Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/502

 a memorable debate, continued over four nights, on the subject of Mr. Gladstone's political conduct, and moved an amendment condemning his coalition with the whigs. G. J. Goschen, M. E. Grant Duff, E. S. Beesly, and C. H. Pearson also spoke. Rogers, whose eloquence made a unique sensation, was followed with cheers into the street, carried to Wadham shoulder high, and elected president for the next term. As a barrister, Rogers built up a lucrative practice, and bade fair to receive high promotion, when severe deafness, at the age of about fifty, cut short his career. Among his legal pupils was Frederick William Maitland.

Rogers now fell back on his other early interest, that of the scholar and poetical translator. He had begun in 1846, as he records sixty-four years later, under the influence of his brother, Thomas Englesby Rogers, fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, an edition of the Clouds of Aristophanes with a translation ‘into corresponding metres’. This he completed while still an undergraduate, and published in 1852. The preface, dated Oxford 1851, shows wide and deep reading, both of original Greek authors and of commentators English and German; the notes, a large and varied acquaintance with English literature; and the translation, much verbal and metrical skill, and poetic feeling. The whole is a very striking performance for a young man of twenty-three. In 1855 Rogers published a pamphlet on Napoleon III and England, a warning against the ‘faithful ally’ of Tennyson's ‘Riflemen, form’, and in 1863 and 1865 two pamphlets, The Difficulties suggested by Dr. Colenso and The Mosaic Record, demonstrating the absurdity of the bishop's mechanical and mathematical handling of the Pentateuch. Returning to Aristophanes, he published the Peace (1867), the Wasps (1875, used for the Cambridge performances of 1897 and 1919), the Lysistrata (1878), the Thesmophoriazusae (1904), and then from 1910 to 1916 reissued all the plays in a complete edition in six volumes. To volume vi was appended a translation of Plautus's Menaechmi, later published separately with the Latin text. In 1909 Oxford University conferred on him the honorary degree of D.Litt. Such was his modesty that when he received the letter conveying the offer he thought that it was meant for someone else of the same name. Wadham College, where he was always greatly liked, elected him an honorary fellow in 1902.

In the final edition of the Clouds Rogers records how after sixty-four years he now reissued the work, having rewritten the commentary, but only slightly retouched the translation lest he should destroy its early vigour. It was a true instinct. A faithful while ardent scholar, steeped in literature dramatic and general, a man of the world, a barrister at home in the courts and in the purlieus and quillets of the law, keenly interested in politics, of an open yet thoroughly conservative temper in church and state, of personal piety, a special lover of birds, Rogers's genius was exactly suited to that of Aristophanes. He is as lively as Frere, and more literal. As Walter Headlam said, ‘he permanently raised the standard of verse translation by writing verse that was verse’. His notes are a thesaurus controlled by literary discrimination, and his version, to use his own eloquent phrase, is ‘fragrant’, through and through, ‘with the volatile wit of the poet’.

Rogers died at Eastwood, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, 22 September 1919 in his ninety-first year. He had two sons and three daughters. He never consented to sit for his portrait, but there is a very good pencil-drawing of him in the Oxford Union. He left his classical library to Wadham College.

 ROMER, ROBERT (1840–1918), judge, was born at Kilburn 23 December 1840, the second son of Frank Romer, musical composer, by his wife, Mary Lydia, daughter of Benjamin Cudworth. He was educated at private schools, and in 1859 matriculated at Cambridge as a scholar of Trinity Hall. In 1863 he was senior wrangler, and Smith's prizeman jointly with the second wrangler. Trinity Hall had never before produced a senior wrangler, and Romer's success is commemorated in the large picture (by Farren, a local artist), ‘Degree Day, 1863,’ which hangs in the combination room of the college. On leaving Cambridge his first appointment was that of private secretary to Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild. In 1864 he married his first cousin, Betty, daughter of Mark Lemon [q.v.], one of the founders, and first editor, of Punch. From 1865 to 1866 he was professor of 476