"When Diocletian's self-corrected mind The imperial fasces of a world resigned, Say, why we trace the labors of his spade In calm Salona's philosophic shade? Say, when contentious Charles renounced a throne, To muse with monks unlettered and unknown, What from his soul the parting tribute drew, What claimed the sorrows of a last adieu?"--_Rogers_. "And say, when summoned from the world and thee, I lay my head beneath the willow-tree, Wilt thou, sweet mourner! at my stone appear, And soothe my parting spirit lingering near?"--_Campbell_. But the likeness is found everywhere--in phrase, in imagery, in topics, and in tone. When, after a lapse of twenty-seven years, Mr. Rogers produced his poem of Human Life, what a change of manner, what a transformation of style had taken place in him! No longer the grandiloquent invocations were found; no longer the sounding style, no longer the easy recurrence of the cadence, pausing on the cæsura and falling at the close of the line. Here the whole rhythm and construction were of a new school and a new generation. The style was more simple and more vigorous. The sentences marched on with a rare recurrence of the cæsura, the cadence did not fall with the end of the line, but oftener far in the middle of it, and the verse abounded with triplets. "He reads thanksgiving in the eyes of all-- All met as at a holy festival! --On the day destined for his funeral! Lo! there the friend, who, entering where he lay, Breathed in his drowsy ear--'Away, away! Take thou my cloak--Nay, start not, but obey! Take it, and leave me.'" What a total revolution is here! The old chime is gone, the old melody is exchanged for a new. All depends on entirely new principles, and seeks to give pleasure through an utterly fresh medium. But the poem itself is one of the most beautiful things in any language. It is human life from the cradle to the tomb, with all its pleasures, aspirations, trials, and triumphs. Every thing which clings round the spirit of man as precious, every thing which wins us onward, and sustains us in sorrow, and soothes us under the infliction of wrong--the glory of public good, and the hallowed charm of domestic affection, is thrown into this poem, with the art of a master and the great soul of a sanctified experience. Never either were the varied scenes of English life more sweetly described. The wedding and the burial, the village wake and the field sports, the battle and the victory, all are blended inimitably into the great picture of existence, and at times the aged minstrel rises into a strain of power and animation, such as rebuke the doubters of those attributes in him.