One common grave, according to Garrick, covers the actor and his art.
The same may be said of the raconteur. Oral tradition, or even his own
writings, may preserve his precise words; but his peculiarities of voice
or action, his tricks of utterance and intonation,--all the collateral
details which serve to lend distinction or piquancy to the
performance--perish irrecoverably. The glorified gramophone of the
future may perhaps rectify this for a new generation; and give us,
without mechanical drawback, the authentic accents of speakers dead and
gone; but it can never perpetuate the dramatic accompaniment of gesture
and expression. If, as always, there are exceptions to this rule, they
are necessarily evanescent. Now and then, it may be, some clever mimic
will recall the manner of a passed-away predecessor; and he may even
contrive to hand it on, more or less effectually, to a disciple. But the
reproduction is of brief duration; and it is speedily effaced or
transformed.
In this way it is, however, that we get our most satisfactory idea of
the once famous table-talker, Samuel Rogers. Charles Dickens, who sent
Rogers several of his books; who dedicated _Master Humphrey's Clock_ to
him; and who frequently assisted at the famous breakfasts in St. James's
Place, was accustomed--rather cruelly, it may be thought--to take off
his host's very characteristic way of telling a story; and it is,
moreover, affirmed by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald[36] that, in the famous
Readings, "the strangely obtuse and owl-like expression, and the slow,
husky croak" of Mr. Justice Stareleigh in the "Trial from _Pickwick_"
were carefully copied from the author of the _Pleasures of Memory_, That
Dickens used thus to amuse his friends is confirmed by the autobiography
of the late Frederick Locker,[37] who perfectly remembered the old man,
to see whom he had been carried, as a boy, by his father. He had also
heard Dickens repeat one of Rogers's stock anecdotes (it was that of the
duel in a dark room, where the more considerate combatant, firing up the
chimney, brings down his adversary);[38]--and he speaks of Dickens as
mimicking Rogers's "calm, low-pitched, drawling voice and dry biting
manner very comically."[39] At the same time, it must be remembered that
these reminiscences relate to Rogers in his old age. He was over seventy
when Dickens published his first book, _Sketches by Boz_; and, though it
is possible that Rogers's voice was always rather sepulchral, and his
enunciation unusually deliberate and monotonous, he had nevertheless, as
Locker says, "made story-telling a fine art." Continued practice had
given him the utmost economy of words; and as far as brevity and point
are concerned, his method left nothing to be desired. Many of his best
efforts are still to be found in the volume of _Table-Talk_ edited for
Moxon in 1856 by the Rev. Alexander Dyce; or preferably, as actually
written down by Rogers himself in the delightful _Recollections_ issued
three years later by his nephew and executor, William Sharpe.
Notes:
[36] _Recreations of a Literary Man_, 1882, p. 137.
[37] _My Confidences_, by Frederick Locker-Lampson, 1896, pp. 98
and 325.
[38] The duellists were an Englishman and a Frenchman; and
Rogers was in the habit of adding as a postscript: "When I tell that in
Paris, I always put the Englishman up the chimney!"
[39] It may be added that Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, himself no mean
mime, may be sometimes persuaded to imitate Dickens imitating Rogers.
But although the two things are often intimately connected, the "books,"
and not the "stories" of Rogers, are the subject of the present paper.
After this, it sounds paradoxical to have to admit that his reputation
as a connoisseur far overshadowed his reputation as a bibliophile. When,
in December 1855, he died, his pictures and curios,--his "articles of
virtue and bigotry" as a modern Malaprop would have styled
them,--attracted far more attention than the not very numerous volumes
forming his library.[40] What people flocked to see at the tiny
treasure-house overlooking the Green Park,[41] which its nonagenarian
owner had occupied for more than fifty years, were the "Puck" and
"Strawberry Girl" of Sir Joshua, the Titians, Giorgiones, and Guidos,[42]
the Poussins and Claudes, the drawings of Raphael and Dürer and Lucas
van Leyden, the cabinet decorated by Stothard, the chimney-piece carved
by Flaxman; the miniatures and bronzes and Etruscan vases,--all the
"infinite riches in a little room," which crowded No. 22 from garret to
basement. These were the rarities that filled the columns of the papers
and the voices of the quidnuncs when in 1856 they came to the hammer.
But although the Press of that day takes careful count of these things,
it makes little reference to the sale of the "books" of the banker-bard
who spent some £15,000 on the embellishments of his _Italy_ and his
_Poems_; and although Dr. Burney says that Rogers's library included
"the best editions of the best authors in most languages," he had
clearly no widespread reputation as a book-collector pure and simple.
Nevertheless he loved his books,--that is, he loved the books he read.
And, as far as can be ascertained, he anticipated the late Master of
Balliol, since he read only the books he liked. Nor was he ever diverted
from his predilections by mere fashion or novelty. "He followed Bacon's
maxim"--says one who knew him--"to read much, not many things: _multum
legere, non multa_. He used to say, 'When a new book comes out, I read
an old one.'"[43]
Notes:
[40] The prices obtained confirm this. Thetotaisum realised was
£45,188:14:3. Of this the books represented no more than £1415:5.
[41] This--with its triple range of bow-windows, from one of
which Rogers used to watch his favourite sunsets--is now the residence
of Lord Northcliffe.
[42] Three of these--the "_Noli me tangere_" of Titian, Giorgione's
"Knight in Armour," and Guide's "_Ecce Homo_"--are now in the National
Gallery, to which they were bequeathed by Rogers.
[43] _Edinburgh Review_, vol. civ. p. 105, by Abraham Hayward.
The general Rogers-sale at Christie's took place in the spring of 1856,
and twelve days had been absorbed before the books were reached. Their
sale took six days more--_i.e._ from May 12 to May 19. As might be
expected from Rogers's traditional position in the literary world, the
catalogue contains many presentation copies. What, at first sight, would
seem the earliest, is the _Works_ of Edward Moore, 1796, 2 vols. But if
this be the fabulist and editor of the _World_, it can scarcely have
been received from the writer, since, in 1796, Moore had been dead for
nearly forty years. With Bloomfield's poems of 1802, l. p., we are on
surer ground, for Rogers, like Capel Lofft, had been kind to the author
of _The Farmer's Boy_, and had done his best to obtain him a pension.
Another early tribute, subsequently followed by the _Tales of the Hall_,
was Crabbe's Borough, which he sent to Rogers in 1810, in response to
polite overtures made to him by the poet. This was the beginning of a
lasting friendship, of no small import to Crabbe, as it at once admitted
him to Rogers's circle, an advantage of which there are many traces in
Crabbe's journal. Next comes Madame de Staël's much proscribed _De
l'Allamagne_ (the Paris edition); and from its date, 1813, it must have
been presented to Rogers when its irrepressible author was in England.
She often dined or breakfasted at St. James's Place, where (according to
Byron), she out-talked Whitbread, confounded Sir Humphry Davy, and was
herself well "_ironed_"[44] by Sheridan. Rogers considered _Corinne_ to
be her best novel, and _Delphine_ a terrible falling-off. The Germany he
found "very fatiguing." "She writes her works four or five times over,
correcting them only in that way"--he says. "The end of a chapter [is]
always the most obscure, as she ends with an epigram,"[45] Another early
presentation copy is the second edition of Bowles's _Missionary_, 1815.
According to Rogers, who claims to have suggested the poem, it was to
have been inscribed to him. But somehow or other, the book got dedicated
to noble lord who--Rogers adds drily--never, either by word or letter,
made any acknowledgment of the homage.[46] It is not impossible that
there is some confusion of recollection here, or Rogers is misreported
by Dyce. The first anonymous edition of the _Missionary_, 1813, had _no_
dedication; and the second was inscribed to the Marquess of Lansdowne
because he had been prominent among those who recognised the merit of
its predecessor.
Notes:
[44] Perhaps a remembrance of Mrs Slipslop's "_ironing_."
[45] Clayden's _Rogers and his Contemporaries_, 1889, i. 225. As
an epigrammatist himself, Rogers might have been more indulgent to a
_consoeur_. Here is one of Madame de Staël's "ends of chapters":--"_La
monotonie, dans la retraite, tranquillise l'âme; la monotonie, dans le
grand monde, fatigue l'esprit_" (ch. viii.). But he evidently found her
rather overpowering.
[46] Table-Talk, 1856, p. 258.
Several of Scott's poems, with Rogers's autograph, and Scott's card,
appear in the catalogue; and, in 1812, Byron, who a year after inscribed
the _Giaour_ to Rogers, sent him the first two cantos of _Childe
Harold._ In 1838, Moore presents _Lalla Rookh_, with Heath's plates, a
work which, upon its first appearance, twenty years earlier, had been
dedicated to Rogers. In 1839 Charles Dickens followed with _Nicholas
Nickleby_, succeeded a year later by _Master Humphrey's Clock_ (1840-1),
also dedicated to Rogers in recognition, not only of his poetical merit,
but of his "active sympathy with the poorest and humblest of his kind."
Rogers was fond of "Little Nell"; and in the Preface to _Barnaby Rudge_,
Dickens gracefully acknowledged that "for a beautiful thought" in the
seventy-second chapter of the _Old Curiosity Shop_, he was indebted to
Rogers's Ginevra in the _Italy_:--
And long might'st thou have seen
An old man wandering _as in quest of something,_
Something he could not find--he knew not what.
The _American Notes_, 1842, was a further offering from Dickens. Among
other gifts may be noted Wordsworth's _Poems_, 1827-35; Campbell's
_Pilgrim of Glencoe_, 1842; Longfellow's _Ballads and Voices of the
Night_, 1840-2; Macaulay's _Lays_ and Tennyson's _Poems_, 1842; and
lastly, Hazlitt's _Criticisms on Art_, 1844, and Carlyle's _Letters and
Speeches of Cromwell_, 1846. Brougham's philosophical novel of _Albert
Lunel; or, the Château of Languedoc_, 3 vols, 1844, figures in the
catalogue as "withdrawn." It had been suppressed "for private reasons"
upon the eve of publication; and this particular copy being annotated by
Rogers (to whom it was inscribed) those concerned were no doubt all the
more anxious that it should not get abroad. Inspection of the reprint of
1872 shows, however, that want of interest was its chief error. A
reviewer of 1858 roundly calls it "feeble" and "commonplace"; and it
could hardly have increased its writer's reputation. Indeed, by some, it
was not supposed to be from his Lordship's pen at all. Rogers, it may be
added, frequently annotated his books. His copies of Pope, Gray and
Scott had many _marginalia_. Clarke's and Fox's histories of James II.
were also works which he decorated in this way.
As already hinted, not very many bibliographical curiosities are
included in the St. James's Place collection; and to look for
Shakespeare quartos or folios, for example, would be idle. Ordinary
editions of Shakespeare, such as Johnson's and Theobald's;
Shakespeariana, such as Mrs. Montagu's _Essay_ and Ayscough's
_Index_,--these are there of course. If the list also takes in Thomas
Caldecott's _Hamlet_, and _As you like it_ (1832), that is, first,
because the volume is a presentation copy; and secondly, because
Caldecott's colleague in his frustrate enterprise was Crowe, Rogers's
Miltonic friend, hereafter mentioned. Rogers's own feeling for
Shakespeare was cold and hypercritical; and he was in the habit of
endorsing with emphasis Ben Jonson's aspiration that the master had
blotted a good many of his too-facile lines. Nevertheless, it is
possible to pick out a few exceptional volumes from Mr. Christie's
record. Among the earliest comes a copy of Garth's _Dispensary_, 1703,
which certainly boasts an illustrious pedigree. Pope, who received it
from the author, had carefully corrected it in several places; and in
1744 bequeathed it to Warburton. Warburton, in his turn, handed it on to
Mason, from whom it descended to Lord St. Helens, by whom, again,
shortly before his death (1815), it was presented to Rogers. To Pope's
corrections, which Garth adopted, Mason had added a comment. What made
the volume of further interest was, that it contained Lord Dorchester's
receipt for his subscription to Pope's _Homer_; and, inserted at the
end, a full-length portrait of Pope; viz., that engraved in Warton's
edition of 1797, as sketched in pen-and-ink by William Hoare of Bath.
Another interesting item is the quarto first edition (the first three
books) of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, Ponsonbie, 1590: and a third, the
_Paradise Lost_ of Milton in ten books, the original text of 1667 (with
the 1669 title-page and the Argument and Address to the Reader)--both
bequeathed to Rogers by W, Jackson of Edinburgh. (One of the stock
exhibits at "Memory Hall"--as 22 St. James's Place was playfully called
by some of the owner's friends--was Milton's receipt to Symmons the
printer for the five pounds he received for his epic. This, framed and
glazeds hung, according to Lady Eastlake, on one of the doors.[47]) A
fourth rare book was William Bonham's black-letter Chaucer, a folio
which had been copiously annotated in MS. by Home Tooke, who gave it to
Rogers. It moreover contained, at folio 221, the record of Tooke's
arrest at Wimbledon on 16th May, 1794, and subsequent committal on the
19th to the Tower, for alleged high treason.[48] Further _notabilia_ in
this category were the Duke of Marlborough's _Hypnerotomachie_ of
Poliphilus, Paris, 1554, and also the Aldine edition of 1499; the very
rare 1572 issue of Camoens's _Lusiads_; Holbein's _Dance of Death_, the
Lyons issues of 1538 and 1547; first editions of Bewick's _Birds_ and
_Quadrupeds_; Le Sueur's _Life of St. Bruno_, with the autograph of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and a rare quarto (1516) of Boccaccio's _Decameron_.
Notes:
[47] It was, no doubt, identical with the "Original Articles of
Agreement" (Add. MSS. 18,861) between Milton and Samuel Symmons,
printer, dated 27th April, 1667, presented by Rogers in 1852 to the
British Museum. Besides the above-mentioned £5 down, there were to be
three further payments of £5 each on the sale of three editions, each of
1300 copies. The second edition appeared in 1674, the year of the
author's death.
[48] He was acquitted. His notes, in pencil, and relating chiefly to his
_Diversions of Parley_, were actually written in the Tower. Rogers, who
was present at the trial in November, mentioned, according to Dyce, a
curious incident bearing upon a now obsolete custom referred to by
Goldsmith and others. As usual, the prisoner's dock, in view of possible
jail-fever, was strewn with sweet-smelling herbs-fennel, rosemary and the
like. Tooke indignantly swept them away. Another of several characteristic
anecdotes told by Rogers of Tooke is as follows:--Being asked once at
college what his father was, he replied, "A Turkey Merchant." Tooke _père_
was a poulterer in Clare Market.
But the mere recapitulation of titles readily grows tedious, even to the
elect; and I turn to some of the volumes with which, from references in
the _Table-Talk_ and _Recollections_, their owner might seem to be more
intimately connected. Foremost among these--one would think--should come
his own productions. Most of these, no doubt, are included under the
auctioneers' heading of "Works and Illustrations." In the "Library"
proper, however, there are few traces of them. There is a quarto copy of
the unfortunate _Columbus_, with Stothard's sketches; and there is the
choice little _Pleasures of Memory_ of 1810, with Luke Clennell's
admirable cuts in _facsimile_ from the same artist's pen-and-ink,--a
volume which, come what may, will always hold its own in the annals of
book-illustration. That there were more than one of these latter may be
an accident. Rogers, nevertheless, like many book-lovers, must have
indulged in duplicates. According to Hayward, once at breakfast, when
some one quoted Gray's irresponsible outburst concerning the novels of
Marivaux and Crébillon _le fils_, Rogers asked his guests, three in
number, whether they were familiar with Marivaux's _Vie de Marianne_, a
book which he himself confesses to have read through six times, and
which French critics still hold, on inconclusive evidence, to have been
the "only begetter" of Richardson's _Pamela_ and the sentimental novel.
None of the trio knew anything about it. "Then I will lend you each a
copy," rejoined Rogers; and the volumes were immediately produced,
doubtless by that faithful and indefatigable factotum, Edmund Paine, of
whom his master was wont to affirm that he would not only find any book
_in_ the house, but _out_ of it as well. What is more (unless it be
assumed that the poet's stock was larger still), one, at least, of the
three copies must have been returned, since there is a copy in the
catalogue. As might be expected in the admirer of Marivaux's heroine,
the list is also rich in Jean-Jacques, whose "_goût vif pour les
déjeuners_," this Amphitryon often extolled, quoting with approval
Rousseau's opinion that "_C'est le temps de la journée où nous sommes le
plus tranquilles, où nous causons le plus à noire aise._" Another of his
favourite authors was Manzoni, whose _Promessi Sposi_ he was inclined to
think he would rather have written than all Scott's novels; and he never
tired of reading Louis Racine's _Mémoires_ of his father, 1747,--that
"_filon de l'or pur du dix-septième siecle_"--as Villemain calls
it--"_qui se prolonge dans l'âge suivant._" Some of Rogers's likings
sound strange enough nowadays. With Campbell, he delighted in Cowper's
_Homer_, which he assiduously studied, and infinitely preferred to that
of Pope. Into Chapman's it must be assumed that he had not
looked--certainly he has left no sonnet on the subject. Milton was
perhaps his best-loved bard. "When I was travelling in Italy (he says),
I made two authors my constant study for versification,--Milton _and
Crowe_" (The italics are ours.) It is an odd collocation; but not
unintelligible. William Crowe, the now forgotten Public Orator of
Oxford, and author of _Lewesdon Hill_, was an intimate friend; a writer
on versification; and, last but not least, a very respectable echo of
the Miltonic note, as the following, from a passage dealing with the
loss in 1786 of the _Halsewell_ East Indiaman off the coast of Dorset,
sufficiently testifies:--
The richliest-laden ship
Of spicy Ternate, or that annual sent
To the Philippines o'er the southern main
From Acapulco, carrying massy gold,
Were poor to this;--freighted with hopeful Youth
And Beauty, and high Courage undismay'd
By mortal terrors, and paternal Love, etc., etc.
It is not improbable that Rogers caught the mould of his blank verse
from the copy rather than from the model. In the matter of style--as
Flaubert has said--the second-bests are often the better teachers. More
is to be learned from La Fontaine and Gautier than from Molière and
Victor Hugo.
Many art-books, many books addressed specially to the connoisseur, as
well as most of those invaluable volumes no gentleman's library should
be without, found their places on Rogers's hospitable shelves. Of such,
it is needless to speak; nor, in this place, is it necessary to deal
with his finished and amiable, but not very vigorous or vital poetry. A
parting word may, however, be devoted to the poet himself. Although,
during his lifetime, and particularly towards its close, his weak voice
and singularly blanched appearance exposed him perpetually to a kind of
brutal personality now happily tabooed, it cannot be pretended that,
either in age or youth, he was an attractive-looking man. In these
cases, as in that of Goldsmith, a measure of burlesque sometimes
provides a surer criterion than academic portraiture. The bust of the
sculptor-caricaturist, Danton, is of course what even Hogarth would have
classed as _outré_[49]; but there is reason for believing that Maclise's
sketch in _Fraser_ of the obtrusively bald, cadaverous and wizened
figure in its arm-chair, which gave such a shudder of premonition to
Goethe, and which Maginn, reflecting the popular voice, declared to be a
mortal likeness--"painted to the very death"--was more like the original
than his pictures by Lawrence and Hoppner. One can comprehend, too, that
the person whom nature had so ungenerously endowed, might be perfectly
capable of retorting to rudeness, or the still-smarting recollection of
rudeness, with those weapons of mordant wit and acrid epigram which are
not unfrequently the protective compensation of physical shortcomings.
But this conceded, there are numberless anecdotes which testify to
Rogers's cultivated taste and real good breeding, to his genuine
benevolence, to his almost sentimental craving for appreciation and
affection. In a paper on his books, it is permissible to end with
a bookish anecdote. One of his favourite memories, much repeated in his
latter days, was that of Cowley's laconic Will,--"I give my body to the
earth, and my soul to my Maker." Lady Eastlake shall tell the
rest:--"This ... proved on one occasion too much for one of the party,
and in an incautious moment a flippant young lady exclaimed, 'But, Mr.
Rogers, what of Cowley's _property_?' An ominous silence ensued, broken
only by a _sotto voce_ from the late Mrs. Procter: 'Well, my dear, you
have put your foot in it; no more invitations for you in a hurry,' But
she did the kind old man, then above ninety, wrong. The culprit
continued to receive the same invitations and the same welcome."[50]
Note:
[49] Rogers's own copy of this, which (it may be added), he held
in horror, now belongs to Mr. Edmund Gosse. Lord Londonderry has a
number of Danton's busts.
[50] _Quarterly Review_, vol. 167, p. 512.