it. On the other hand his friends did not Spare Rogers, and his cadaverous appearance was the source of many jests, which he took in good part.

One day, when he had been visiting the Catacombs with a party of friends, Rogers emerged last. Good-bye, Rogers, "said Lord Dudley, shaking his hand; and everybody understood the joke. Lord Alvanley asked him why, if he could afford it, he did not set up his hearse; and the story used to be told that on hailing a cab in St. Paul's Churchyard the affrighted cabman had exclaimed, "No, not you!" and had taken him for a ghost. Another story was that Rogers, upon telling Ward that a watering-place to which he had gone was so full that he could not find a bed, Ward replied, "Dear me, was there no room in the churchyard?"

Sidney Smith is stated to have joked
Rogers as nobody else dared.
My dear

Rogers," he said one day, "if we were both in America, we should be tarred and feathered, and lovely as we are by nature, I should be an ostrich and you an emu."

their cherished recollections of his kind-
ness to them in their childhood. It was
his yearly custom to have a Twelfth Night
party, when the beautiful rooms were all
opened, and on the table in the centre of
one of them was a splendid ice-cake, half
of which was made of wood. An old lady,
now in the eighties, recollects being pres-
ent at one of those festivities, and how,
being the youngest child, she was made
queen of Twelfth Night.

crimson silk, and the king, little Martin Shee,
She remembers sitting in state on a sofa of
sat by her. Mr. Rogers came up to her, and
dropped on one knee and kissed her hand.
He was followed by Tom Moore, Lord Byron,
"Conversation ""
Sharp, Boddington, and
others. Mr. Rogers then amused the chil-
dren by conjuring. More than thirty years
after this Crabb Robinson said, Rogers
loves children, and is fond of the society of
young people.

It would convey a very unjust impression of Rogers if we were to dwell too much on the pleasure he took in saying severe things. In spite of his occasional acerbity he was a man of warm affections, and having gained friends "grappled them to his soul with hooks of steel." It was not of a cold-blooded cynic that a man like Sir Walter Scott could say, " I really like Samuel Rogers, and have always found him most friendly;" or to whom Wordsworth could write, "Be assured, my dear friend, that in pleasure and pain, in joy and sorrow, you are often and often in my thoughts." A lady once told him, with great truth, that no one ever said severer things or did kinder deeds. "Borrow five hundred pounds of Rogers," said It would be a great mistake to suppose Campbell, "and he will never say a word that his sayings were always dipped against you till you want to repay him." in vinegar. Some of his gentler utterAnd the poet spoke from experience. He was indeed wisely charitable, and delighted in helping men who were willing to help themselves. He did good by stealth also, and made no parade of his generous deeds; and there are men still living, who, like Dr. Mackay, are ready to testify to his disinterested kindness.

The old bachelor's love of children, a love returned with interest, is another beautiful trait in his character. He had once said to Lady Herschel, “I can never gaze at a sunset without uttering a prayer.' And Lady Herschel, writing to him in his declining age, and speaking of her grandchildren, tells him, "Your name is planted in their young hearts, where it will bloom and fructify in beauty and fragrance when our generation is transplanted beyond the most glorious of sunsets." Mrs. Gladstone, writing a few years before his death, says, "I gave your loving messages to my little rosebud, who sends you kisses. I shall bring her to you, please God, before the spring.' "One of the acts of his old age," says Mr. Clayden, "still vividly remembered by the remaining members of the groups of children who were round. the table, was to say to them just before the party broke up, We have eaten together, we have played together, but we have never prayed together; let us do so now,' and he made them kneel while he repeated the Lord's Prayer."

There are many hundreds of persons now living, Mr. Clayden says, who speak of Rogers with the warmest affection from

ances are wise and true, and therefore "worthy the reading." At a large dinnerparty Rogers remarked, when the ladies had left the room, "There have been five separate parties, every one speaking above the pitch of his natural voice, and therefore there could be no kindness expressed; for kindness consists not in what is said, but how it is said." He was a great advocate for committing good poetry to memory, and said "he treasured up in his mind the most exquisite lines that he met with, and repeated them to himself as he lay awake at night, or as he walked on Hampstead Heath, and was the better for them all his life."

Rogers had more than one love passage in his youth, but either the lady proved faithless or the gentleman indifferent; and there are no indications that his heart was deeply moved. Though he lived so much in society and apparently for soci. ety, the poet was not wanting in serious thoughts, The lines of Cowper, The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown, were, we are told, often on his lips. that this singularly prosperous man was deeply conscious of his own deficiencies may be gathered from a letter in which, after counselling a scapegrace, and saying that what he regards as an affliction may be the happiest event in his life, Rogers adds, "When I look back on mine, I feel that I am too faulty myself to blame

And