nhance--the greatness and the
value of his poetical position, both in the elaboration of a new poetic
style and language, and still more in the indication of a new road
whereby the great poetic exploration could be carried on.

Round or under these great Seven--for that Byron was great in a way need
not be denied; Southey, the weakest of all as a poet, had a very strong
influence, and was one of the very greatest of English men of
letters--must be mentioned a not inconsiderable number of men who in any
other age would have been reckoned great. The eldest of these, both in
years and in reputation, holds his position, and perhaps always held it,
rather by courtesy than by strict right. Samuel Rogers[7] was born in
London on 30th July 1763, and was the son of a dissenting banker, from
whom he derived Whig principles and a comfortable fortune. It is said
that he once, as a very young man, went to call on Dr. Johnson, but was
afraid to knock; but though shyness accompanied him through life, the
amiability which it is sometimes supposed to betoken did not. He
published a volume of poems in 1786, and his famous _Pleasures of
Memory_, the piece that made his reputation, in 1792. Twenty years
afterwards _Columbus_ followed, and yet two years later, in 1814,
_Jacqueline_; while in 1822 _Italy_, on which, with the _Pleasures of
Memory_, such fame as he has rests, was published, to be reissued some
years afterwards in a magnificent illustrated edition, and to have a
chance (in a classical French jest) _se sauver de planche en planche_.
He did not die till 1855, in his ninety-third year: the last, as he had
been the first, of his group.

Rogers had the good luck to publish his best piece at a time when the
general and popular level of English poetry was at the lowest point it
has reached since the sixteenth century, and to be for many years
afterwards a rich and rather hospitable man, the acquaintance if not
exactly the friend of most men of letters, of considerable influence in
political and general society, and master of an excessively sharp
tongue. A useful friend and a dangerous enemy, it was simpler to court
or to let him alone than to attack him, and his fame was derived from
pieces too different from any work of the actual generation to give them
much umbrage. It may be questioned whether Rogers ever wrote a single
line of poetry. But he wrote some polished and pleasant verse, which was
vigorous by the side of Hayley and "co