So, after two years more work, was issued the famous illustrated edition, precursor of many such volumes since, such as the wonderful guinea Tennyson, and innumerable gems of the sixties. The story of the Turner Italy has often been told. The bare facts alone need be repeated here. The total cost of production was £7335. “By 31 December 1830, 3959 copies had been sold, producing £4252," while by May 1832, 6800 had been sold; and 648 more copies had to be bought, before the book began to make a profit. The idea and its execution were worthy of the virtuoso and the ex-banker; and the first issue of the Italy, with its beautiful engravings, is still valued by the lover of exquisite things. For many it has been, as it was for John Ruskin, the first introduction to the charm, the sunny May-like allure of Italy and its towns. The books, as the figures show, had a success, and Rogers brought out a uniform edition of his poems, in which the engravings are comparable to those in Italy. No little part of Rogers' claim to remembrance lies in the opportunity he thus gave to English people to learn something of the work of the greatest of their landscape painters, the most poetic and imaginative of their artists.

With the issue of Italy Rogers became, rather definitely, the most conspicuous example of an age that was departing. Fifteen years before, when Byron could still speak of him as the next man of letters to Scott, he was still of some account in the movement of art; although the manner of Byron's praise did, in a way, put him among the classics and so among the past. For who could seriously compare the slow, refined, cultivated Muse of Rogers, with the galloping, innovating, romantic work of Scott? And Byron himself, though he praised the gods of old, was forced by his genius to turn into strange temples and bow before

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the Rimmon of the Romantics. It does not seem that the position thus bestowed on Rogers, of becoming rather a "show-piece," a relic, was other than pleasing to him. He had a quiet, steady sense of the value of his work; but he did not overrate it as did Leigh Hunt his, nor regard it with the calm of arrogance of genius that marks Landor's self-appreciation. Also, in spite of his traditional bitterness, Rogers was always ready to remember the claims of youth, even when its brilliance over-shone his, as in the case of Byron, or when it was as tiresome and bumptious as the hard, efficient genius Macaulay.

Notwithstanding his continued interest in men and things the main events in his life which were of real interest to Rogers were the deaths of his relations and friends. He was fated to see many who were his juniors die before him: Scott and Mackintosh both went in 1832, and at the end of the year Rogers lost his brother Henry, and Macaulay records that Rogers was away from a party because "his brother chose that day to die upon." Two years later Coleridge and Lamb, one nine years, the other twelve years younger than Rogers, also died: nothing perhaps makes one so realise the way in which Rogers' career embraced two or even three eras of literary history than the death, before his, of men so intimately associated with the modern spirit in poetry and humour.

Another of the younger generation who met Rogers, about 1838, was Thomas Carlyle; and the gruff Scotsman's impressions, hackneyed as they are, must be quoted: "Old Rogers, with his pale head, white, bare and cold as snow . . . those large blue eyes, cruel, sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf chin." It is evident that Carlyle, rebel as he was, was impressed with the " grim old dilettante, full of sardonic sense 99 ; and when we remember how un

responsive was Carlyle to mere reputations, and how hopelessly unfair even to greatness that did not agree with him, his tribute is remarkable. There must have been a force of character, trained and controlled, to make this wild prophet of a new age write so definitely of an old poet to the fellow-prophet in America, Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose Orators Rogers called "German poetry, given out in American prose." A long procession of visitors is all that strikes us during the rest of Rogers' life, with the exception of two outstanding incidents. Among the visitors were men who became famous and are now nearly forgotten, such as Sir Henry Taylor and F. Goodall; others whose fame was to increase and entirely overshadow not only Rogers' own, but that of all save the greatest of their contemporaries, such as Charles Dickens and John Ruskin, and others, the old friends of the old poet, men like Lord Holland, who died in 1840, Sydney and Bobus Smith, who died five years later, Wordsworth, and Moore. In 1844 Rogers' friends had an opportunity for showing their gratitude for the many kindnesses of the man "who says the most ill-natured things, and does the best." At the end of November the Bank, from which Rogers derived most of his income, was robbed of nearly £50,000, most of it in bank-notes. Fortunately nearly all the money was recovered later, and the actual loss to be borne by the partners was but small. It is pleasant, however, to see how many friends offered Rogers sympathy and assistance. Lord Ashburton, Lord Lansdowne, Sydney Smith, and Lady Grey, all wrote letters, and Lord Lansdowne wanted to transfer his balance -amounting to some thousands-to Rogers' Bank.

In 1850 two more of Rogers' oldest friends died—Jeffrey, who survived till January, and Wordsworth, whose death was announced to Rogers three months later.