note
).
"The Pleasures of Memory," he said (Lady Blessington's Conversations, p. 153), "is a very beautiful poem, harmonious, finished, and chaste; it contains not a single meretricious ornament. If Rogers has not fixed himself in the higher fields of Parnassus, he has, at least, cultivated a very pretty flower-garden at its base."
But he goes on to speak of the poem (p. 354) as
"a hortus siccus of pretty flowers," and an illustration of "the difference between inspiration and versification."
If Rogers ever saw Byron's
Question and Answer
(1818), he was generous enough to forget the satire. In
Italy
he paid a noble tribute to the genius of the dead poet—