of his Poems. It was succeeded, in 1814 by his Jacqueline, in 1819 by his Human Life, and in 1822 by the First Part of his Italy, which was not completed till several years after, and which closes the series of his works. During the long remainder of his days he confined himself to a few copies of occasional verses, one of them composed so late as 1853.†-Of all that Mr. Rogers has written, The Pleasures of Memory and the Epistle to a Friend have been generally the most admired: it is questionable, however, if Human Life will not be regarded by posterity as his master-piece,—as pre-eminent in feeling, in graceful simplicity of diction, and in freedom of versification.

Mr. Rogers commenced life by performing the duties of a clerk in his father's banking-house: but after inheriting a large share of the concern, he ceased to take an active part in its management; and, himself an object of interest to society, he associated on familiar terms, during more than two generations, with all who were most distinguished for rank and political influence, or most eminent in literature and art.-Genius languishing for want of

* Published anonymously: see Literary Gazette for January 19, 1822, where its reviewer thinks "there can be little hesitation in ascribing it to Southey."

See the lines, "Hence to the altar," &c., in his Poems, p. 305, ed. 1853.

patronage was sure to find in Mr. Rogers a generous patron. His purse was ever open to the distressed :—of the prompt assistance which he rendered in the hour of need to various well-known individuals there is ample record; but of his many acts of kindness and charity to the wholly obscure there is no memorial—at least on earth.

The taste of Mr. Rogers had been cultivated to the utmost refinement; and, till the failure of his mental powers a short time previous to his death, he retained that love of the beautiful which was in him a passion: when more than ninety, and a prisoner to his chair, he still delighted to watch the changing colours of the evening sky, -to repeat passages of his favourite poets, or to dwell on the merits of the great painters whose works adorned his walls. By slow decay, and without any suffering, he died in St. James's Place, 18th December 1855.

From my first introduction to Mr. Rogers, I was in the habit of writing down, in all their minutiæ, the anecdotes, &c. with which his conversation abounded: and once on my telling him that I did so, he expressed himself pleased, the rather, because he sometimes had the mortification of finding impatient listeners. Of those memoranda, which gradually accumulated to a large mass, a selection is contained in the following pages; the subjects being arranged (as far as such miscellaneous matter would

admit of arrangement) under distinct heads; and nothing

having been inserted which was likely to hurt the feelings of the living.

EDITOR.

RECOLLECTIONS

OF THE

TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS.

I was taught by my mother, from my earliest infancy, to be tenderly kind towards the meanest living thing; and, however people may laugh, I sometimes very carefully put a stray gnat or wasp out at the window. My friend Lord Holland, though a kind-hearted man, does not mind killing flies and wasps; he says, "I have no feeling for insects.”— When I was on the Continent with Richard Sharp, we one day observed a woman amusing her child by holding what we at first thought was a mouse tied to a string, with which a cat was playing. Sharp was all indignation at the sight; till, on looking more closely, he found that the supposed mouse was

a small rat; upon which he exclaimed, “Oh, I have no pity for rats!”—People choose to give the term vermin to those animals that happen to like what they themselves like; wasps eat peaches, and they call them vermin.-I can hardly persuade myself that there is no compensation in a future existence for the sufferings of animals in the present life,*. for instance, when I see a horse in the streets unmercifully flogged by its brutal driver.

I well remember one of the heads of the rebels upon a pole at Temple-Bar,—a black shapeless lump. Another pole was bare, the head having dropt from it.t

In my childhood, after doing any thing wrong, I used always to feel miserable from a consciousness

* Compare a poem On the Future Existence of Brutes, by Miss Seward,-Poet. Works, ii. 58.-ED.

"The last heads which remained on the Bar were those of Fletcher and Townley. 'Yesterday,' says a news-writer of the 1st of April, 1772, 'one of the rebels' heads on the Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now remaining."" P. Cunningham's Handbook of London, sub Temple-Bar.--ED.