C (MR ENT LITE RAT URE.
THE TABLE TALK OF SAMUEL ROGERS.
The Table Talk of Samuel Rogers. By G. H. Powell. (R. B. Johnson. Os. net.)—Mr. Powell has combined in this volume Mr. Alexander Dyce's " Recollections " (1856), and the poet's own " Re- collections," which appeared under the care of Mr. William Sharpe in 1859. Rogers himself died in 1855, :it the age of ninety-two. (Ho had the chance of seeing Dr. Johnson, who died in 1784, but his courage failed him.) It is scarcely necessary to say that the volume is full of good stories. Many of these have become so well known that one hardly likes to quote them; others, scarcely inferior, will probably be new to many. In either ease, we cannot help giving Parr's rebuke to James Mackintosh, who bad spoken of one O'Coigly—executed as a traitor in 1798—as a " rascal." "Yes," said Parr, "he was a bad man, but he might have been worse; he was an Irishman, but he might have been a Scotchman ; he was a priest, but he might have been a lawyer ; he was a Republican, but he might have been an apostate." "I should prefer despotism to anarchy," said some one to Horne Tooke. " Then you would do as your ancestors did at the Reformation ; they rejected Purgatory and kept Hell." Grattan thought that Lord Strafford was unjustly executed. " He had committed every crime but that for which he was condemned to die." He said of Dr. Lucas, an unpopular personage, who failed egregiously in his maiden speech in Parliament : "He rose without a friend, and sat down without an enemy." The first Sir Robert Piel said to his more famous son : " Bob, you dog, if you are not Prime Minister some day, I'll disinherit you." (He died in 1830; the son was in the Cabinet in 1822, but not Prime Minister till 1841.) " I have committed one mistake in life," said some one to Talleyrand. " Et quand finira-t-elle ?" Pozzo di Borgo said of Talleyrand himself : "11 vit encore, parse que le Diable en a peur."
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