Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries
Edward Everett to Samuel Rogers, 22 December 1844
‘46 Grosvenor Place: 22nd Dec., 1844.
‘My dear Mr.
Rogers,—I write this to tell you, in case I should not
find you at home, how much I am obliged to you for the privilege of reading the
memoranda contained in your golden little manuscript, herewith returned. I was
half tempted to page and index it for you; but such mechanical appliances, in a
collection of this kind, would be like the railway among the lakes, against
which poor Wordsworth is fighting.
‘You must not forget that one of these days you are ![]()
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to show me your memoranda of the
Duke of Wellington. I rejoice in the
hope that you have bestowed some of that care on yourself which you have so
well given to recording the wit and wisdom of others. I see your
“Journal” mentioned in the manuscript; and since it is necessary to
look forward to the time (εσσεται ημαρ,
may it be far distant) when your living intercourse will cease to be the
delight of all around you, I trust you will feel it a kind of duty to leave
behind you that which will, in some degree, supply the loss, and perpetuate
your intellectual existence.
‘You must not, however, infer from this remark that I
think your poems are not of themselves a sufficient acquittal of the debt which
every man gifted like you owes to the world. I can easily prove to you that I
feel all their worth, as I do most truly enjoy their calm, deep beauty, which
suits my own subdued spirit better than the startling wonders (speciosa miracula) of the younger and more ambitious
school. My secretary, Mr. Rives, left me the past week to pass the winter in
Italy. I put into his hand at parting a beautiful copy of your “Italy,” with this
inscription—
‘Francisco Roberto Rives, Optime de se merenti Italiam visuro, Alter am hanc vix minus Pulchram Italiam, Opus poetæ eorum qui vivunt Inter Anglos summi, Amicitiæ pignus, Commendat Eduardus Everett. |
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| 260 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES | |
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So that, you see, in begging you to preserve your
journals and letters, I am not insensible to what you have already
done—neither am I selfish, for, though some years your junior, the
archers have planted more than one arrow in my side, and my life is worth
little.
‘I hardly know what has given my pen this unwonted
direction—the thought, I believe, that in a few months—but I must
stop.—Adieu.
‘Believe me affectionately yours,
‘E. E.’
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular
Pleasures of Memory (1792),
Columbus (1810),
Jaqueline (1814), and
Italy (1822-28).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
Italy, a Poem. 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1823-1828). In 1828 the poem was revised and expanded into two parts; in 1830 it was elaborately
illustrated with engravings after paintings by J. M. W. Turner and Thomas Stothard.
