Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries
Lord Brougham to Samuel Rogers, [1845 c.?]
‘Berkeley Square: Sunday.
‘My dear Rogers,—Allow me to give you a very trifling present, of
little or no value in any sense, unless that it is valuable to me by affording
an opportunity of expressing my admiration of the truly independent habits of
thinking and feeling which a long intercourse with the aristocracy (the subject
in part of this speech) has never for a moment impaired. Were I to say all I
think on this matter, my good friends the Whigs, who have now discovered (a
thing quite unsuspected by myself) that I have all my life been a flatterer of
princes, might suspect me of flattering poets—a much lighter offence
however, in my eyes.
‘Believe me, very sincerely yours,
Henry Peter Brougham, first baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868)
Educated at Edinburgh University, he was a founder of the
Edinburgh
Review in which he chastised Byron's
Hours of Idleness; he
defended Queen Caroline in her trial for adultery (1820), established the London University
(1828), and was appointed lord chancellor (1830).
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).
