"When I beheld thee, light and gay,
The idol of the passing day;
The god of fools who never knew
The worth of him they cringed to;—
When I beheld thee, proud and young,
Despise the tribute due thy song;
While thy high spirit kept away
Sages from converse, souls astray:—
When nature show'd the bitter mind
Fraught with ill-will to all mankind;—
I wept that genius had been given
To one who thus could lead so far from heaven."
Maginn brings the easy accusation of "petty larceny" against the poet. This charge is probably, in part at least, based upon the assertion of Coleridge, in his first volume of verse, that Rogers stole the tale of "Florio" from the Lochleven of Michael Bruce. Lamb wrote to Coleridge, denouncing the charge as utterly unfounded; and Coleridge, in the second edition of his volume, took occasion to "expiate a sentence of unfounded detraction by an unsolicited and self-originating apology." Rogers was satisfied, and thus the matter ended.
The face of Rogers is said to have been pleasing, and even handsome, in youth. The painting by Hoppner {ætat. 46), and the drawing by Sir Thomas Lawrence, alike lend credence to the belief. Then there is the oil-painting by the latter, "in middle life," of which a wood-cut is given in the Illustrated London News, Dec. 20, 1855, side by side with one from a photograph by Paine, representing the banker-poet at the age of ninety-two. But the fact is there is no good likeness of him, for the simple reason that he would not allow one to be taken. There is one drawn on stone in 1838, by Mrs. Geale, a niece of Lady Morgan, which would have been excellent if the artist had ventured to give her subject his actual age. The portrait by Meyer, from a sketch by Baron Denon, is not satisfactory. Dantan's bust is hardly a caricature, and for that reason was held by Rogers in especial horror. The sketch of Maclise before us is, perhaps, the best, and most faithful of all,—though we can understand how Goethe, in distant Weimar,—as Thackeray wrote to G. H. Lewes,—looked upon it with a natural horror, as "a ghastly caricature," exclaiming, as he shut up the book and put it away in anger: "They would make me look like that!"
If Rogers has not come down to us as a modern Joe Miller, it is not the fault of Dr. Maginn and Theodore Hook. He had a knack of uttering pointed epigrammatic sayings and smart repartees; but, as the case of Selwyn, Luttrell, Sheridan, Walpole, Jekyll, Rose and others—not to mention honest "Joe" himself,—hundreds of jokes have been fathered upon him, of whose paternity he was guiltless. In the early days of the John Bull it was the fashion to lay every foundling witticism at the door of Sam Rogers; and thus the refined poet and man of letters became known as a sorry jester,—just as Virgil was held to have been a great magician, in the dark ages; the grave philologist Meursius is chiefly known to the present generation as the author of one of the most obscene books ever written, of which he is altogether innocent;[1] Aristotle himself enjoys, in the bucolic mind, at least, the reputation of a circumforaneous quack; and the learned George Buchanan, lumen Scotiæ, who whipped
- ↑ Joannis Meursii, Elegantiæ Latini Sermonis, 12mo (circa. 1750).
