131 



ROGER OF HOVEDEN. 



ROGERS, SAMUEL. 



132 



F. Castello, he was a competitor for the place of cabinet painter to the 

 king, Philip III.; notwithstanding the " many years' service of Rodlas's 

 father," however, Bartoloine" Gonzalez succeeded Castello. Rodlas 

 settled in Olivares in 1624, when he was appointed one of the canons 

 of the college, but he died there inline following year, April 23rd, 

 1625. Francisco Zurbaran was the scholar of Roelas. 



The works of Rodlas are very numerous in Seville ; and there are 

 still many in the College of Olivares, and there are some at Madrid. 

 His master-piece is the death or ' el Transito ' of San Isidore, in the 

 church of that saint at Seville ; this is a large majestic composition, 

 in two compartments, similar to the communion of St. Jerome by 

 Domenichino, and other Italian pictures, but on a larger scale. In 

 the lower part is the archbishop in a church in the attitude of prayer 

 and about to die, supported and surrounded by his numerous clergy, 

 among which are some magnificent heads ; in the upper part of the 

 picture is our Saviour on his throne, with the Madonna by his side, 

 and surrounded by angels ; the attention of all is directed to the dying 

 saint. Tbis picture, it appears, has never been engraved ; indeed, very 

 few good Spanish pictures have been engraved, and it is owing to this 

 circumstance that the great painters of Spain are so little known out 

 of their own provinces. One of his best works also is the Saint lago, 

 in the Capilla de Santiago, in the Cathedral of Seville : the saint is 

 riding over Moors ; it was painted in 1609. Bermudez speaks of it as 

 full of fire, majesty, and decorum. According to Mr. Ford ('Hand- 

 book of Spain '), it is surpassed by the picture of the Conception, by 

 Roelas, in the Academy ; and by three in the chapel of the University 

 of Seville a 'Holy Family, with Jesuits;' a 'Nativity;' and an 

 ' Adoration.' " No one," says this writer, " ever painted the sleek 

 grimalkin Jesuit like Rodlas." Pacheco, who was censor of pictures 

 in Seville [PACHECO], reproached Roelas with want of decorum in a 

 picture, in the Merced Calzada, of ' St. Anne Teaching the Virgin to 

 Read,' for representing some sweetmeats and some articles of common 

 domestic life upon a table in the picture; and also for painting a 

 sheet, intended to wrap the infant Saviour in, who is naked, in the 

 picture of the ' Nativity,' in the chapel of the university. 



Roe'las is compared with Tintoretto and the Caracci ; he is the best 

 of the Andalusian painters in design and composition, and displays 

 frequently a grandeur of form and majesty of character which belong 

 only to the greatest masters : in colouring also he may be compared 

 with the Venetians. His last picture is apparently the ' Nativity,' at 

 Olivares. Palomino's account of this painter is almost wholly incor- 

 rect ; he calls him Doctor Pablo de las Roela?. 



(Cean Bermudez, Diccionario ffistorico, &c.) 



ROGER OF HOVEDEN. [HOVEDEN.] 



* ROGERS, HENRY, now Professor of Philosophy at Spring-Hill 

 Independent College, Birmingham, and well known as an English 

 Essayist, and the author of works designed to exhibit the harmony 

 of Philosophy and Revealed Religion, was educated at Highbury 

 College, and was for some time an Independent preacher. The duties 

 of this office not agreeing with his health, he resigned his charge. 

 He was afterwards for a time Professor of the English Language and 

 Literature in University College, London. Thence he removed to 

 his present situation. 



Within the last ten or fifteen years Mr. Rogers, by his contributions 

 to the ' Edinburgh Review,' has won himself the high place which 

 he occupies in the contemporary literature of Britain. Probably since 

 Mi\ Macaulay ceased to write for the ' Edinburgh,' Mr. Rogers has 

 been the most distinguished of its regular contributors in the kinds 

 of topics formerly treated by Mr. Macaulay in the pages of that 

 periodical.. His articles have been numerous and on very various 

 e critical, some historical or biographical, and some 

 collection of them was republished in 1850 under the 

 a selected from Contributions to the Edinburgh 



speculatr 

 title of r * 



. view/, ^pf'this collection, increased in bulk by an additional 

 volume putmshted in 1855, has passed through more than one 

 edition. It is by these three volumes of republished 'Essays' that 

 Sir. Rogers is best known ; but he is also the author of ' The Life and 

 Character of John Howe, M.A., with an Analysis of his Writings,' 

 1836 ; of ' General Introduction <o a Course of Lectures on English 

 Grammar and Composition,' 1838; of a well-known work on the 

 present state of religious opinion entitled ' The Eclipse of Faith ; ' 

 and of a 'Defence' of that work, published in 1854 hi reply to Mr. 

 Francis Newman. Mr. Rogers pfficiated, along with Mr. Isaac Taylor, 

 as Examiner of the Essays given in for the Burnett prizes of Aber- 

 deen in 1854, and awarder of the prizes. 



ROGERS, SAMUEL, was bom on the 30th of July 1763, at 

 Newington Green, a suburb of London. His father, who was a 

 Dissenter, and much respected by the Dissenters of London, was 

 a banker by profession; and the poet, after a careful private edu- 

 cation, was placed, when yet a lad, in the banking-house to learn the 

 business prior to his becoming a partner. Among his reminiscences 

 of this time was that of Wilkes calling at the banking-house to solicit 

 his father's vote, and, as his father was out, shaking hands with him 

 as his father's representative. From a very early period, the future 

 poet exhibited a taste for letters, and he used to date his first deter- 

 mination towards poetry from the effect produced upon him by reading 

 Beattie's ' Minstrel,' when a mere boy. His admiration of literature 

 and literary men led him, while still a clerk in his father's bank, to 



meditate a call on Dr. Johnson for the purpose of introducing himself; 

 and once, with a young friend, he went to Johnson's house in Bolt 

 Court bent on accompanying the object, but his courage failed him 

 when he had his hand on the knocker. It was in 1786 two years 

 after Johnson's death that Rogers, then in his twenty-third year, 

 published his first volume of poetry, under the title of 'An Ode to 

 Superstition, and some other Poems.' The date is important. " The 

 commencement of a new era in British Poetry," says a critic, " dates 

 almost exactly from this year. For a year or two before 1786, there 

 had been manifestations of a new poetio spirit, differing from that of 

 the poetry of the 18th century as a whole, and more particularly from 

 that of Darwin, Hayley, and the Delia Cruscans who represented 

 the poetry of the 18th century in its latest and dying stage. Crabbe, 

 for example, had published his ' Library ' in 1781 ; and Cowper had 

 made his first distinct appearance as a poet in 1782, when he was 

 already in his fifty-second year. Crabbe's ' Village ' was published 

 in 1783, and Cowper first made an effective impression by the pub- 

 lication of his second volume, including his ' Task,' in 1785. Thus 

 Rogers was heard of as a poet almost at the same time as Crabbe 

 and Cowper. But more exactly contemporary with Rogers than 

 either Crabbe or Cowper, was Robert Burns, the first edition of 

 whose poems appeared in that very year, 1786, which saw Rogers's 

 debut as an author." In short, Rogers's first appearance as a poet 

 coincides with the opening of that era in our literature in which we 

 still are, and of which Rogers himself is one of the minor stars. 



Shortly after his first publication, Rogers travelled in France, where 

 he saw Condorcet and many other men afterwards celebrated in the 

 French Revolution. He also visited Scotland, where he saw Adam 

 Smith, Dr. Robertson, and other celebrities. In 1792 he published his 

 ' Pleasures of Memory,' by which, and by a subsequent volume con- 

 taining 'An Epistle to a Friend and other Poems,' published in 1798, 

 he " established his place among the men of letters who adorned 

 Great Britain in the closing decade of the last century." During the 

 next fourteen years he gave nothing new to the world, either to 

 increase or to mar his reputation. It was during this long interval of 

 silence that he retired from his hereditary business as a banker (though 

 with an income still derived from the bank, and with the nominal 

 character of partner continued to him) to enjoy, by means of his 

 ample wealth, a leisure absolutely at the command of his private 

 tastes. " The house of Rogers in St. James's-place," it is said, "became 

 a little paradise of the beautiful, where, amid pictures and other objects 

 of art, collected with care and arranged with skill, the happy owner 

 nestled in fastidious ease, and kept up among his contemporaries a 

 character in which something of the Horace was blended with some- 

 thing of the Maecenas." As he had known Fox, and Home Tooke, and 

 Dr. Price, and Dr. Priestley, and Lord Nelson, and others of the 

 eminent men of the former generation, so now he gathered round hia 

 table the political and social, and literary and dramatic celebrities who 

 had succeeded them Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Mackintosh, 

 Southey, Wellington, Chantrey, &c., &c. His own political sentiments 

 were those of moderate Whiggism, but this did not prevent men of all 

 parties from being his guests. 



In 1812, Rogers, when his muse seemed dead, added to a republi- 

 cation of his earlier poems, the fragment entitled ' Columbus.' He was 

 then in his fiftieth year. In 1814 his 'Jacqueline' was published in 

 conjunction with Byron's ' Lara,' this being the period of the height of 

 the intimacy between the two so dissimilar poets. " Composed with 

 the same laborious slowness, and polished line by line to the same 

 degree of smoothness," says the writer of a sketch of his life, " his 

 'Human Life' appeared in 1819. Finally, as the last and much the 

 longest of his productions, came his ' Italy,' the first part of which was 

 published in 1822, in the poet's sixtieth year, and the complete edition 

 of which, illustrated, under the author's care, at an expense of 

 10,OOOZ. by Stothard, Prout, and Turner, did not appear till 1836. 

 With the preparation of this exquisite book his literary career may be 

 said to have closed. He still wrote an occasional copy of verses at the 

 rate of a couplet a week; and some of these trifles, including one 

 written as late as his ninety-first year, are preserved in his collected 

 works. But on the whole it was in his character as a superannuated 

 poet, living on the reputation of his past performances, drawing the 

 artists and wits, and men of rank of a more modern age around him, 

 and entertaining them with his caustic talk, and his reminiscences of 

 the notable persons and events of former days, that he figured in a 

 select portion of London society during the last twenty years of his 

 existence." The longevity of the poet was, indeed, one of the sources 

 of the public interest felt for him in his later life. Ahvays fond of 

 open air exercise and of going to public exhibitions, ho might be seen 

 strolling about in the parks, or in a stall or box at the opera, to 

 within a few years of his death. An accident in the streets at last 

 disabled him from walking out ; but the extraordinary tenacity of his 

 constitution enabled him to recover from it, when a younger man might 

 have died. It was not till the 18th of December 1855, when he was in 

 his ninety -third year, and had already for many years been the literary 

 patriarch of his country, that he departed this life. Wordsworth and 

 many others who had been born after him, and had attained old age 

 under his view, had predeceased him, and left him alone among a 

 generation of juniors. 



Rogers will be remembered partly for hia poetry, and partly from 



