Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries
Samuel Rogers to Henry Mackenzie, [November 1804]
‘When yours arrived here I was from home. I returned
full of cold and fever, and a thousand fancies which have clung to me ever
since, and have rendered me absolutely fit for nothing. But I am now beginning
to breathe again, and hope by means of two great doctors, not Galen and Hippocrates, but a horse and a cow, to become a miracle of
health and strength. . . . So the star which first discovered itself in your
sky is soon to be visible in ours? Mrs.
Siddons, from a discreet regard to her amplitude of person, begs
leave to
1 Tasso, Aminta, act i. sc. 1.
|
![]()
![]()
| ROGERS AND HENRY MACKENZIE | 17 |
![]()
decline comparison with this
actor from Liliput, but we are all on tiptoe and prepared to die in the crowd.
. . . There is a printer, I understand,
in our town who is perfectly intoxicated with happiness, and who stops his
friends to inquire whether any man was ever so distinguished before. He is at
once employed on “Madoc” and
on “The Lay of the Last
Minstrel,” so we may expect great amusement this winter. . . .
S. Smith is now very happy and very
busy preparing, as he says, his moral philosophy for the ladies. I met him not
long ago in the fields, lost in thought and full of his subject. Roscoe’s “Leo X.” is nearly printed, which reminds
me of a book I have just read with great delight. Alas! there are not above six
copies of it existing, but I will not rest till it is reprinted, I mean
Tenhove’s “Memoirs of
the House of Medici.” It is, if I may say so, all kernel and
no shell, and as interesting as a French Memoir. If histories were written as
histories should be, boys and girls would cry to read them.’
Galen (129-199 c.)
Greek physician who systematized the study of medical science.
Hippocrates (460 BC c.-370 BC c.)
Greek physician who founded the practice of medicine on an empirical basis.
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
William Roscoe (1753-1831)
Historian, poet, and man of letters; author of
Life of Lorenzo di
Medici (1795) and
Life and Pontificate of Leo X (1805). He
was Whig MP for Liverpool (1806-1807) and edited the
Works of Pope,
10 vols (1824).
Sarah Siddons [née Kemble] (1755-1831)
English tragic actress, sister of John Philip Kemble, famous roles as Desdemona, Lady
Macbeth, and Ophelia. She retired from the stage in 1812.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845)
Clergyman, wit, and one of the original projectors of the
Edinburgh
Review; afterwards lecturer in London and one of the Holland House
denizens.
Torquato Tasso (1554-1595)
Italian poet, author of
Aminta (1573), a pastoral drama, and
Jerusalem Delivered (1580).
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Madoc. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805). A verse romance relating the legendary adventures of a Welsh prince in Wales and
pre-Columbian America.
