"the town mouse a sleek, well-fed, sly, white mouse, and the country mouse with its rough, weather-worn face and grey hairs; the town mouse displaying its delicate little rolls and pyramids of glistening strawberries, the country mouse exulting in its hollow tree, its crust of bread and liberty, and rallying its brother on his late hours and frequent dinners."
One of his earliest recollections was the sight of a rebel's head upon a pole at Temple Bar. He had talked with a Thames boatman who remembered Pope; had seen Garrick in
The Suspicious Husband
; had heard Sir Joshua Reynolds deliver his last lecture as President of the Royal Academy; had seen John Wesley "lying in state" in the City Road; had gone to call on Dr. Johnson, but, when his hand was on the knocker, found his courage fled. He lived to be offered the laureateship in 1850, on the death of Wordsworth, and to decline it in favour of Tennyson.
"Time was," wrote Mathias (Pursuits of Literature, note, p. 360, ed. 1808), "when bankers were as stupid as their guineas could make them; they were neither orators, nor painters, nor poets. But now. .. Mr. Rogers dreams on Parnassus; and, if I am rightly informed, there is a great demand among his brethren for the Pleasures of Memory."
Rogers began to write poetry at an early age, and continued to write it all his life. His
Ode to Superstition
was published in 1786; the
Pleasures of Memory
, in 1792; the