ROGERS, SAMUEL (1763-1855), English poet, was born at Newington Green, London, on July 3o, 1763. His father, Thomas Rogers, was the son of a Stourbridge glass manufacturer, who was also a merchant in Cheapside. Thomas Rogers had a place in the London business, and married Mary Radford, daughter of his father's partner, becoming himself a partner shortly afterwards. On his mother's side Samuel Rogers was connected with the Noncomformist divines Philip and Matthew Henry, and it was in Nonconformist circles at Stoke Newington that he was brought up. He was educated at private schools at Hackney and Stoke Newington. Samuel Rogers entered the bank ing business in Cornhill, but his delicate health necessitated long holidays, during which he met the literary society of the day in Edinburgh as well as in London. He had already published a volume of verse when his Pleasures of Memory was printed in 1792. This poem may be regarded as the last embodiment of the poetic diction of the 18th century. Here is carried to the extremest pitch the theory of elevating and refining familiar themes by ab stract treatment and lofty imagery.
In 1793 his father's death gave Rogers the principal share in the banking house in Cornhill, and a considerable income. He left Newington Green in the same year and established himself in chambers in the Temple. In his circle of friends at this time were "Conversation" Sharp and the artists Flaxman, Opie, Martin Shee and Fuseli. He also made the acquaintance of Charles James Fox, with whom he visited the galleries in Paris in 1802, and whose friendship introduced him to Holland House. In 1803 he moved to 2 2 St. James's Place, where for 5o years he entertained all the celebrities of London. Flaxman and Stothard had a share in the decorations of the house, which Rogers had almost rebuilt, and now proceeded to fill with pictures and other works of art. His collections at his death realized £50,000. An invitation to one of Rogers's breakfasts was a formal entry into literary society, and his dinners were even more select. His social success was due less to his literary position than to his powers as a conversationalist, his educated taste in all matters of art, and no doubt to his sarcastic and bitter wit, for which he excused himself by saying that he had such a small voice that no one listened if he said pleasant things. Above all, he seems to have had a genius for benevolence. "He certainly had the kindest heart and unkindest tongue of any one I ever knew," said Fanny Kemble. He helped the poet Robert Bloomfield, he reconciled Moore with Jeffrey and with Byron, and he relieved Sheridan's difficulties in the last days of his life. Moore, who refused help
from all his friends, and would only be under obligations to his publishers, found it possible to accept assistance from Rogers. He procured a pension for H. F. Cary, the translator of Dante, and obtained for Wordsworth his sinecure as distributor of stamps.
Rogers played the part of literary dictator in England over a long period. He made his reputation by The Pleasures of Memory when Cowper's fame was still in the making. He became the friend of Wordsworth, Scott and Byron, and lived long enough to give an opinion as to the fitness of Alfred Tennyson for the post of poet laureate. Alexander Dyce, from the time of his first intro duction to Rogers, was in the habit of writing down the anecdotes with which his conversation abounded. From the mass of ma terial thus accumulated he made a selection which he arranged under various headings and published in 1856 as Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, to which is added Porsoniana. Rogers himself kept a notebook, in which he entered impressions of the conversation of many of his friends—Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, Henry Grattan, Richard Porson, John Horne Tooke, Talleyrand, Lord Erskine, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Gren ville and the duke of Wellington. They were published by his nephew William Sharpe in 1859 as Recollections by Samuel Rogers; and Reminiscences and Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, Banker, Poet, and Patron of the Arts, 1763-1855 (19o3), by G. H. Powell, is an amalgamation of these two authorities. Rogers held various honorary positions : he was one of the trustees of the National Gallery; and he served on a commission to inquire into the management of the British Museum, and on another for the rebuilding of the houses of parliament.
Rogers's later works are An Epistle to a Friend (Richard Sharp) (1798); The Voyage of Columbus (18io); Jacqueline (1814), a narrative poem; Human Life (1819) and Italy (1822-28). Rogers was in Italy in 1814 and again in 1820, when he visited Byron and Shelley at Pisa. The 1828 edition of Italy was not a success. But in an enlarged form the poem was republished in 1830, and in 1838 a sumptuous edition of Poems was brought out. Rogers declined the laureateship in 185o when upon the death of Wordsworth it was offered him. He died in London on Dec. 18, 1855.
See P. W. Clayden, The Early Life of Samuel Rogers (1887) and Rogers and his Contemporaries (2 vols., 1889) ; Dyce, Reminiscences and of Samuel Rogers (1856, ed. Powell, 1903) ; Roberts, Samuel Rogers and his Circle (Iwo).