BOOKS.
ROGERS'S TABLE-TALK.*
This is a handsome reprint, apparently without revision, of the volume which called down the wrath of Mr. Hayward in the Edinburgh Review. His criticism appeared in 1856, and in that year a second edition of the Recollections was published, with Mr. Dyce's initials at the end of the preface. It is an enter- taining book, and does not, we think, merit the slight cast upon it by the reviewer. Anecdotes are probably never transmitted with precise accuracy, and there seems to be no higher authority for accepting the reviewer's versions than those given by Mr. Dyce. That one reads better than another is not any evidence of greater fidelity. Mr. Dyce laid no claim to be a Boswell in writing down the table-talk, and it is probable that he did not always use the exact words, and that he may even have sometimes used "the very phraseology Rogers notoriously disliked." This, and more, may be admitted against the book. Doubtless it has imperfections, the chief being what Mr. Roscoe justly called an utter poverty of thought ; but we do not look to Rogers for thought, and the Table Talk is at least amusing, and conveys some characteristics of the poet that Mr. Hayward's essay corroborates. The reader may be grateful for both ; and by the help of them, and of other sources of information, we shall try to give a slight, and necessarily imperfect, sketch of a man who, at the beginning of the century, was one of the most popular of living poets, and who at a later period was one of the best- known hosts in London.
There are few biographical details worth recording of this wealthy poet. The third son of a London banker, and born in 1763, he was wise enough to follow his father's vocation, and to court the Muses, to use the old-fashioned term, in leisure hours. He was a working partner in the bank when The Pleasures of Memory was published ; but at a comparatively early period of life he gave up all active management, and about the beginning of the present century took a house in St. James's Place, which, having nearly rebuilt, be occupied until his death on December 18th, 1855. All the world knows that the cultivation of taste and literature, and the society of the men and women most dis- tinguished for culture, occupied his long life. He loved art and poetry, he loved society, and London was as dear to him as mountains were to Wordsworth. Rogers never married, and love-making neither formed an element of his verse nor of his life. He wished, indeed, for a cot beside a hill, with a Lucy sing- ing at her wheel, "in russet gown and apron blue ;" but such wishes in Rogers's day were proper to express in verse, and the nearest approach to a real love-affair he himself described in his old age. When a young man, so runs the story as repeated by Mr. Hayward, "he admired and sedulously sought the society of the most beautiful girl he then, and still, thought he had ever seen. At the end of the London season, at a ball, she said, I go to-
morrow to Worthing; are you coming there 1° He did not go. Some months afterwards, being at Ranelagh, he saw the atten- tion of every one drawn towards a large party that had just entered, in the centre of which was a lady on the arm of her husband. Stepping forward to see this wonderful beauty, he found it was his love. She merely said, Yon never came to Worthing.'" A
• Rseelloetiwo of ths Table-Talk of &need Bean; to labia is added Pensacola Edited by the late Rey. Alexander Dyes. New Southgate : H. A. Rogers. 1887. lover so indifferent was not likely to have suffered from this laconic rebuke, which meant so much. Possibly he thought the beauty would wait while he was revising couplets or straining his " hard-bound brains " to write fresh ones. Four lines a day was the measure of his poetical fecundity, and one cannot imagine Rogers roused to a storm of passion, whether by love or poetry. "He did nothing rash," says Mrs. Norton ; "I am sure Rogers as a baby never fell down unless he was pushed, but walked from chair to chair of the drawing-room furniture till he reached the place where the sunbeam fell on the carpet. He was the very embodiment of quiet." Probably there was something in him of the finical element in Gray. Take from that poet nine- tenths of his genius and his learning, and the residue would make a Rogers with some notable points of difference. Gray was poor and reserved, and lived the lonely life of a student ; Rogers, if not very wealthy, had ample means, and lived in society. "He knew everybody, and everybody knew him ;" but though he was most generous in helping all who needed help, and was only avaricious of praise, he does not seem to have had many thoroughly warm friends. "I have a sneaking kindness for Rogers," Lady Donegal wrote," which gives me an interest in all his little affairs ;" and Thomas Moore, with whom he was very familiar, calls him his "dearest Rogers ;" but the love which men could give unreservedly to Scott was never given to him. The reason is obvious. He could not be trusted, and when the wind was in the East, to use Mr. Hayward's phrase, would say bitter things of his most intimate acquaint- ances. He gave money more freely than admiration, and his praise was of doubtful value. " His general opinion of what I have done," writes Moore, "is very flattering ; he only finds fault with every part of it in detail ; and this, you know, is the style of his criticism of characters,—' An excellent person, but—' " Some illustrations of this unhappy faculty of "placing everything and everybody in the most disadvantageous point of view" are given in the Edinburgh Review. We prefer, however, to quote the poet Campbell's reply to a person who complained that Rogers said spiteful things. " Borrow five hundred pounds of him," was the answer, "and he will never say one word against you until you want to repay him." To his credit, too, be it added that whilst he was annually giving away large sums, his name figured little in subscription-lists. And it speaks nobly for the firm of Rogers, Olding, and Co., that when the bank was robbed of a large amount, munificent offers of assistance came from all quarters, one friend, a true one surely, placing £100,000 at Rogers's disposal.
In correspondence with the equanimity of his nature was the smoothness of his life. The bank robbery was almost the sole event to rums the calm, until the accident came that deprived him of physical activity. Washington Irving, writing of the poet in his old age, says, "He has enjoyed life, the feast is over, but he occasionally indulges in a breakfast yet ;" but it may be questioned whether he was a happy man. Sir F. Doyle writes of the tinge of bitterness that ran through his con- versation, and considers that he was disappointed. "His early triumphs," he adds, " had no doubt flattered his imagination with the hope of future greatness, and when this hope failed to realise itself, his temper turned somewhat sour, as did, indeed, his face ; still, this vinegar aspect did not go very deep, it was only an aspect, and never impaired the genuine kindness of his nature." In appearance Rogers had nothing to favour him, and there are indications that he felt this more than a sensible man should. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, was gross enough to taunt him with his ghastly appearance, and to ask him why he did not set up his hearse, and Rogers revenged himself in an epigram,-
" Ward has no heart they say, bat I deny it ; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it."
It was owing to courtesy, rather than to judgment, that on the death of Wordsworth, the post of Laureate was offered to Rogers, who was then eighty-seven years of age. He was wise enough to decline the honour.
Rogers belongs to the elegant order of poets. His verse is graceful and refined, wanting in thought and flashes of inspira- tion, but never foolish, although frequently inaccurate. Many of his expressions and metaphors—and in this he resembles Campbell—will not bear examination. He is content to say 'something pretty, whether his words convey a meaning or not, and it is to be feared that his modest hope of enlightening climes and moulding future ages has no chance of being realised. He came into the world at a fortunate period. He was
the senior of all the great poets who made the first quarter of this century so famous, and when he published The Pleasures of Memory in 1793, he had no strong competitors with the exception of Cowper and Crabbe. Both these poets had a distinct vein of their own, both are powerfully pathetic, and both, though in a very different way, looked at Nature without trusting to books. Cowper's imagination lifts him at times into a lofty region of thought ; at times, too, he writes exquisite lyrics, and many of his occasional verses are rich with humour and fancy. Often weak in judgment when he assumes the gown of the preacher, lie is always true when depicting the rural scenes he loves so well. Crabbe, whose work, though fall of energy, is sometimes difficult, apart from the metre, to distinguish from prose, is saved as a poet by a pathos which is not that of the prose writer, and by an originality that places him alone as a delineator of certain aspects of Nature. Horace Smith called Crabbe Pope in worsted stockings ;" but, in fact, there are few points of likeness between them. Pope's fine wit and exquisite precision of phrase, that happy art which makes him, with one exception, the most frequently quoted poet in the language is denied to Crabbe, whose works do not contain half-a-dozen familiar quotations ; and Pope is wholly wanting in the close observation of natural objects and of human life apart from town life, that distinguishes the author of The Borough. In spite of his modern proclivities and sense of natural beauty, Rogers has more affinity to Pope than to Cowper or Crabbe ; and we are inclined to fancy he would have preferred the society of Pope and his friends, to that of the greater poets and men of letters who surrounded his table.
It is to his credit, however, that he could appreciate almost every variety of literary power. Wordsworth he treated with the highest respect, saying, " He deserves all his fame ;" but for Shakespeare he is stated by Hayward to have had little real admiration. It is always interesting to learn what a distin- guished man of letters has to say about books. Rogers slid not take readily to new works, and when the most recent novel was recommended, preferred to read an old one ; Pope, with a warmth of expression unusual to him, is called " a darling man ;" he found, as many readers have done since, an 4' inexpressible charm" in Gray's letters, saying that they are as witty as Walpole's, and have what his want, true wisdom. Beattie's Minstrel, or rather the First Book, delighted him ; so did Cowper's Homer; and The Collar's Saturday Night is pronounced to be the finest pastoral in any language. Rogers regretted, by-the-way, that he had never seen Burns, although he was once within thirty miles of his house ; and he must have regretted, too, in after-years, that his courage failed him one day when he had his hand on Dr. Johnson's knocker.
Like Gray, be admired excessively Marivaux's Marianne, which he read six times through ; and the story goes that, finding three persons at one of his breakfasts who had never read the novel, he lent them each a copy. "I don't call Bebinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels novels," be said ; "they stand quite unrivalled for invention among all prose fictions." Of Scott he does not appear to have thought highly, and was not sure that he would not rather have written Manzoni's Promessi Spozithan all Scott's novels, which reminds one of Coleridge's very moderate estimation of the Waverleys, and of his absurd comment on The Bride of Lammermoor and Ivanhoe as " two wretched abortions." Rogers had a just estimate of Coleridge. He called his Love one of the most enchanting lyrics in the language, and had a very different opinion of his powers as a talker from that entertained by Carlyle. " One morning," he said, " when Hookham Frere also breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without intermission about poetry, and so admirably, that I wish every word he uttered had been written down." Yet the marvellous talker was not always intelligible. A story told with extreme brevity in the Table-Talk is amplified by the Edinburgh Reviewer, who complains that Mr. Dyce has selected the worst version. The point is expressed with equal pertinence in both, but we will give Mr. Hayward's the preference :-
"' Wordsworth and myself,' said Rogers, ' had walked to Highgate to call on Coleridge, when he was living at Gillman's. We sat with him two hours, he talking the whole time without intermission. When we left the house we walked for some time without speaking. " What a wonderful man beim!" exclaimed Wordsworth.—"Wonderful indeed," said I.—" What depth of thought, what richness of expres- sion !" continued Wordsworth.—" There's nothing like him that ever I heard," rejoined I—Another panse.—"Pray," inquired Words- worth, "did you precisely understand what he said about the Kantian philosophy P"—R. "Not precisely."—W. "Or about the plurality of worlds ?"—R. " I can't say I did. In fact, if the truth must out, I did not understand a syllable from one end of his mono. logue to the other."—W. " No more did L" ' " There is some danger lest this article should be as discursive as the book that has suggested it. One interesting feature of the Table-Talk has not yet been mentioned, and must now be dismissed with a word or two. Rogers died scarcely more than thirty years ago, yet his recollections carry the reader back to old-world incidents and to a state of society curiously unlike that with which we are familiar. He remembered seeing the heads of rebels upon Temple Bar, and when a lad, saw "a whole cartful of young girls in dresses of various colours, on their way to be executed at Tyburn." At the sale of Dr. Johnson's books, he met General Ogelthorpe, who, when a young man, had shot snipes in Conduit Street. He recollected the time when it was the fashion to wear swords, and when women's head-dresses were so high that on taking a lady to Ranelagh, she was forced to sit on a stool on the floor of the coach. He remembered Brighton before the Pavilion was built, and saw the Prince of Wales drinking tea in a public room of the inn, "just as other people did." He knew a lawyer at Brighton who bad known Gray ; he had shaken hands with Wilkes, and felt proud of it for a week afterwards. He had supped with Adam Smith, breakfasted with Robertson the historian, heard him preach, heard Blair preach, and had taken coffee with the Piozzis," all in one day." At Erskine'e house, at Hampstead, he dined with the Prince of Wales. Like Fanny Burney, he was present at the trial of Hastings, and though he does not mention her name, must have met her at Streatham. Fox he knew intimately, and went with him once to see young Betty act Hamlet; and passing from gay to grave, it is interesting to read that, in a chapel in the City Road, he saw the dead body of a clergyman," in fall canonicals, his grey hair partly shading his face on both sides, and his flesh resembling was. It was the corpse of Sohn Wesley, and the crowd moved slowly and silently round and round the table to take a last look at that most venerable man."
Certainly the Table-Talk, weak though it may be in some ways, is well worthy of a reprint, and the agreeable form in which it now appears should tempt many book-buyers.
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