at a very great age, I have heard her say that “she would go down upon her knees to them, if they would only be reconciled to her."* I never saw Burns: I was within thirty miles of Dumfries when he was living there; and yet I did not go to visit him; which I have regretted ever since. I think his Cottar's Saturday-Night the finest pastoral in any language.. How incapable of estimating Burns's genius were the worthy folks of Edinburgh! Henry Mackenzie (who ought to have known better) advised him to take for his model in song-writing-Mrs. John Hunter !t * See Addenda at the end of the Table-Talk. On this passage an accomplished northern critic (Mr. Carruthers) has remarked;-"Mr. Rogers was in error here. Henry Mackenzie from the first hailed Burns as a genius of no ordinary rank, irrespective of his humble condition in society. It was Dr. Gregory who recommended the poems of Mrs. Hunter to Burns, not as his model in song-writing, but to show how much correctness and high polish enhance the value of short occasional poems." The Inverness Courier for February 14th, 1856.-As a writer of songs, Mrs. Hunter is, no doubt, immeasurably inferior to Burns: but her Cherokee Death-Song, and several other small pieces which she wrote for music, are far from contemptible: Bee her Poems, 1802.-ED.. His Sir John Henry Moore, who died in his twentyfourth year, possessed considerable talent. L'Amour timide is very pretty.. ["L'Amour timide. If in that breast, so good, so pure, Compassion ever lov'd to dwell, Pity the sorrows I endure; The cause-I must not, dare not tell. The grief that on my quiet preys—* That rends my heart-that checks my tongue, I fear will last me all my days, But feel it will not last me long."] Marivaux'st Marianne is a particular favourite with me: I have read it six times through; and I * Mr. Rogers, I believe, was not aware that the second stanza is taken from Montreuil; "Ne me demandez plus, Sylvie, Quel est le mal que je ressens. C'est un mal que j'auray tout le temps de ma vie, Mais je ne l'auray pas long-temps." Œuvres. p. 602, ed. 1666.-ED. † At the Strawberry-Hill sale, Mr. Rogers's admiration of this writer induced him to purchase his picture,-a miniature, by Liotard, which had been painted for Horace Walpole.-ED. have shed tears over it, after I was seventy,—not so much at its pathos as at its generous senti ments. The Abbé Delille (whom I knew well and liked much) was of opinion that Marivaux's Paysan Parvenu was a greater literary effort than Marianne. I once said to Delille, "Don't you think that Voltaire's vers de société are the first of their kind?" He replied, "Assuredly; the very first, and-the last." Dr. Parr had a great deal of sensibility. When I read to him, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the account of O'Coigly's death, the tears rolled down his cheeks. One day, Mackintosh having vexed him by calling O'Coigly "a rascal," Parr immediately rejoined, "Yes, Jamie, he was a bad man, but he might have * James O'Coigly (alias James Quigley, alias James John Fivey) was tried for high treason at Maidstone, and hanged on Penningdon Heath, 7th June, 1798. When he had hung about ten minutes, he was beheaded; and the head and body were imme diately buried under the gallows (the rest of his sentence,-that, "while he was yet alive, his bowels should be taken out and burnt before his face, &c., Laving been remitted).-ED. |