OF THE TABLE-TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS. TO WHICH IS ADDED PORSONIANA. LONDON: EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. MDCCCLVI. PREFACE. SAMUEL ROGERS was born at Stoke Newington, 30th July 1763. His first publication, An Ode to Superstition, with some other Poems, appeared in 1786; at which period the coldly classic Mason (then a veteran) and the feeble Hayley were perhaps the most popular of our living poets: Cowper, though The Task was in print, had scarcely won all his fame; Crabbe had put forth only his earlier pieces; and Darwin was yet to come. By The Pleasures of Memory, in 1792, Mr. Rogers rose to high reputation; which he fully maintained by his Epistle to a Friend, with other Poems, in 1798. He gave nothing new to the public till 1812, when he added Columbust to a re-impression of his Poems. It was succeeded, in 1814 by his * The second volume of Cowper's Poems, containing The Task, is noticed with high praise in The Gentleman's Magazine for Dec. 1785. † See p. 152 (note) in the present volume. |