of critical examination. The most plausible solution is suggested by their want of simplicity and spontaneity. Their linked sweetness is too long and elaborately drawn out for such a purpose; and the very symmetry and artistic finish of a production may militate against its general popularity. When Campbell complained to James Smith of not having been included in the Rejected Addresses,' he was politely assured that to parody his poetry was as impossible as to caricature his handsome and regular features. I should like to be amongst 'them for all that,' was his remark; and he was right, if he valued notoriety as well as solid fame; for what cannot be parodied will not be so often quoted, nor so freshly remembered. In the preface to the annotated edition of the Rejected Ad'dresses,' Rogers and Campbell are placed on the same footing, and their common exclusion is justified on the same complimentary principle. To The Pleasures of Memory,' in addition to the invaluable service which it rendered literature by its purity of language and chasteness of tone, which immediately became the objects of improving imitation and elevating rivalry, must be assigned the honour of having suggested 'The Plea'sures of Hope.'

Rather more than another lustrum was to elapse before Rogers had hived up enough for another publication. His Epistle to a Friend, with other Poems,' appeared in 1798. The Epistle' is a vehicle for conveying, after the manner of Horace and (in parts) of Pope, the writer's notions of social comfort and happiness, as dependent upon, or influenced by, the choice of residence, furniture, books, pictures, and companions, subjects on all of which he was admirably qualified to speak. His precepts are delivered in a series of graceful couplets, and enforced by authorities collected in the notes. Of course, he is all for modesty, simplicity, and retirement, — what poet or poetaster is not? - with about the same amount of practical earnestness as Grattan, when he declared he could be content in a small neat house, with cold meat, bread, and beer, and plenty of claret; or as a couple from May Fair, who, when they talk of love in a cottage, are dreaming of a cottage like the dairy-house at Taymouth or Cashiobury. All Rogers wanted, was to be able to enjoy every pleasure or luxury he really cared about; and as he did not care about a numerous establishment or a large house, the model villa to which he invites his friend is of restricted dimensions

-

'Here no state chambers in long line unfold,

Bright with broad mirrors, rough with fretted gold;

Yet modest ornament with use combined,
Attracts the eye to exercise the mind.

Small change of scene, small space his home requires,
Who leads a life of satisfied desires.'

This strikes us to be what Partridge would call a non sequitur. Like the Presbyterian divine who, after praying that all the lady of the manor's desires might be gratified, judiciously added, 'provided they be virtuous,' - Rogers should have added 'pro'vided they be limited.' The spendthrift who complained there was no living in England like a gentleman under forty thousand a year, would not have led a life of satisfied desires, with small change of scene, or small space to disport in.

Nothing in their way can be better than the fourteen lines in which the poet inculcates the wise doctrine, that engravings and copies from the best pictures and statues are far preferable to mediocre or second-rate originals. The ornaments of the rustic bath, also, are happily touched off, and the 'Description ' of Winter' is marked by the same delicate fancy which is displayed in the Rape of the Lock' on a different class of phenomena:

'When Christmas revels in a world of snow,

And bids her berries blush, her carols flow:
His spangling shower when Frost the wizard flings,
Or, borne in ether blue, on viewless wings,
O'er the white pane his silvery foliage weaves,
And gems with icicles the sheltering eaves,-
Thy muffled friend his nectarine wall pursues

There is no disputing the eye for nature which fixed and carried off the image of the silvery foliage woven on the white pane. At one of his Sunday breakfasts, he had quoted with decided commendation Leigh Hunt's couplet on a fountain (in Rimini'), also selected by Byron as one of the most poetical descriptions of a natural object he was acquainted with:

'Clear and compact, till at its height o'er run,
It shakes its loos'ning silver in the sun.'

'I give my vote,' said one of the guests, for

"O'er the white pane its silvery foliage weaves

And Rogers looked for a moment as if he were about to reenact Parr's reception of the flattering visitor at Birmingham.

Fourteen years elapsed between the publication of the Epistle to a Friend,' and Columbus,' which formed part of a new edition of his poems in 1812, and was followed by 'Jacqueline' in 1814. We look upon both these productions

as mistakes, especially the first, which is a kind of fragmentary epic, and deals with topics requiring the highest order of imagination to invest them with fitting grandeur and interest. When chasms are left in the narrative, and an author only professes to open glimpses into the past or the future, he can claim no allowance for Homeric slumbers, for tameness of diction, or for extravagance of invention. Each detached scene or picture should be complete in its way, for the very reason that it is detached. Rogers, however, has done little more than versify, with less than his usual attention to metre and rhythm, the well-known events in the lives and adventures of Columbus and his companions, interspersed with imitations of Dante, Virgil, and Euripides. His machinery is an unhappy medium between Pope's and Milton's; and when he made an American deity, or angel of darkness, hight Merion, rise in pomp of 'plumage,' in the shape of a condor, to descend and couch on 'Roldan's ample breast' in the shape of a vampire, he delivered himself, bound hand and foot, into the hands of the scorner. How he could have read over the following passage of The 'Argument,' without becoming aware of his danger, would be a mystery to us were we less familiar with the weaknesses of authors when their offspring is concerned;

'Alarm and despondence on board. He (Columbus) resigns himself to the care of Heaven, and proceeds on his voyage. Meanwhile the deities of America assemble in council, and one of the Genii, the gods of the islanders, announces his approach. "In vain," says he, “have we guarded the Atlantic for ages. A mortal has baffled our power; nor will our votaries arm against him. Yours are a sterner race. Hence, and while we have recourse to stratagem, do you array the "nations round your altars, and prepare for an exterminating war." They disperse while he is yet speaking, and in the shape of a Condor, he directs his flight to the fleet. His journey described. He arrives

there.'

We wish we could add that the conception is redeemed or exalted by the execution; but the perusal of the poem is rendered positively disagreeable by the breaks, the obscurity, and the constant straining after effect. The most successful contrivance is the use made of the trade-winds; the waterspouts of the New World, also, are felicitously introduced:

'And see the heavens bow down, the waters rise,
And, rising, shoot in columns to the skies,

That stand, and still when they proceed, retire, -
As in the Desert burned the sacred fire,
Moving in silent majesty,- till Night

Descends and shuts the vision from their sight.'

The scorner speedily came forth in the guise of a candid friend. The late Lord Dudley (then Mr. Ward) reviewed 'Columbus' in the Quarterly Review' in a tone of calculated depreciation, made more incisive by the affectation of respect. The poet's feelings may be fancied when he read the polished quiz upon his deities and his condor, and was asked, 'what but extreme haste and carelessness could have occasioned the author of the "Pleasures of Memory" to mistake for verse such a line as

"There silent sate many an unbidden guest."

This line will not be found in the later editions, but the two following are in the last —

And midway on their passage to eternity.' (Canto 1.)

"That world a prison-house, full of sights of woe.' (Canto 12.) Nor would Rogers have shown much indulgence for couplets like these by another:

'Right through the midst, when fetlock deep in gore,
The great Gonzalvo battled with the Moor.'

'He said, he drew: then at his master's frown,
Sullenly sheath'd, plunging the weapon down."

The first of these might lead a superficial or ill-informed reader to suppose that the great Gonzalvo was a Centaur; and the second is much like saying

'Swallowed the loaf, gulping each morsel down.'

Ward had greatly aggravated his offence by communicating with his intended victim on the subject of the criticism during its composition; and he well merited the characteristic retaliation which it provoked

'Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it.

He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.'

According to the author of the Table Talk,' Rogers confessed to having written this epigram, with a little assistance. 'from Richard Sharp.' One day, he adds, while Rogers was on bad terms with Ward, Lady D. said to him, 'Have you seen Ward lately? What Ward?' Why, our Ward, of course.' Our Ward!-you may keep him all to yourself.'

Ward was not a man to be behindhand in this kind of contest; and his adversary's cadaverous complexion afforded as ample material for jocularity as his own alleged want of heart. Indeed, Jack Bannister remarked that more good things had been said and written on Rogers's face than on that of the

greatest beauty. It was Ward who asked him why, now that he could afford it, he did not set up his hearse; and it was the same sympathising companion who, when Rogers repeated the couplet,

The robin, with his furtive glance,

Comes and looks at me askance,'

struck in with, 'If it had been a carrion crow, he would have 'looked you full in the face.'

Mackintosh made a gallant effort in this Review (No. 43. Nov. 1813) to neutralise the corrosive sublimate of Ward's article; but impartial opinion concurred in the main with the less favourable judgment, and even the Vision (Canto 12.), which both agreed in praising, is not free from the prevalent faults of the poem,- obvious effort, abruptness, and obscurity. Matters were not much improved by the publication, two years later (1814), of Jacqueline,' in the same volume with 'Lara,' which suggested the notion of an innocent maiden choosing a high-bred rake for her travelling companion. If she preserved her virtue, she was tolerably sure to lose her reputation; and

Pretty Miss Jacqueline,

With her nose aquiline,'

afforded fine sport to the wits and to her noble yoke-fellow amongst the rest. The Corsair' had already got his Kaled, a young lady who did not stand upon trifles and wore small clothes. How, in a corrupt age, could Jacqueline hope to obtain a preference by dint of the gentle virtues, even though 'Her voice, whate'er she said, enchanted; Like music, to the heart it went.

And her dark eyes,

how eloquent!

Ask what they would, 'twas granted.'

Some years since, a story got about touching an application from an American lady of distinction for a ball-ticket for a female friend who was staying with her. The request was politely declined, and the applicant wrote to express her surprise at the slight put upon a young lady who, in her own country, was more in the habit of granting favours than of asking them. She must be like my Jacqueline,' said Rogers, when he heard the story; for Byron would always have it that 'the line

"Ask what they would, 'twas granted,"

'did not necessarily refer to her eyes.'

We had some hopes of Jacqueline, when she left her paternal abode at midnight'a guilty thing and full of fears,' or she