Samuel Rogers

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Samuel Rogers (July 1763 – 18 December 1855) was an English poet who was one of the most influential writers of his lifetime, although his fame has long been eclipsed by his Romantic colleagues and acquaintances Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron.

His recollections of these and other friends, including Charles James Fox, are among the best sources of information about London's cultural and literary life, which he was intimate with and for which he used his money to support.

He earned his money as a banker and was also a discriminating art collector.

Early life and family

Rogers was born in Newington Green, then a village north of Islington, and now in Inner London. Thomas Rogers, a banker and briefly MP for Coventry, was the son of a Stourbridge glass manufacturer who was also a retailer in Cheapside. Thomas married Mary, Daniel Radford's only daughter, who died soon after. Samuel Rogers was affiliated with well-known Welsh Dissenting clergymen Philip Henry and his son Matthew and became a long-serving member of the Unitarian Church of Newington Green, first led by the inspirational Dr. Richard Price. He was educated in Hackney and Stoke Newington.

Samuel Sharpe, the Egyptologist and translator of the Bible, and his younger brother Daniel, the early geologist, were orphaned young and for whom he assumed responsibility.

Middle life and friendships

Rogers was given the main stake in the Cornhill banking house in 1793 as a result of his father's death in 1793. He left Newington Green and established himself in chambers of the Temple. Richard Sharp, his best friend, and John Opie, Martin Shee, and John Henry Fuseli were among his close friends at the time, as well as John Opie, Richard Opie, Martin Shee, and John Henry Fuseli. Charles James Fox, with whom he visited the galleries in Paris in 1802, and whose acquaintance welcomed him to Holland House, was also acquainted with him. He moved to 22 St James' Place in 1803, where he entertained all the celebrities of London for fifty years. Flaxman and Charles Alfred Stothard participated in the construction of the house, which Rogers essentially rebuilt, and then began to fill with works of art. His collections at his death attracted £50,000.

In London, social breakfasts were in vogue in the mid-19th century. Rogers held social breakfasts with guests including Thomas Macaulay, Henry Hallam, George Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle, Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope, Nassau Senior, Charles Greville, Henry Hart Milman, George Cornewall Lewis, and Sylvain Van de Weyer. An invitation to one of Rogers' breakfasts was a formality in literary life, and his dinners were much more selective. His social success was less due to his literary position than to his abilities as a conversationalist, his educated taste in all fields of art, and no one listened if he said pleasant things. "He had the kindest heart and unkindest tongue of any one I ever knew," Fanny Kemble said. He aided Robert Bloomfield in his reconciliation with Thomas Moore, Francis Jeffrey, and with Byron, and he eased Sheridan's agony in the last days of his life. Moore, who refused to help from all his relatives and would only owe money to his publishers, found it possible to receive Rogers' assistance. He acquired Wordsworth's sinecure as a stamp manufacturer, as the translator of Dante. While still enjoying his country life, John Mitford rented permanent housing in Sloane Street, where he enjoyed "the most intimate closeness with Samuel Rogers for more than 20 years."

In England, Rogers was effectively a literary tyrant. When William Cowper's fame was still in the making, he made his name by The Pleasures of Memory. He became a friend of Wordsworth, Walter Scott, and Byron, and lived long enough to give an insight into Alfred Tennyson's potential for the role as Poet Laureate. Alexander Dyce, from the time of his first contact with Rogers, was used to writing down the anecdotes with which his conversation was based. He arranged and published selections as Recollections of Samuel Rogers' Table-Talk, which includes Porsoniana. Rogers himself owned a notebook in which he took snapshots of many of his distinguished friends' conversations—Fox, Edmund Burke, Henry Grattan, Richard Porson, John Horne Tooke, Talleyrand, Lord Erskine, Scott, Lord Grenville, and the Duke of Wellington. They were published by William Sharpe's nephew William Sharpe in 1859 as Recollections of Samuel Rogers; Reminiscences and Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, poet and Patron of the Arts, 1763-1855 (1903) by GH Powell, a fusion of these two authorities.

Rogers served in various positions of authority, including as one of the trustees of the National Gallery, and later served on a commission to investigate the British Museum's administration, as well as the reconstruction of Parliament. In November 1796, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Later life

His literary career stalled. Rogers' ideal of a happy life is represented in An Epistle to a Friend (the above-mentioned Conversation Sharp), published in 1798. The Voyage of Columbus (1810) was followed by Jacqueline (1814), a memoir essay written in the tetrameter of the newer writers, and released in the same volume as Byron's Lara. In his earlier years, his reflective poem on Human Life (1819), in which he had been active for ten years, was published in his original style.

Rogers and his sister Sarah made a trip on the Continent in 1814. He travelled from Switzerland to Italy, keeping a full diary of events and images, and he arrived in Naples when Napoleon's evacuation from Elba compelled him to hurry home. He returned to Italy seven years later, visiting Byron and Shelley at Pisa. It was his last and longest work, Italy, that came out of the earlier tours. The first part of the series was released anonymously in 1822, and the second was published in 1828, with his name changed. It was at first a failure, but Rogers was determined to make it a success. He enlarged and revised the poem, as well as commissioning J.M.W. illustrations. Turner, Thomas Stothard, and Samuel Prout were among Thomas Prout's on tour. In the sumptuous edition of 1830, these were engraved on steel. Rogers followed it with a more sumptuous version of his Poems (1834). Rogers was expected to replace him as poet laureate in 1850, but he declined the honor due to his age. He was confined to his chair for the first five years of his life as a result of a car accident. He died in London at 92, a remarkable age for the time, and is buried in the family's churchyard in Hornsey High Street, Haringey.

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