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Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 2 p.116
sight for which institutions essentially democratic do nor
prepare a spectator of either sex, and must naturally place
the opinions on which the republic is founded, and the
sentiments which support it, in strong contrast with a
government based and upheld as ours is. I am not, therefore,
suprised that Mrs. Everett was moved, as she herself
described to persons of my acquaintance, among others to Mr.
Rogers the poet. By the by, of this gentleman, now, I
believe, in his eighty-third year, I saw more than any other
person except my host, Mr. Moxon, while I was in London. He
is singularly fresh and strong for his years, and his mental
faculties (with the exception of his memory a little), not
at all impaired. It is remarkable that he and the Rev. W.
Bowles were both distinguished as poets when I was a
school-boy, and they have survived almost all their eminent
contemporaries, several of whom came into notice long after
them. Since they became known Burns, Cowper, Mason, the
author of 'Caractacus' and friend of Gray, have died. Thomas
Warton, laureate, then Byron, Shelley, Keats, and, a good
deal later, Scott, Coleridge, Crabbe, Southey, Lamb, the
Ettrick shepherd, Cary, the translator of Dante, Crowe, the
author of Lewesdon Hill, and others of more or less
distinction, have disappeared. And now, of English poets
advanced in life, I cannot recall any but James Montgomery,
Thomas Moore, and myself who are living, except the
octogenarian with whom I began."
The list of eminent departed contemporary poets would have
been complete if the name of Felicia Hemans had not escaped
for the moment the recollection of the venerable survivor.
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