down in Dorsetshire, enjoying the "winding wood-walks green," with that sister Dorothy, who "added sunshine to his daylight." These two had not as yet made the acquaintance of that coming man, S. T. Coleridge, who is living at Clevedon, over by Bristol Channel, with that newly married wife, who has decoyed him from his schemes of American migration; 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 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 Children 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 childrenwithout 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 fastidiouswas written and published in London, four years before Burns died, by the poet-banker Samuel Rogers.1 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 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

1

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

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 children 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 Green-an old suburb lying directly north of the city, toward Stamford Hill-and now engulfed by the tide of London houses; we know he studied at good schools there, and under careful teachers at home; we know that he used to read and love Dr. Beattie's minstrel; we know that once, in boyhood (he tells the story himself), craving a sight of the great Dr. Johnson, he went to his door, but scared by the first tap of the knocker, sidled away,