The banker poet Samuel Rogers was born in 1762 to a fortune very unlike that of the Ettrick Shepherd. His father was a banker, and he himself entered the banking-house, in which he remained a partner until his death in 1855. Rogers had literary and artistic tastes that he could afford to indulge freely. What reputation he had as a poet was made by his "Pleasures of Memory," published in 1792. In 1812, he produced the "Voyage of Columbus" as a fragment; in 1814, "Jacqueline, a Tale," which was printed in the same volume with Byron's "Lara;" in 1819, "Human Life;" and in 1822, a blank verse poem on "Italy." Here is one from a collection of Rogers's short poems, included in an edition of the "Pleasures of Memory" published in 1810, with wood engravings from designs by Thomas Stothard, R.A. It is here set between the sketch Stothard designed for it and that with which he closed the little volume :

:

CUPIDS IN A BOWER.

1 Dowie, sad.

2 Fley'd, frightened.

3 Lilt, sing cheerfully.

4 Kebbit. "A ewe is said to keb when she has abandoned her lamb,

or lost it by death, or in any other way." (Jamieson.)

5 Drifty, blowing snow-drifts.

A WISH.

Mine be a cot beside the hill,

A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear;

A willowy brook that turns a mill
With many a fall shall linger near.

IN the quarter of a century between the death of Byron (1824) and the death of Wordsworth (1850), the stream of English Literature, that had passed the rapids, broadened and flowed on with less grandeur of impatient force. The number of writers began greatly to multiply, and the best of them still faithfully expressed, each in his own way, the highest aspirations of the time. It was during these years that the two writers who next took foremost place among the poets of their day-Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning-first won recognition. Tennyson's "In Memoriam," and Browning's "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," both appeared in the year of Wordsworth's death.

When Wordsworth, in 1821, was visiting Sir George Beaumont, at Coleorton, he found his old friend busy over the building of a church on his estate. That led to many conversations on church history, and of these came the design of the series of "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," tracing the course of English religion. The third book of the series opened with a sonnet describing a real dream of his beloved daughter Dora, which caused a dread that, in the next sonnet, he likened to such dread as belonged to any thought of the decay of England :

A DREAM.

I saw the figure of a lovely Maid
Seated alone beneath a darksome tree,
Whose fondly-overhanging canopy

Set off her brightness with a pleasing shade.
No Spirit was she; that my heart betrayed,
For she was one I loved exceedingly;

But while I gazed in tender reverie

(Or was it sleep that with my Fancy played?)
The bright corporeal presence-form and face-
Remaining still distinct grew thin and rare,
Like sunny mist;-at length the golden hair,
Shape, limbs, and heavenly features, keeping pace
Each with the other in a lingering race
Of dissolution, melted into air.

Wordsworth's children had been-John, born in 1803; Dora, born in 1804, on her mother's birthday, the 16th of August; Thomas, born in 1806; Catherine, in 1808; and William, in 1810. When, in 1812, Thomas and Catherine died, there remained only two sons and Dora.

In 1827 Sir George Beaumont died, and bequeathed to his friend Wordsworth £100 a year to defray the expenses of a yearly summer tou". Lady Beaumont died in 1829, and Wordsworth's "Elegiac Musings in the Grounds of Coleorton," written in 1830, expressed the poet's sense of what had passed, with them, out of his life. In that year his eldest son, who had become rector of Moresby, married. In the autumn of 1831 Wordsworth went with his daughter to see Sir Walter Scott before his departure for Italy. Broken down by five years of heroic struggle that had made his life a poem, Scott was about to seek in Italy some faint renewal of health utterly spent in fulfilment of resolve that the burden of debt heaped on him when his fortunes fell, in a year of much commercial disaster, should be lifted only by his labours for the honest payment of it all. Wordsworth found Scott, in 1831, far other than he had been when he once said playfully, in Patterdale, "I mean to live till I am eighty, and write as long as I live." Scott went with his friends to Newark Castle, on the Yarrow. Upon their return the Tweed had to be crossed opposite Abbotsford. The wheels of their carriage grated on the pebbles of the river-bed; there was a purple light upon the hills; and Wordsworth's heart was full. as he thought that this might be the last time Scott would ever cross that stream. Then it was that in the trouble of his mind he began the sonnet

ON THE DEPARTURE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT FROM ABBOTSFORD FOR NAPLES.

A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain,
Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light
Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height:
Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain
For kindred Power, departing from their sight:
While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain,
Saddens his voice again and yet again.

Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might

deductions. In 1813, upon the death of Mr. Pye, the office of Poet Laureate was declined by Sir Walter Scott, at whose suggestion it was accepted by Southey. Considering what small poets had lately made of it, the office was so fallen in esteem that it conferred no credit until Southey honoured it by his acceptance, and a greater poet became his successor. In 1816, Southey lost his only son Herbert, a boy of ten. Two years later another son, his last child, was born to him. The death of his youngest daughter and the marriage of his eldest preceded the last illness of his wife. He had made his home for many years the home of his wife's sisters, Mrs. Lovell and Mrs. Coleridge. In 1829, Mrs. Coleridge went to live with her daughter, who then married. Soon afterwards Mrs. Southey was afflicted with mental

him as poet laureate. Southey was thirty when he settled down at Greta Hall, near Keswick, in the year 1804, and there his home was fixed until his death. In a pleasant home by Skiddaw, upon vantageground that gave him a broad view of the scenery of Derwentwater, he worked steadily day by day, gathering a large library about him, while he wrote reviews for aid to housekeeping expenses, and in books that sometimes failed to benefit the housekeeping account, he added treasures of his own mind to the libraries of others. But of such work, when he knew that it would be ill-paid, Southey wrote to Coleridge, that £10,000 would not induce him to forego it, "for twice the sum could not purchase me half the enjoyment." In one of Miss Seward's letters we read that the first year's balance in Southey's favour on the sale of his "Madoc" was £3 17s. Id. Southey had friends able to help him in two of his old Westminster schoolfellows, Charles Wynn and Grosvenor Bedford. In 1807, when Charles Wynn became an Under-Secretary of State, he obtained for Southey a pension of £200, which became £144 by official

disease, and had to be placed in an asylum. "I have been parted from my wife," wrote Southey, "by something worse than death; forty years she has been the life of my life." Her death followed in 1837. "During more than two-thirds of my life," he wrote, "she has been the chief object of my thoughts, and I of hers. No man had a truer helpmate; no children a more careful mother." Southey went abroad for a time to recover health, and came back with dread of the failure of his own mind. Another daughter had married, only one remained at home, and his son was at Oxford. In June, 1839, he married again, taking for his wife a poetess, Miss Caroline Bowles. But the malady he had dreaded came upon him. He still hovered lovingly about the books of his library, and talked of work, and planned times for beginning. But there was to be no renewal of his powers till he had put off the failing body that was buried in Crosthwaite churchyard, in March,

1843.

Wordsworth then, seventy-three years old, succeeded his friend as poet laureate, and held that

office for the last seven years of his life. In 1847 his only daughter, Dora, died. "Our sorrow," said the father" our sorrow, I feel, is for life; but God's will be done." In 1850, on the 10th of March, Wordsworth attended service at Rydal Chapel for the last time. Between four and five in the evening he set out to walk to Grasmere in a keen north-east wind, lightly clad, and looking feeble. He was about during the next two days in cold, bright weather, called at a cottage, and sat down on the stone seat of the porch to watch the setting sun. Then came pain in the side, with severe inflammation of the chest and throat, and his strength sank. The 7th of April was his birthday; he was eighty years old, and prayed for in Rydal Chapel. About the 20th his wife whispered to him that death was near, in the tenderest words she could use to him, William, you are going to Dora." On the 23rd he died, and he was buried in Grasmere churchyard. In a volume published in 1838 Wordsworth had parted from his reader with a sonnet, of which the last line will have its answer ever from more hearts while England stands :—

66

In November, 1820, appeared the first number of "The Etonian," a school magazine, which had for chief founder, editor, and contributor, Winthrop Mack worth Praed. Walter Blunt was Praed's fellow-editor, and other writers in "The Etonian," whose names afterwards became known to the world, were John Moultrie, Henry Nelson Coleridge, William Sidney Walker. In 1821, Praed left Eton for Trinity College, Cambridge. Charles Knight, son of the bookseller at Windsor who had printed "The Etonian," was then establishing himself in London, full of the young energy that, as it ripened, gave him power to take a front place for himself among those who found means for the better culture of each unit among the masses of the people. To young Charles Knight, at the end of 1822, young Praed-become a Brown's medallist for the Greek ode and for epigrams -suggested the continuance from Cambridge of the old pleasant magazine work; accordingly, "Knight's Quarterly Magazine" began to appear in the year 1823. Praed wrote in it as Peregrine Courtenay and Vyvyan Joyeuse, John Moultrie as Gerard Montgomery, Henry Nelson Coleridge as Joseph Haller, Derwent Coleridge as Davenant Cecil, W.

Sidney Walker as Edward Haselfoot, Henry Malden as Hamilton Murray, and to these was joined Thomas Babington Macaulay, who signed himself Tristram Merton. Among Praed's contributions to the magazine were these two charades. Their answers are "Good Night" and "Death Watch."

CHARADES. I.

Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt;
Sooth, 'twas an awful day!
And though in that old age of sport
The rufflers of the camp and court

Had little time to pray,

'Tis said Sir Hilary muttered there Two syllables by way of prayer:

My First to all the brave and proud
Who see to-morrow's sun :

My Next, with her cold and quiet cloud,
To those who find their dewy shroud
Before to-day's be done:

And both together to all blue eyes,
That weep when a warrior nobly dies.

II.

On the casement frame the wind beat high; Never a star was in the sky;

All Kenneth Hold was wrapt in gloom,

And Sir Everard slept in the Haunted Room.

I sat and sang beside his bed ;

Never a single word I said,

Yet did I scare his slumber;

And a fitful light in his eyeball glistened,
And his cheek grew pale as he lay and listened,
For he thought or dreamt that Fiends and Fays
Were reckoning o'er his fleeting days
And telling out their number.
Was it my Second's ceaseless tone?
On my Second's hand he laid his own;
The hand that trembled in his grasp
Was crushed by his convulsive clasp.

Sir Everard did not fear my First ;

He had seen it in shapes that men deem worst,
In many a field and flood;

Yet in the darkness of that dread

His tongue was parched and his reason fled,
And he watched, as the lamp burned low and dim,
To see some phantom, gaunt and grim,
Come dabbled o'er with blood.

Sir Everard kneeled, and strove to pray :
He prayed for light, and he prayed for day,
Till terror checked his prayer;
And ever I muttered clear and well
"Click, click," like a tolling bell,
Till, bound by Fancy's magic spell,
Sir Everard fainted there.

And oft, from that remembered night, Around the taper's flickering light

Stout Skippon hath a wound; the centre hath given ground: Hark! hark-What means the trampling of horsemen on our rear?

Whose banner do I see, boys? 'Tis he, thank God, 'tis he, boys.

Bear up another minute: brave Oliver is here.

Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row,

Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes, Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the Accurst, And at a shock have scattered the forest of his pikes.

Fast, fast, the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide

Their coward heads, predestined to rot on Temple Bar: And he he turns, he flies:-shame on those cruel eyes That bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war.

Ho! comrades, scour the plain; and, ere ye strip the slain,
First give another stab to make your search secure,
Then shake from sleeves and pockets their broad-pieces and
lockets,

The tokens of the wanton, the plunder of the poor.

Fools! your doublets shone with gold, and your hearts were gay and bold,

When you kissed your lily hands to your lemans to-day; And to-morrow shall the fox, from her chambers in the rocks, Lead forth her tawny cubs to howl above the prey.

Where be your tongues that late mocked at heaven and hell and fate,

And the fingers that once were so busy with your blades, Your perfum'd satin clothes, your catches and your oaths, Your stage-plays and your sonnets, your diamonds and your spades?

Down, down, for ever down with the mitre and the crown, With the Belial of the Court, and the Mammon of the

Pope;

There is woe in Oxford Halls; there is wail in Durham's Stalls:

The Jesuit smites his bosom: the Bishop rends his cope.

And She of the seven hills shall mourn her children's ills, And tremble when she thinks on the edge of England's sword;

And the Kings of earth in fear shall shudder when they hear What the hand of God hath wrought for the Houses and the Word.

In 1824, when this appeared, Macaulay's age was four-and-twenty. Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope" appeared when its author was but two-and-twenty. Keats at four-and-twenty wrote the "Eve of St. Agnes" and the "Pot of Basil," had written "Endymion," and was writing "Hyperion." There were no depths of thought in Macaulay's lively verse rhetoric, but there was some forecast of the brilliant success to be achieved by him hereafter as a prose historian who could fascinate the many and the few.

Thomas Hood was but about a year older than Macaulay. He was born in 1799, and died in 1845. Thomas Hood-whom we may distinguish as the elder, from a clever son, now also passed away-made