‘My dear Rogers,—I was exceedingly vexed at not being able to call before I left town, but the whole of last week I was locked up in the House of Lords from ten o’clock. Sunday I went into the country and Monday again in the Lords all day; and even yesterday I had to be there till the moment I set out.
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1 This was the Patent Law Amendment (No. 3) Bill, which was passed into Committee on the 1st of July, 1851. |
| LORD BROUGHAM’S LETTERS | 395 |
‘My journey has even already been of service to me, and I expect to profit much by the change of air, and above all the quiet of Brougham, where I hope to arrive late to-day.
‘I have been to the Cathedral service; the music is certainly fine, but it is never at all an impressive thing, except to the multitude. The simple liturgy is worth a hundred of it for effect. I remember that Wilberforce’s funeral in Westminster Abbey affected no one. It was all chanted. Campbell’s, which was all read, was the most affecting thing I can remember.1
‘I had not been in the Cathedral here since 1798, therefore Chantrey’s famous group (1817) was quite new to me. It has great merit, but I recollected the remark (on examining it) that the difference of ancient and modern sculpture is this—the latter gives form and flesh, the former skin also. I believe it to be quite true.
‘The Johnson stone statue painted over is really not so bad as I expected to find it. So here ends my travel.
‘I hope to find you as well as ever, if not better, when
1 Rogers himself took a very different view of Campbell’s funeral. His nephew Samuel Sharpe, says in his Diary, under date the 4th of July, 1844: ‘I spoke to my Uncle Sam of Campbell’s funeral yesterday in Poets’ Corner, and of his not being there. He said: “I did not attend your uncle Henry’s nor your brother Sutton’s, and so, of course, I did not go to Campbell’s. Besides, I did not want to be elbowed by lords who never did anything for him when alive.”’ Again, on the 20th of October in the same year, Mr. Sharpe writes: ‘My uncle again spoke of the folly of burying Campbell in Westminster Abbey, and praised Pope for refusing to be buried there. He thought the sentiment of seeing the poet’s tomb in the village churchyard so much more valuable than seeing it among a crowd of vain candidates for fame in Poets’ Corner.’ (Samuel Sharpe, Egyptologist, &c., p. 175.) |
| 396 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES |
‘I wish you would let Luttrell know why I could not call again, also how happy I am to have such good accounts of him.’
