His first volume was printed in the very year on which the poor thin book of Burns's first poems saw the light at Kilmarnock. This, however, did not make his reputation; _that_ came six years later with the _Pleasures of Memory_, of which I cited a fragment; and thereafter, all down through the earlier half of the present century, there was hardly a better known man in London than Samuel Rogers, banker and poet. He voyaged widely and brought back many spoils of travel; he had luxurious tastes and fed them with the utmost discretion. He had social ambition, and rare sagacity in {305} selecting his companions, and in timing his courtesies; he flattered critics, and was obsequious to men with titles. His house in St. James's--with its broad upper double window, looking out upon the Green Park--was known of all men. Before yet the days of bric-à-brac had come, it was filled with beautiful things and with trophies of art. It was not large nor pretentious; but on its walls were paintings, or sketches by Raphael, by Rubens, by Titian, by Gainsborough, by Rembrandt, and by Reynolds; and in its ante-rooms, marbles by Thorwaldsen and Canova. There were no children of the house, nor was there ever a wife there to aid, or to lord the master. Yet many a lady, ranking by title, or by cleverness, has enjoyed the dinners and the breakfasts for which the house was famous. The cooking was always of the best; the wines the rarest; the meats and fruits the choicest, and the porcelain superb. Like most who have richly equipped houses, he loved to have his fine things admired; and he loved to have his fine words echoed. Few foreigners of any literary distinction visited London from 1815 to 1850, without coming to a taste {306} of the poet's hospitality, and to a taste too, very likely, of his pretty satire. His wit flashed more sharply in his talk than in his verse; and his dinner stories were fabulous in number, in piquancy, and in sting. Like all accomplished _raconteurs_, he must needs tell his good stories over and over, so that Rogers's butler, it was wittily said, was next best to Rogers. He could hardly have been called a good-natured man, and was always, I think, keener for a good thing to say, than for a good thing to do. He gave, it is true, largely in charities; but in orderly, business-like ways and with none of the unction and kindly indirectness[2] which doubles the {307} warmth of the best giving. All London knew him as a diner out, as a connoisseur, as an opera-goer, as a patron of clever people, as a friend to those in place, as a _flâneur_ along Piccadilly. He was cool, unimpassioned, blasé in look, never doing openly discreditable things; and he carried his reputation for unmitigated respectability, for wealth, for sharp speeches, for cleverness, for sagacious charities, down to extreme age; dying as late as 1855, ninety-three years old. [Sidenote: Rogers' poems.]