Page:The Maclise Portrait-Gallery.djvu/43

  "But 'tis an old belief, That on some solemn shore, Beyond the sphere of grief, Dear friends shall meet once more—

"Beyond the sphere of time. And sin and fate's control, Serene in endless prime Of body and of soul.

"That creed I fain would keep, That hope I'll not forego; Eternal be the sleep. Unless to waken so."

The original sketch of the portrait before us, which a writer in the Hour newspaper (Nov. 12, 1873) considers, from personal remembrance, " the very best in the whole series," is in the hands of Mr. John Murray, of Albemarle Street.

IV.—SAMUEL ROGERS.

" mortuis nil nisi bonum!" ejaculates Fraser. "There is Sam Rogers, a mortal likeness—painted to the very death! "

Yes, here we have the "Bard of Memory," lean as if he had been fed on bank-notes, and drunk ink: sallow as if he had breathed no air that was not imbued with the taint of gold,—a caput mortuum;—yet another quarter of a century was even yet to pass away before " The weary wheels of life at length stood still:"— and Samuel Rogers, so long a symbol of death in life, exchanged, we would trust, for life in death, his fabled wealth, and his Tusculum of St. James's Place, with its pictures, its busts, its gems, its coins, and its books.

Innumerable were the jokes on the tête morte Rogers. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, asked him how it was, since he was so well off, he did not set up his hearse; Mackintosh wondered why, when at an election time he could not find accommodation at any hotel in a country town, he did not seek a snug lie down in the churchyard; a French valet, mistaking him for Tom Moore, threw the company into consternation by announcing him as "M. Le Mort"; Scott advised him to try his fortune in medicine in which he would be sure to succeed, if there was any truth in physiognomy, on the strength of his having a perpetual facies Hippocratica; Hook, meeting him at Lord Byron's funeral, gave him the friendly caution to keep out of the sight of the undertaker lest that functionary should claim him as one of his old customers; but the story which caps all is that in the John B71II, to the effect that when Rogers one night hailed a coach in St. Paul's churchyard, the jarvey cried—" Ho, ho, my man; Tm not going to be had in that way: go back to your grave!" 