"Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village green, With magic tints to harmonize the scene; Stilled is the hum that thro' the hamlet broke, When round the ruins of their ancient oak The peasants flocked to hear the minstrel play And games and carols closed the busy day. * * * * * Up springs, at every step--to claim a tear, Some little friendship formed and cherished here; And not the lightest leaf, but trembling teems With golden visions and romantic dreams. This poem, with echoes of Goldsmith in it, with echoes of Dryden, with echoes of Cowper--all caught together by a hand that was most deft, and by a taste that was most fastidious--was written and published in London, four years before Burns died, by the poet-banker Samuel Rogers.[1] It is not a name that I feel inclined to glorify very much, or that should be honored with any large reverence; but it is brought specially to the reader's notice here, because the life, career, and accomplishment of the man offers so striking a contrast to that of the Scottish poet who was his contemporary. They were born within four years {303} of each other. One under the bare roof of an Ayrshire cottage, the other amid the luxuries of a banker's home in London; one caught inspiration amongst the hills and the woods; the other was taught melody in the drawing-rooms and libraries of London; one wrested his conquests in the kingdom of song, single-handed; and the other, his lesser and feebler ones, bolstered with all the appliances that wealth could give, or long culture suggest. The poetry of the one is rich, individual, and spirited, with sources in nature and in the passions of the man; the poetry of the other has only those congruous and tamer harmonies, whose sources lie in the utterance of deeper and stronger singers before him. Yet the life of that Ayrshire poet was a miserable failure; and the life of this other, Samuel Rogers, was--as the world counts things--a complete success. No half-starved children pulled at his skirts for bread. All luxuries were about him, and from the beginning life flowed with him as calmly as a river. Of his early history there is not much to be said. We know that he was born at Newington Green--an old suburb lying directly north of the city, {304} toward Stamford Hill--and now engulfed by the tide of London houses; we know he studied at good schools there, and under careful teachers at home; we know that he used to read and love Dr. Beattie's minstrel; we know that once, in boyhood (he tells the story himself), craving a sight of the great Dr. Johnson, he went to his door, but scared by the first tap of the knocker, sidled away, and so never saw that literary magnate. It was a timidity that did not cling to Mr. Rogers; in all his later years no man in London was less afraid of the pounding of a knocker.