of a little child”; who had been with Beckford at Fonthill; who had seen Porson slink back into the dining-room after the company had left it and drain what was left in the wineglasses; who had crossed the Apennines with Byron; who had seen Beau Nash in the height of his career dancing minuets at Bath; who had known Lady Hamilton in her days of beauty, and seen her often with Lord Nelson; who was in Fox’s room when that great man lay dying; and who could describe Pitt from personal observation, speaking always as if his mouth was “full of worsted.”  It was unreal as a dream to sit there in St. James Place and hear that old man talk by the hour of what one had been reading about all one’s life.  One thing, I must confess, somewhat shocked me,—­I was not prepared for the feeble manner in which some of Rogers’s best stories were received by the gentlemen who had gathered at his table on those Tuesday mornings.  But when Procter told me in explanation afterward that they had all “heard the same anecdotes every week, perhaps, for half a century from the same lips,” I no longer wondered at the seeming apathy I had witnessed.  It was a great treat to me, however, the talk I heard at Rogers’s hospitable table, and my three visits there cannot be erased from the pleasantest tablets of memory.  There is only one regret connected with them, but that loss still haunts me.  On one of those memorable mornings I was obliged to leave earlier than the rest of the company on account of an engagement out of London, and Lady Beecher (formerly Miss O’Neil), the great actress of other days, came in and read an hour to the old poet and his guests.  Procter told me afterward that among other things she read, at Rogers’s request, the 14th chapter of Isaiah, and that her voice and manner seemed like inspiration.

Seeing and talking with Rogers was, indeed, like living in the past:  and one may imagine how weird it seemed to a raw Yankee youth, thus facing the man who might have shaken hands with Dr. Johnson.  I ventured to ask him one day if he had ever seen the doctor.  “No,” said he; “but I went down to Bolt Court in 1782 with the intention of making Dr. Johnson’s acquaintance.  I raised the knocker tremblingly, and hearing the shuffling footsteps as of an old man in the entry, my heart failed me, and I put down the knocker softly again, and crept back into Fleet Street without seeing the vision I was not bold enough to encounter.”  I thought it was something to have heard the footsteps of old Sam Johnson stirring about in that ancient entry, and for my own part I was glad to look upon the man whose ears had been so strangely privileged.

Rogers drew about him all the musical as well as the literary talent of London.  Grisi and Jenny Lind often came of a morning to sing their best arias to him when he became too old to attend the opera; and both Adelaide and Fanny Kemble brought to him frequently the rich tributes of their genius in art.