As it has been asserted in my presence by an eminent literary man, within a month of the present writing, that Samuel Rogers systematically depreciated Shakespeare, and that he was above all things a cynic, I think it right, in justice to his memory, to repeat the conversation above recorded. Though it took place nearly forty years ago, I wrote down the heads of it in my notebook on the very day when it occurred; and by reperusal of it I have refreshed my memory so as to be certain of its accuracy. Mr. Rogers doubtless said very pungent and apparently ill-natured things in his time; no professed wit, such as he was, can always, or indeed very often, refrain from shooting a barbed dart either to raise a laugh and to strengthen an argument, or to dispense with one; but there was no malevolence in the heart, though there might appear to be some on the tongue, of Samuel Rogers. To love literature, and to excel in poetical composition, were unfailing passports to his regard, his esteem, and if necessary, his purse. One of the guests of the morning on which these conversations took place, and who bore his part in them, was a grateful recipient and witness of his beneficence. Thomas Miller, who began life as a journeyman basket-maker, working for small daily wages in the fens of Lincolnshire, excited the notice of his neighbors by his poetical genius, or it may have been only talent, and by their praises of his compositions, filled his mind with the desire to try his literary fortune in the larger sphere of London. He listened to the promptings of his ambition, came to the metropolis, launched his little skiff on the wide ocean of literary life, and by dint of hard work, indomitable perseverance, unfailing hope, and incessant struggles, managed to earn a modest subsistence. He speedily found that poetry failed to put money in his purse, and prudently resorted to prose. When prose in the shape of original work—principally fiction—just enabled him to live from day to day, he took refuge in the daily drudgery of reviewing in the _Literary Gazette_, then edited by Mr. Jerdan, a very bad paymaster. He had not been long in London before he made the acquaintance or Mr. Rogers, and after a period of more or less intimacy, received from that gentleman the good, though old, and as it often happens, the unwelcome advice that he should cease to rely wholly upon literature for his daily bread. As poor Miller could not return to basket-making—except as an employer of other basket-makers, for which he had not sufficient, or indeed any, capital—and as, moreover, he had no love for any pursuits but those of literature, he resolved, if he could manage it, to establish himself as a bookseller and publisher. Mr. Rogers, to whom he confided his wish, approved of it, and generously aided him to accomplish it, by the advance without security of the money required for the purpose. The basket-maker carried on the business for a few