Thus commenced a friendship with both of my much-valued friends which remained unruffled by the slightest wave until their lamented loss. Miss Rogers removed to a house in the Regent’s Park, in which the paintings by modern artists collected by her elder brother, and increased by her own judicious taste, were arranged. The society at that house comprised all that was most eminent in literature and in art. The adjournment after her breakfasts to the delightful verandah overlooking the Park still clings to my fading memory, and the voices of her poet brother, of Jeffrey, and of Sidney Smith still survive in the vivid impressions of their wisdom and their wit.
I do not think the genuine kindness of the poet’s character was sufficiently appreciated. I occasionally walked home with him from parties during the first years of our acquaintance. In later years, when his bodily strength began to fail, I always accompanied him, though sometimes not without a little contest.
I have frequently walked with him from his sister’s house, in the Regent’s Park, to his own in St. James’s Place, and he has sometimes insisted upon returning part of the way home with me.
On one of those occasions we were crossing a street near Cavendish Square: a cart coming rapidly round the corner, I almost dragged him over. As soon as we were safe, the poet said, very much as a child would, “There, now, that was all your fault; you would come with me, and so I was nearly run over.” However, I found less and less resistance to my {192} accompanying him, and only regretted that I could not be constantly at his side on those occasions.
Soon after the publication of the “Economy of Manufactures,” Mr. Rogers told me that he had met one evening, at a very fashionable party, a young dandy, with whom he had had some conversation. The poet had asked him whether he had read that work. To this his reply was, “Yes: it is a very nice book—just the kind of book that anybody could have written.”
〈HOW TO LIVE FOR EVER.〉
One day, when I was in great favour with the poet, we were talking about the preservation of health. He told me he would teach me how to live for ever; for which I thanked him in a compliment after his own style, rather than in mine. I answered, “Only embalm me in your poetry, and it is done.” Mr. Rogers invited me to breakfast with him the next morning, when he would communicate the receipt. We were alone, and I enjoyed a very entertaining breakfast. The receipt consisted mainly of cold ablutions and the frequent use of the flesh brush. Mr. Rogers himself used the latter to a moderate extent regularly, three times every day—before he dressed himself, when he dressed for dinner, and before he got into bed. About six or eight strokes of the flesh-brush completed each operation. We then adjourned to a shop, where I purchased a couple of the proper brushes, which I used for several years, and still use occasionally, with, I believe, considerable advantage.
〈RAPIDITY OF COMPOSITION.〉
Once, at Mr. Rogers’s table, I was talking with one of his guests about the speed with which some authors composed, and the slowness of others. I then turned to our host, and, much to his surprise, inquired how many lines a-day on the average a poet usually wrote. My friend, when his astonishment had a little subsided, very good-naturedly gave us the result of his own experience. He said that he had never written {193} more than four[36] lines of verse in any one day of his life. This I can easily understand; for Mr. Rogers’ taste was the most fastidious, as well as the most just, I ever met with. Another circumstance also, I think, contributed to this slowness of composition.
[36] I am not quite certain that the number was four; but I am absolutely certain that it was either four or six.