to the dictum of Swift, who demurred to the title of "a fine old man," saying, "there is no such thing; if his head and his heart had been good for anything, they Avould have worn him out long ago."
As Rogers enjoyed the most refined society of his long day—that of the frequenters of his ever memorable breakfasts, so did he live surrounded with the choicest memorials of past and present literature and art. His walls were hung with rare specimens of the older masters, and the brighter aquarelles of Turner and Stothard. The mantel-piece in his drawing-room was designed by Flaxman; in his library were stored the MSS. of Gray, in their exquisite caligraphy, and the celebrated agreement between Milton and Samuel Simmons, the publisher (April 27, 1667), for the copyright of Paradise Lost; there was Roubiliac's clay model for a bust of Pope, by whose side his father had stood when the artist was modelling the drapery; there was a sketch by Raphael for which the Marquis of Westminster had offered him enough land to build a villa on; and there was a piece of amber enclosing a fly, which as Sydney Smith hinted, might have buzzed in the ear of Adam. As Byron wrote in his diary; "if you enter his house—his drawing-room—his library—you, of yourself, say this is not the dwelling of a common mind. There is not a gem, a coin, a book thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor."
Rogers made a good use of his wealth, which has, however, been overstated. It probably was never much above £5000 a year, of which he spent a fourth part in charity. It was to him that Sheridan addressed the last letter he ever wrote, begging for assistance, to prevent the very bed on which he was dying from being torn from under him by the bailiffs; and the answer was a cheque for £150,—not the first, by the way, in the same direction. It was he who helped Moore in his Bermudan difficulties; and lent Campbell £500 to enable him to purchase a share in the Metropolitan; and it was under his patronage that Moxon commenced business as a publisher, as, under the auspices of Pope, Dodsley had started in business-life a century before.
As a proser,—take the word in any sense,—Rogers commenced his literary career, as Dr. Johnson had done before him, when he was still in his teens (1781), by contributing a series of essays, eight in number, entitled the "Scribbler," to the Gentleman's Magazine. He was not, however, an admirer or imitator of the lexicographer's "turgid style"; and his prose notes, or episodical and illustrative narratives appended to Italy and Poems, which he continued to polish and augment as long as his faculties lasted, have been said on high authority to constitute the choicest collection of anecdotes and quotations, and some of the most exquisite pieces of prose compositions in the language. Of these, indeed, Mackintosh used to cite the short essay on "National Prejudices" in Italy as absolutely perfect, both in thought and style.
The epoch of his advent as a poet was favourable to his fame; a small taper is conspicuous in a dark room. Gray, Goldsmith, Akenside and Churchill were dead. Burns had not appeared; Cowper and Crabbe were but yet little known; the audience of Darwin was fit but few; Dr. Walcott ("Peter Pindar") held the day with his coarse and vigorous satires; and Hayley was lord of the ascendant in his vapid and polished mediocrity. The rest of the field was occupied by poets of the softer sex,—Hannah More, Anna Seward, Lucy Aikin, and Helen Maria Williams.
