He left Newington Green in the same year and established himself in chambers in the Temple. In his circle of friends at this time were “ Conversation ” Sharp and the artists Flaxman, Opie, Martin Shee and Fuseli. He also made the acquaintance of Charles James Fox, with whom he visited the galleries in Paris in 1802, and whose friendship introduced him to Holland House. In 1803 he moved to 22 St James's Place, Where for fifty years he entertained all the celebrities of London. Flaxman and Stothard had a share in the decorations of the house, which Rogers had almost rebuilt, and now proceeded to fill with pictures and other Works of art. His collections at his death realized, £50,000. An invitation to one of Rogers's breakfasts was a formal entry into literary society, and his dinners were even more select. His social success was due less to his literary position than to his powers as a conversationalist, his educated taste in all matters of art, and no doubt to his sarcastic and bitter wit, for which he excused himself by saying that he had such a small voice that no one listened if he said pleasant things. Above all, he seems to have had a genius for benevolence. “He certainly had the kindest heart and unkindest tongue of any one I ever knew,” said Fanny Kemble. He helped the poet Robert Bloomfield, he reconciled Moore with Jeffrey and with Byron, and he relieved Sheridan's difficulties in the last days of his life. Moore, who refused help from all his friends, and would only be under obligations to his publishers, found it possible to accept assistance from Rogers. He procured a pension for H. F. Cary, the translator of Dante, and obtained for Wordsworth his sinecure as distributor of stamps.
It is difficult to realize the length of time that Rogers played the part of literary dictator in England. He made his reputation by The Pleasures of Memory when Cowper's fame was still in the making. He became the friend of Wordsworth, Scott and Byron, and lived long enough to give an opinion as to the fitness of Alfred Tennyson for the post of poet laureate. Alexander Dyce, from the time of his first introduction to Rogers, was in the habit of writing down the anecdotes with which his conversation abounded. From the mass of material thus accumulated he made a selection which he arranged under various headings and published in 1856 as Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, to which is added Porsoniana. Rogers himself kept a notebook, in which he entered impressions of the conversation of many of his distinguished friends—Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, Henry Grattan, Richard Porson, John Horne Tooke, Talleyrand, Lord Erskine, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Grenville and the duke of Wellington. They were published by his nephew William Sharpe in 1859 as Recollections by Samuel Rogers; and Reminiscences and Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, Banker, Poet, and Patron of the Arts, 1763–1855 (1903), by G. H. Powell, is an amalgamation of these two authorities. Rogers held various honorary positions: he was one of the trustees of the National Gallery; and he served on a commission to inquire into the management of the British Museum, and on another for the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament.
Meanwhile his literary production was slow. A poem of some autobiographical interest, An Epistle to a Friend (Richard Sharp), published in 1798, describes Rogers's ideal of a happy life. This was followed twelve years later by The Voyage of Columbus (1810), and by Jacqueline (1814), a narrative poem, written in the four-accent measure of the newer writers, and published in the same volume with Byron's Lara. His reflective poem on Human Life (1819), on which he had been engaged for twelve years, is written in his earlier manner.
In 1814 Rogers made a tour on the Continent with his sister Sarah. He travelled through Switzerland to Italy, keeping a full diary of events and impressions, and had made his way to Naples when the news of Napoleon's escape from Elba obliged him to hurry home. Seven years later he returned to Italy, paying a visit to Byron and Shelley at Pisa. Out of the earlier of these tours arose his last and longest work, Italy. The first part was published anonymously in 1822; the second, with his name attached, in 1828. The production was at first a failure, but Rogers was determined to make it a success. He enlarged and revised the poem, and commissioned illustrations from J. M. Turner, Thomas Stothard and Samuel Prout. These were engraved on steel in the sumptuous edition of 1830. The book then proved a great success, and Rogers followed it up with an equally sumptuous edition of his Poems (1838). In 1850, on Wordsworth's death, Rogers was asked to succeed him as poet laureate, but declined the honour on account of his great age. For the last five years of his life he was confined to his chair in consequence of a fall in the street. He died in London on the 18th of December 1855.
A full account of Rogers is given in two works by P. W. Clayden, The Early Life of Samuel Rogers (1887) and Rogers and his Contemporaries (2 vols., 1889). One of the best accounts of Rogers, containing many examples of his caustic wit, is by Abraham Hayward in the Edinburgh Review for July 1856. See also the Aldine edition (1857) of his Poetical Works, and the Journals of Byron and of Moore.
ROGERS, WILLIAM (1819–1896), English clergyman and educational reformer, was born in London on the 24th of November 1819, the son of a barrister. Educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, he entered Durham University in 1842, to study theology, and was ordained in 1843. In 1845 he was appointed to St Thomas Charterhouse, where he remained for eighteen years, throwing, himself passionately into the work of education of his poor, degraded and often criminal parishioners. He began by establishing a school for ragamuffins in a blacksmith's abandoned shed, and with the generous help of friends he gradually extended its scope until the Whole parish was a network of schools. In 1858 he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission to inquire into popular education, and he was returned a representative of the London School Board after the passing of Forster’s Act in 1870. In 1863 the bishop of London *gave him the living of St Botolph Bishopsgate. Rogers was also made a prebendary of St Paul's, and in 1857 he had been appointed Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. Having largely solved at St Thomas's the problem of elementary education, at Bishopsgate Rogers tackled the no less difficult one of middle-class schools. He believed in secular education, leaving doctrinal training to parents and clergy. To the cry against “godless education,” Rogers impulsively replied, “ Hang theology; let us begin ”; and his nickname of “Hang-theology Rogers” stuck to him for the rest of his life. The Cowper Street Schools, costing £20,000, were the practical result of his energy. His next great work was the reconstruction of Edward Alleyn's charity at Dulwich. The new college was opened in 1870; new buildings were erected for the lower school, and the lion's share of the work fell upon Rogers. The culmination of his labours was the opening, on his seventy-fifth birthday, of the Bishopsgate Institute, including a hall, with accommodation for 500 people and a reference and lending library. On the same day a portrait and gift of plate was made him at the Mansion House, before a distinguished gathering. Lord Rosebery, then Prime Minister, observed in his speech that though bishoprics and deaneries had not been the rector's lot, there was not a poor Jew in Houndsditch or Petticoat Lane whose face would not brighten when he saw him coming. When he died, on the 19th of January 1896, this might have served as an appropriate epitaph.
ROGIER, CHARLES LATOUR (1800-1885), Belgian statesman, descended from a Belgian family settled in the department of the Nord in France, was born at St Quentin on 17th August 1800. His father, an officer in the French army, perished in the Russian campaign of 1812; and the family moved to Liége, where the eldest son, Firmin, .held a professorship. Charles, after being called to the Bar, founded, in collaboration with his lifelong friends, Paul Devaux and Joseph Lebeau, the journal Mathieu Laensberg (afterwards Le Politique), which by its ardent patriotism and its attacks on the Dutch administration soon acquired a widespread influence. When the insurrection of 1830 broke out at Brussels, Rogier put himself at the head of 150 Liégeois, and inscribing on his banner the motto,
