SOURCE: Introduction to Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, First Collected by The Revd. Alexander Dyce, edited by Morchard Bishop, The Richards Press, Ltd., 1952, pp. v-xxvi.

In the following excerpt, Bishop, finding little of merit within Rogers's work, discusses the author's popularity.

It would be idle to pretend that Rogers is a figure of importance, or one whose works literary fashion will some day rediscover. His poetry—and I have read most of it before considering myself entitled to make such a statement—is dead beyond much hope of resurrection. There was never a great deal of it, and it is one of the lasting miracles of literary history that upon so scanty a foundation he should have been able to rear so lofty a reputation. How this came about is, indeed, very much more interesting than the poetry itself. It is as a social portent that...