Latin fundamentally into James I., is only known to chap-book students as "the King's Fool"! Maginn gives a happy, if outrageously extravagant, illustration of our poet's alleged reputation for humour, when he says:—"Joe Miller vails his bonnet to Sam Rogers; in all the newspapers, not only of the kingdom but its dependencies,—Hindostan, Canada, the West Indies, the Cape, from the tropics,—nay, from the Antipodes to the Orkneys, Sam is godfather-general to all the bad jokes in existence. The Yankees have caught the fancy, and from New Orleans to New York it is the same,—Rogers is synonymous with a pun. All British-born or descended people, — yea the very negro and the Hindoo—father their calembourgs on Rogers. Quashee, or Ramee-Samee, who knows nothing of Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, or Fraser's Magazine, grins from ear to ear at the name of the illustrious banker, and with gratified voice exclaims, 'Him dam funny, dat Sam!'"
It was to Rogers that Moore dedicated his Lalla Rookh, Byron inscribed his name at the summit of a literary pyramid of contemporary poets, while he put Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey nearly at the base. Leigh Hunt, on the other hand with better judgment, in his clever Feast of the Poets, admits four only to dine with Apollo,—Scott, Southey, Campbell and Moore;— hile Rogers is merely asked to tea. "You might have given him supper," wrote Byron to Hunt, "if only a sandwich;" and Moore pointed out what he thought an injustice.
Dr. Beattie, his medical attendant, who was with him when he died, wrote:—"a more tranquil and placid transition I never beheld." Memory had long deserted her chosen bard, and he fell into that state which Juvenal depicts as sadder than all the other infirmities of age:—
"————————————— omni
Membrorum damno major dementia, quæ nec
Nomina servorum, nee vultum agnoscit amici
Cum quo præterita cænavit nocte, nec illos
Quos genuit, quos eduxit."
Still, almost to the very last, he remembered and would fondly repeat some beautiful lines by Charles Mackay,—worth, he was wont to say, all the fine writing the world ever produced,—and which, published in a juvenile volume of poems, and presented to Rogers, had gained for their writer his acquaintance and friendship:—
"When my soul flies to the first great Giver,
Friends of the Bard, let my dwelling be,
By the green bank of that rippling river,
Under the shade of that tall beech tree
Bury me there, ye lovers of song,
When the prayers for the dead are spoken.
With my hands on my breast.
Like a child at rest,
And my lyre in the grave unbroken."
Among the most constant guests at the memorable breakfasts of Rogers was the Rev. Alexander Dyce. This gentleman—who himself died May, 1869,—had been in the habit, from his first introduction to the poet, and with his knowledge and sanction, of recording the various sayings and anecdotes with which the conversation of his host abounded. These, or rather a selection from them, he subsequently published under the title of Recollections is of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (Moxon, 1856, 8vo), a volume which received an unfavourable notice in the
