‘My dear Rogers,—I have always intended to send you these volumes, but have been always unwilling to place such ordinary matter upon a library table around which the great and the wise are so often gathered. I remember, however, that you are not only an author of the highest distinction, but a politician of unblemished honesty, and that if you thought little of my powers you would still value my principles—nor was my vanity forgotten, for I trusted your guests would say, “If Sydney Smith was not a Liberal and an upright man we should not find his books on the table of Samuel Rogers.”
