LITEBATTJEE AND THE EIXE AB.T3. 83 



LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS. 



SAMUEL KOGKKS. 



, the last survivor, if we except Walter Savage Landor, of tho 



■poets of England whom we specially associate with the age of Scott and Byron, 



)t London on the 18th of December, at the advanced age of ninety-three. His 



': poets has long been assigned to him, and we cannot doubt 



ill confirm the decision which two generations of his cotemporariee 



jted in regard to the author of "Italy" and the "Pleasures of Memory." 



:hat the biographer of the poet will now produce to us some farther 



evidences th it the poetic genius which manifested its powers for a brief period so 



vigorously, preserved the same power in later years, however rarely put forth ; but 



ict that he who has just passed away from the circle of admiring 



friends and co temporaries, belonged as a poet entirely to a former generation. 



recollections only mebrace the exhibitions of the poet's refined aesthetic tastes 



as manifested in the wedding of his verse to the younger sister art. The illustrated 



editions of the "Pleasures of Memory," and "Italy," chiefly by the pencils of 



Stotbard and Tamer, constitute an era in the history of English art. It was notmerply 



the lavish expenditure of the wealthy poet, in the adornment of the offspring of his 



genius; for great as that was, it was probably equalled in the outlay for some of 



the ephemeral literary "Annuals" of the same period. But the exquisite taste of 



the poet was employed with such a delicate tact in guiding the artistic illustrations, 



thai it3 influence only became fully apparent, when publishers seeking to rival his 



success, in vain employed the same arts and devices, only to be mortified by the 



discovery that even Turner shone iu the pages of Rogers with an inspiration which 



thei<- money could not purchase from his pencil. 



The poet's housejn St. James's Place, was a perfect treasury of art. Iu the 

 preliminary steps for illustrating hi3 poems he is reported to have spent £10,000. 

 Many drawings made for the purpose were not used, the work in its completed 

 form : to us only the choice selection of the poet's taste, from the con- 



tributions of art to illustrate his inusc. The paintings which adorned the poet's 

 reside~.ee, though comparatively few in number, "were gem? of their kind, and of 

 these he has bequeathed to the nation three well-known pictures — the Titian "Noli 

 me tangcrc ;" the Giorgione, a small picture of a Knight in Armour; and the 

 Guido, "Head of Christ crowned with thorns." 



The correspondence of Rogers, if given to the world, a3 doubtless it will be in 

 part at least, will furnish illustrations not only of the literary history cf the nine- 

 teenth century, but also of the closing era of the previous one, when men flourish- 

 ed as his literary cotemporaries, whom we have learned to clas3 among the ancients. 

 His life must also embrace in its narration many historical reminiscences of other 

 kinds, of no les3 lively interest. 



"The biography of Samuel Rogers," says the Times, " would involve the history 

 of Europe since George III., then in the bloom of youth, declared to his subjects 

 'hat ' he gloried in the name of Briton.' It is now more than a quarter of a cen- 

 tury since that monarch was carried to his grave in extreme age, worn out with 

 mental and bodily disease. Let lis take the most notable historic drama of the 

 century, 1793-1815— the rise, decline and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. 



" This was but an episode in the life of Samuel Rogers. He was a young man 

 ome standing in the world, fully of an age to appreciate the iveaning and im" 



