the publication of my stupid drama, "The Star of
Seville"), he met me with a malignant grin, and the exclamation,
"Ah, I've just been reading your play. So nice! young poetry!"--with
a diabolical _dig_ of emphasis on the "_young_." "Now, Mr. Rogers,"
said I, "what did I do to deserve that you should say that to me?" I
do not know whether this appeal disarmed him, but his only answer
was to take me affectionately by the chin, much as if he had been my
father. When I told my sister of this, she, who was a thousand times
quicker-witted than I, said, "Why didn't you tell him that young
poetry was better than old?"

Walking one day in the Green Park, I met Mr. Rogers and Wordsworth,
who took me between them, and I continued my walk in great glory and
exultation of spirit, listening to Rogers, and hearing
Wordsworth,--the gentle rill of the one speech broken into and
interrupted by sudden loud splashes of the other; when Rogers, who
had vainly been trying to tell some anecdote, pathetically
exclaimed, "He won't let me tell my story!" I immediately stopped,
and so did Wordsworth, and during this halt Rogers finished his
recital. Presently afterwards, Wordsworth having left us, Rogers
told me that he (Mr. Wordsworth), in a visit he had been lately
paying at Althorpe, was found daily in the magnificent library, but
never without a volume of his own poetry in his hand. Years after
this, when I used to go and sit with Mr. Rogers, I never asked him
what I should read to him without his putting into my hands his own
poems, which always lay by him on his table.

A comical instance of the rivalry of wits (surely as keen as that of
beauties) occurred one day when Mr. Rogers had been calling on me
and speaking of that universal social favorite, Lady Morley, had
said, "There is but one voice against her in all England, and that
is her own." (A musical voice was the only charm wanting to Lady
Morley's delightful conversation.) I was enchanted with this pretty
and appropriate epigram, so unlike in its tone to Mr. Rogers's usual
_friendly_ comments; and, very soon after he left me, Sydney Smith
coming in, I told him how clever and how pleasant a remark the
"departed" poet (Sydney Smith often spoke of Rogers as dead, on
account of his cadaverous complexion) had made on Lady Morley's
voice. "He neve