John Kemble had the honour of giving the Prince of Wales some lessons in elocution.  According to the vitiated pronunciation of the day, the Prince, instead of saying “oblige,” would say “obleege,” upon which Kemble, with much disgust depicted upon his countenance, said: 

“Sir, may I beseech your Royal Highness to open your royal jaws, and say ’oblige’?”

ROGERS AND LUTTRELL
[Sidenote:  Captain Gronow]

I saw a good deal of the poet Rogers during his frequent visits to Paris; and often visited him in his apartments, which were always on the fourth or fifth story of the hotel or private house in which he lived.  He was rich, and by no means avaricious, and chose those lofty chambers partly from a poetic wish to see the sun rise with greater brilliancy, and partly from a fancy that the exercise he was obliged to take in going up and down stairs would prove beneficial to his liver.

I could relate many unpublished anecdotes of Rogers, but they lose their piquancy when one attempts to narrate them.  There was so much in his appearance, in that cadaverous, unchanging countenance, in the peculiar low, drawling voice, and rather tremulous accents in which he spoke.  His intonations were very much those one fancies a ghost would use if forced by some magic spell to give utterance to sounds.  The mild venom of every word was a remarkable trait in his conversation.  One might have compared the old poet to one of those velvety caterpillars that crawl gently and quietly over the skin, but leave an irritating blister behind.  To those, like myself, who were sans consequence, and with whom he feared no rivalry, he was very good-natured and amiable, and a most pleasant companion, with a fund of curious anecdote about everything and everybody.  But woe betide those in great prosperity and renown; they had, like the Roman emperor, in Rogers the personification of the slave who bade them “remember they were mortal.”

At an evening party many years since at Lady Jersey’s every one was praising the Duke of B——­, who had just come in, and who had lately attained his majority.  There was a perfect chorus of admiration to this effect:  “Everything is in his favour—­he has good looks, considerable abilities, and a hundred thousand a year.”  Rogers, who had been carefully examining the “young ruler,” listened to these encomiums for some time in silence, and at last remarked, with an air of great exultation, and in his most venomous manner, “Thank God, he has got bad teeth!”

His well-known epigram on Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley—­

  They say that Ward’s no heart, but I deny it;
  He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it—­

was provoked by a remark made at table by Mr. Ward.  On Rogers observing that his carriage had broken down, and that he had been obliged to come in a hackney-coach, Mr. Ward grumbled out in a very audible whisper, “In a hearse, I should think,” alluding to the poet’s corpse-like appearance.  This remark Rogers never forgave, and, I have no doubt, pored over his retaliatory impromptu, for he had no facility in composition.  Sydney Smith used to say that, if Rogers was writing a dozen verses, the street was strewn with straw, the knocker tied up, and the answer to the tender inquiries of his anxious friends was, that Mr. Rogers was as well as could be expected.