was represented to him that the poet had miscalculated the probable returns, he consented, it is said, to take them back, and charge £5 each for their use.[1] They are now, with the exception of the second vignette the "Hospice of St. Bernard," in the National Gallery. The engravers received sixty guineas a plate.
One of the most interesting episodes in the life of Rogers was his intimacy with Byron. This took place, through the introduction of Moore, in Nov. 1811. Byron in his satire of 1809 had called the poet "melodious Rogers," and classed the "Pleasures of Memory" with the "Essay on Man," and the "Pleasures of Hope," as the most beautiful didactic poems in the language. In 1813, Byron dedicated to him his poem, "The Giaour," "as a slight but most sincere token of admiration for his genius, respect for his character, and gratitude for his friendship;" and wrote on a blank leaf of the "Pleasures of Memory," the charming lines: —
"Absent or present, still to thee,
My friend, what magic spells belong!
As all can tell, who share like me.
In turn thy converse or thy song.
"But when the dreaded hour shall come,
By friendship ever deem'd too nigh.
And 'Memory' o'er her Druid's tomb
Shall weep that aught of thee can die;
"How fondly will she then repay
Thy homage offered at her shrine.
And blend, while ages roll away.
Her name immortally with thine."
After this, the poets met by appointment at Bologna, in the autumn of 1821; visited the Florence Gallery together; and parted, never to meet again in this world. Rogers had found Byron had grown grey-headed in the five years that had passed since they had met before, though only in his thirty-third year; and saw little to
"——— recall the youth that swam
From Sestos to Abydos."
The poets sat "far, far into the night conversing;" and the elder bard has left a charming account of the interview, as one of the episodes in his Italy (p. 97).
It is sad to know that such a friendship, so begun, and between two such men, should be marred in its remembrance. How it came about is not known. Whether Byron, as has been said, had received annoyance by the minute and fastidious dilletanteism of Rogers, and his unseasonable visits when in Italy; or whether, as seems more probable, some one of those sarcastic and personal remarks in which the latter was wont to indulge at the expense of his most intimate associates had been conveyed to the poetic pilgrim at Ravenna by one of the good-natured friends who are ever ready to charge themselves with such missions,—it appears that he (Byron) revenged himself by the composition of a satire, which has been said to be "the greatest of modern satirical portraits in verse," and "not surpassed for cool malignity and happy imagery in the whole
- ↑ Edinburgh Review, No. ccxi. p. 99. It is elsewhere stated that Turner's remuneration for the drawings was from fifteen to twenty guineas apiece.
