# Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron/Conversations/Section 36

“What did you mean,” said a person who was with Lord Byron, “by calling Rogers a Nestor and an Argo​naut? I suppose you meant to say that his poetry was old and worn out.”
“You are very hard upon the dead poet,—upon the late lamented Mr. Samuel Rogers, (as he has been called,)—and upon me too, to suspect me of speaking ironically upon so serious a subject.”
“It was a very doubtful expression, however, that ‘Nestor of little poets,’” rejoined the other. “Compliments ought never to have a double sense—a cross meaning. And you seem to be fond of this mode of writing, for you call Lady Morgan’s ‘Italy’ a fearless and excellent work. What two odd words to be coupled together!”
“Take it as you like,” replied Lord Byron, “I say the ‘Pleasures of Memory’ will live.”
“The Pleasures of Mummery! Pray now, (speak can​didly,) have you read since you were a schoolboy, or can you, with all your memory, repeat five lines of that boasted ‘Essay on Memory’ that you have been bepraising so furiously all your life? Instruct me where to find the golden fleece. Be my Jason for once.”
“I remember being delighted with ‘The Pleasures of Memory’ when I was at Harrow; and that is saying a great deal, for I seldom read a book when I was there, and continue to like what I did then.
“‘Jacquelina,’ too, is a much finer poem than ‘Lara.’ Your allowing precedence to the latter amused me. But they soon got a divorce.”
“There you go again: your taste is too fastidious. Rogers was very much offended at its being said that his ‘Pleasures,’ &c. were to be found shining in green and gold morocco-bindings in most parlour-windows, and on the book-shelves of all young ladies.”
“But, don’t we all write to please them? I am sure I was more pleased with the fame my ‘Corsair’ had, than with that of any other of my books. Why? for the ​very reason because it did shine, and in boudoirs. Who does not write to please the women? And Rogers has succeeded: what more can he want or wish?
“There was a Mrs. ——— once fell in love with Shelley for his verses; and a Miss Stafford was so taken with the ‘Sofa’ (a very different one from Cowper’s,) that she went to France and married Crebillon.
“These are some of the sweets of authorship. But my day is over. Vixi, &c. I used formerly (that olim is a bad and a sad word!) to get letters by almost every post, the delicate beauty of whose penmanship suggested the fair, taper fingers that indited them. But my ‘Corsair’ days are over. Heigh ho!”
“But what has all this to do with Rogers, or ‘The Pleasures of Memory?’ Is there one line of that poem that has not been altered and re-altered, till it would be difficult to detect in the patchwork any thing like the texture of the original stuff?”
“Well, if there is not a line or a word that has not been canvassed, and made the subject of separate epistolary ​discussion, what does that prove but the general merit of the whole piece? And the correspondence will be valuable by and bye, and save the commentators a vast deal of labour, and waste of ingenuity. People do wisest who take care of their fame when they have got it. That’s the rock I have split on. It has been said that he has been puffed into notice by his dinners and Lady Holland. Though he gives very good ones, and female Mæcenases are no bad things now-a-days, it is by no means true. Rogers has been a spoilt child; no wonder that he is a little vain and jealous. And yet he deals praise very liberally sometimes; for he wrote to a little friend of mine, on the occasion of his late publication, that ‘he was born with a rose-bud in his mouth, and a nightingale singing in his ear,’—two very prettily turned Orientalisms. Before my wife and the world quarrelled with me, and brought me into disrepute with the public, Rogers had composed some very pretty commendatory verses on me; but they were kept corked up for many long years, under hope that I might reform and get into favour with the world again, and that the said lines (for he is rather costive, and does not like to throw away his effusions) might find a place in ‘Human Life.’ But after a great deal of oscillation, and ​many a sigh at their hard destiny—their still-born fate,—they were hermetically sealed, and adieu to my immortality!
“Rogers has an unfortunately sensitive temper. We nearly quarrelled at Florence. I asked the officer of the Dogana (who had trouble enough with all my live and dead stock), in consequence of his civilities, to dine with me at Schneider’s; but Rogers happened to be in one of his ill humours, and abused the Italians.
“He is coming to visit me on his return from Rome, and will be annoyed when he finds I have any English comforts about me. He told a person the other day that one of my new tragedies was intended for the stage, when he knew neither of them was. I suppose he wanted to get another of them damned. O Samuel, Samuel! But,” added he, after a pause, “these things are, as Lord Kenyon said of Erskine, ‘mere spots in the sun.’ He has good qualities to counterbalance these littlenesses in his character.
“Rogers is the only man I know who can write epigrams, and sharp bone-cutters too, in two lines; for ​instance, that on an M. P. who had reviewed his book, and said he wrote very well for a banker:—
‘They say he has no heart, and I deny it: He has a heart,—and gets his speeches by it.’”