"When Sheridan was on his death-bed, Rogers aided him with purse and person. This was particularly kind of Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (to me, at least), but, indeed, he does that of everybody to anybody. Rogers is the reverse of the line:

'The best good man with the worst natured Muse,'

being:

'The worst good man with the best natured Muse.'

His Muse being all Sentiment and Sago and Sugar, while he himself is a venomous talker. I say 'worst good man' because he is (perhaps) a good man; at least he does good now and then, as well he may, to purchase himself a shilling's worth of salvation for his slanders. They are so little, too—small talk—and old Womanny, and he is malignant too—and envious—and—he be damned!"

'The best good man with the worst natured Muse,'

'The worst good man with the best natured Muse.'

In a manuscript note to these passages Sir Walter Scott writes,

"I never heard Rogers say a single word against Byron, which is rather odd too. Byron wrote a bitter and undeserved satire on Rogers. This conduct must have been motived by something or other."

Speaking of Rogers and Sheridan, he says,

"He certainly took pennyworths out of his friend's character. I sat three hours for my picture to Sir Thomas Lawrence, during which the whole conversation was filled up by Rogers with stories of Sheridan, for the least of which, if true, he deserved the gallows. One respected his committing a rape on his sister-in-law on the day of her husband's funeral. Others were worse."

In politics Rogers was a Whig, in religion a Presbyterian. But he meddled little with either. In private life he was as kindly in action as he was caustic in speech. A sensitive man himself, he studied to be satirical to others. When Ward condemned

Columbus

in the