# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Rogers, Benjamin Bickley

​ROGERS, BENJAMIN BICKLEY (1828–1919), barrister and translator of Aristophanes, was born at Shepton Montague, Somerset, 11 December 1828, the third son of Francis Rogers, of Yarlington Lodge, Wincanton, by his wife, Catharine Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Benjamin Bickley, of Bristol and Ettingshall, Staffordshire. He was educated at Bruton School, Somerset, and Sir Roger Cholmley's School, Highgate (now Highgate School), of both of which he subsequently became a governor. He matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford, in 1846, and was elected scholar there the same year. He obtained a first class in literae humaniores and a fourth class in mathematics in 1851, and in the next year was elected a fellow of his college. In 1853 Rogers joined Lincoln's Inn, and in 1856 was called to the bar. He vacated his fellowship in 1861, having in that year married Ellen Susanna, daughter of Robert Herring, of Cromer. As an undergraduate he had shown rare gifts and promise, as well as intellectual and moral bent. Already prominent in the Oxford Union, in February 1853 he took part in ​a memorable debate, continued over four nights, on the subject of Mr. Gladstone's political conduct, and moved an amendment condemning his coalition with the whigs. G. J. Goschen, M. E. Grant Duff, E. S. Beesly, and C. H. Pearson also spoke. Rogers, whose eloquence made a unique sensation, was followed with cheers into the street, carried to Wadham shoulder high, and elected president for the next term. As a barrister, Rogers built up a lucrative practice, and bade fair to receive high promotion, when severe deafness, at the age of about fifty, cut short his career. Among his legal pupils was Frederick William Maitland.
Rogers now fell back on his other early interest, that of the scholar and poetical translator. He had begun in 1846, as he records sixty-four years later, under the influence of his brother, Thomas Englesby Rogers, fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, an edition of the Clouds of Aristophanes with a translation ‘into corresponding metres’. This he completed while still an undergraduate, and published in 1852. The preface, dated Oxford 1851, shows wide and deep reading, both of original Greek authors and of commentators English and German; the notes, a large and varied acquaintance with English literature; and the translation, much verbal and metrical skill, and poetic feeling. The whole is a very striking performance for a young man of twenty-three. In 1855 Rogers published a pamphlet on Napoleon III and England, a warning against the ‘faithful ally’ of Tennyson's ‘Riflemen, form’, and in 1863 and 1865 two pamphlets, The Difficulties suggested by Dr. Colenso and The Mosaic Record, demonstrating the absurdity of the bishop's mechanical and mathematical handling of the Pentateuch. Returning to Aristophanes, he published the Peace (1867), the Wasps (1875, used for the Cambridge performances of 1897 and 1919), the Lysistrata (1878), the Thesmophoriazusae (1904), and then from 1910 to 1916 reissued all the plays in a complete edition in six volumes. To volume vi was appended a translation of Plautus's Menaechmi, later published separately with the Latin text. In 1909 Oxford University conferred on him the honorary degree of D.Litt. Such was his modesty that when he received the letter conveying the offer he thought that it was meant for someone else of the same name. Wadham College, where he was always greatly liked, elected him an honorary fellow in 1902.
In the final edition of the Clouds Rogers records how after sixty-four years he now reissued the work, having rewritten the commentary, but only slightly retouched the translation lest he should destroy its early vigour. It was a true instinct. A faithful while ardent scholar, steeped in literature dramatic and general, a man of the world, a barrister at home in the courts and in the purlieus and quillets of the law, keenly interested in politics, of an open yet thoroughly conservative temper in church and state, of personal piety, a special lover of birds, Rogers's genius was exactly suited to that of Aristophanes. He is as lively as Frere, and more literal. As Walter Headlam said, ‘he permanently raised the standard of verse translation by writing verse that was verse’. His notes are a thesaurus controlled by literary discrimination, and his version, to use his own eloquent phrase, is ‘fragrant’, through and through, ‘with the volatile wit of the poet’.
Rogers died at Eastwood, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, 22 September 1919 in his ninety-first year. He had two sons and three daughters. He never consented to sit for his portrait, but there is a very good pencil-drawing of him in the Oxford Union. He left his classical library to Wadham College.
[The Times, 25 September 1919; H. A. Morrah, The Oxford Union 1823–1923, 1923; Foster's Alumni Oxonienses and Men at the Bar; Rogers's Prefaces to his translations; private information; personal knowledge. There is an excellent summary of the value of Rogers's work by T. L. Agar, Classical Review, vol. xxxiii, nos. 7 and 8, 1919.]
T. H. W.