he, “at the orator’s Irish brogue when he began his speech that day, but after he had been on his legs five minutes nobody dared to laugh any more.”  Then followed personal anecdotes of Madame De Stael, the Duke of Wellington, Walter Scott, Tom Moore, and Sydney Smith, all exquisitely told.  Both our host and his friend Procter had known or entertained most of the celebrities of their day.  Procter soon led the conversation up to matters connected with the stage, and thinking of John Kemble and Edmund Kean, I ventured to ask Rogers who of all the great actors he had seen bore away the palm.  “I have looked upon a magnificent procession of them,” he said, “in my time, and I never saw any one superior to David Garrick.”  He then repeated Hannah More’s couplet on receiving as a gift from Mrs. Garrick the shoe-buckles which once belonged to the great actor:—­

    “Thy buckles, O Garrick, another may use,
    but none shall be found who can tread in thy shoes”

We applauded his memory and his manner of reciting the lines, which seemed to please him.  “How much can sometimes be put into an epigram!” he said to Procter, and asked him if he remembered the lines about Earl Grey and the Kaffir war.  Procter did not recall them, and Rogers set off again:—­

    “A dispute has arisen of late at the Cape,
    As touching the devil, his color and shape;
    While some folks contend that the devil is white,
    The others aver that he’s black as midnight;
    But now’t is decided quite right in this way,
    And all are convinced that the devil is Grey.”

We asked him if he remembered the theatrical excitement in London when Garrick and his troublesome contemporary, Barry, were playing King Lear at rival houses, and dividing the final opinion of the critics.  “Yes,” said he, “perfectly.  I saw both those wonderful actors, and fully agreed at the time with the admirable epigram that ran like wildfire into every nook and corner of society.”  “Did the epigram still live in his memory?” we asked.  The old man seemed looking across the misty valley of time for a few moments, and then gave it without a pause:—­

    “The town have chosen different ways
    To praise their different Lears;
    To Barry they give loud applause,
    To Garrick only tears.

    “A king! ay, every inch a king,
    Such Barry doth appear;
    But Garrick’s quite another thing,—­
    He’s every inch King Lear!”

Among other things which Rogers told us that morning, I remember he had much to say of Byron’s forgetfulness as to all manner of things.  As an evidence of his inaccuracy, Rogers related how the noble bard had once quoted to him some lines on Venice as Southey’s, “which he wanted me to admire,” said Rogers; “and as I wrote them myself, I had no hesitation in doing so.  The lines are in my poem on Italy, and begin,

    “‘There is a glorious city in the sea.’”