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THE CONVERSATION AND POETRY OF ROGERS.*

[April 1856.]

THERE has been much talk of a consolidation of the statutes; when shall we have a consolidation of Whig anecdotes? A Holland-House Joe Miller, bringing up all the dinner-talk of that party to the present date, is greatly needed. Such a work, forming a general body of reference, from which moreover it should be as fatal to quote as from the old body of English wit comprised in the original of that name, would constitute at once a valuable repertory of amusement and a much-needed barrier against boredom. At present Whig wit is in much the same state as English common law, it must be gathered from a mass of independent reports; and the novelty and parentage of a joke is as laborious a thing to ascertain as the truth and authority of a position in law. Let the thing be done thoroughly and once for all; let us have the remaining two volumes of Mr. Moore's diary; print two more, if it is absolutely necessary; publish all his invitations to dinner, with copies of the answers; put in his butcher's bill; furnish more full details about Bessy's accouchements; ransack the drawers of every Whig nobleman and distinguished literary character of liberal principles; exhaust the memory of all dowager duchesses and dinersout; invite all the filial spirits who think justice has never been done by an ungrateful world to the hero of the family to say all they have to say; let there be nothing left that can possibly be printed ;-and then let some industrious man, not naturally given to despond

*Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. London, Edward Moxon, 1856.

ency, collate the authorities; or appoint a commission, if you will, and let the puns and the personal reminiscences remain in abeyance while its members meet. Only let Lord John be excluded, or he will infallibly insist on all being published in extenso, and add notes explanatory of the jokes.

Holland House has not been happy in its reporters: we have had brilliant general descriptions of the host, the hostess, and the guests, and enthusiastic generalising on the uniform feast of reason and flow of soul which prevailed; but of all this nothing has survived but a few personal anecdotes and a great deal of indifferent wit. In fact, though the beginning of this century was rich in conversational talent, the kind of conversation was not that which will bear reporting. A ready and well-stored memory, and a quick and lively wit, were the essentials of success, and so perhaps they should be in general conversation; but then, general conversation ought to be allowed to expire with the occasion. Small gossip about individuals, interesting and amusing while the subjects are fresh and present to the minds of all the hearers, become the worst of annoyances when coldly inflicted in print on a new generation.

The only table-talk really worth preserving is that which reflects an individual mind of capacity and originality enough to let fall, even in its lighter moments, matter pregnant with thought and observation. Some men, like Selden and Johnson, survive mainly in the records of their conversation. And sometimes, as in the case of Coleridge, the sayings thus rescued from oblivion are not only of the highest value in themselves, but are a sort of key to the mind of the speaker, and corrective and interpretative of his written works.

The present work is not of this class. It would more properly have been entitled Table-Silence of Samuel Rogers; for in it is recorded, not what Samuel Rogers thought and said, but what Samuel Rogers had heard

other people say. From a man whose taste and connoisseurship were so eminent, readers will be apt to expect some nicety of criticism in painting and poetry. They must be content to suffer disappointment. A few casual expressions of likings and dislikings, a few minute cavillings and trite remarks, make up the sum of Mr. Rogers's conversation on this subject. It by no means follows, that because a man has no power to criticise he has no faculty of enjoyment, or even great accuracy and delicacy in the perception of beauty and skill in art. But to have a taste so good as Mr. Rogers's undoubtedly was in the main, and a critical judgment of this calibre, indicates that he was not much in the habit of bringing his thoughts to bear on his intuitions.

Anecdotes and characteristic sayings of the men by whom Rogers was surrounded are what we next look for, when we find there is nothing characteristic of the man's own mode of thinking except that negative trait itself. We are not surprised that there should be very few of these. Men do not easily conceive that the conversation and demeanour of those with whom they live on the same level and in daily intercourse can be worth noting and remembering. Besides, Mr. Rogers was a little of a virtuoso as well as a man of taste, and little bits of outof-the-way personal information and gossip had more charm for him, and left a more permanent impression on him, than the conversation of Lamb, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Mackintosh. Characteristic traits of great men, however minute, are always worth preserving. We gratefully receive-we only too eagerly grasp at-the smallest incidents or sayings which can help us to give greater vividness or truth to the figure existing in the imagination. But then the recorded traits must have something characteristic about them; it is sufficient to have one or two of a class; selected without discrimination, and reiterated without mercy, they are perhaps more trying to the temper than any other reading. That Fox

had not been able to read Mickle's Lusiad through; that he thought Robertson's Columbus pleasingly written; how Lord Holland looked at breakfast; what Tierney thought of Burke's eloquence; whether Sheridan had 2007. sent him by the Prince; whether more than 2007.; whether it might not have been 2007. with an intimation that there was more if he wished for it; whether it might not be an annuity;-these and such-like petty details and trivial discussions are trying enough: but when the persons themselves are as little important as the incidents. are significant, then a reader resigns. We would at any time rather read the Supplement to the Times than much of Mr. Rogers's Table-Talk. What on earth do we care about Hoppner's "awful temper"? or how can any man conscientiously ask us to pay for the printing of this sort of thing?

"Lord Holland and Lord Lansdowne having expressed a wish to be introduced to Cumberland, I invited all the three to dine with me. It happened, however, that the two lords paid little or no attention to Cumberland (though he said several very good things),-scarcely speaking to him the whole time something had occurred in the House which occupied all their thoughts; and they retired to a window, and discussed it."

We have never been able ourselves to find much satisfaction in seeing a person who has simply seen another. That degree of approximation to the king which consists in your brother having seen the Duke of York is generally deemed unsatisfactory, and only becoming in an Irishman to boast of. From Mr. Rogers we learn that

"Sir George Beaumont, when a young man, was introduced at Rome to an old painter, who in his youth had known an old painter, who had seen Claude and Gaspar Poussin riding out, in a morning, on mules, and furnished with palettes, &c., to make sketches in the Campagna."

Throw in another handful or two of old painters, you might see Zeuxis; exchange them for gardeners, and you

may get a vicarious view of Adam himself. This process is like constructing an opaque telescope to see an invisible object; or like travelling to York by conversation with the coachman who drives the first stage out of London.

"If the favour," says the editor of the last English Table-Talk that deserved to be printed,-" if the favour shown to several modern instances of works nominally of the same description as the present were alone to be considered, it might seem that the old maxim, that nothing ought to be said of the dead but what is good, is in a fair way of being dilated into an understanding that every thing is good that has been said by the dead." The present editor appears to be very much of this opinion; and when we learn that the present is a selection from a large mass of memoranda of Mr. Rogers's conversation, we have no difficulty in believing a fact we learn from the preface, that he "sometimes had the mortification of finding impatient listeners." Yet it would be unjust to deny that this memorial of his sayings contains some curious and characteristic anecdotes, and one or two good sayings. Gray's notion about keeping a dog is new, we think; it throws a ray both on the coldness and the cautiousness of his nature:

"At Brighton, during my youth, I became acquainted with a lawyer who had known Gray. He said that Gray's pronunciation was very affected, e.g. 'What naise (noise) is that?' Henley (the translator of Beckford's Vathek) was one morning paying a visit to Gray, when a dog came into the room. 'Is that your dog?' said Henley. 'No,' replied Gray: do you suppose that I would keep an animal by which I might possibly lose my life?""

We will omit Mr. Rogers's criticism on Gray, and only cite the following, which gives a lively picture of Wordsworth pouncing upon his own property as it were; for whether Gray took it from Oldham or not, the phrase and idea are both so eminently Wordsworthian, that we