Page:Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824).djvu/223

 many a sigh at their hard destiny—their still-born fate,—they were hermetically sealed, and adieu to my immortality!

“Rogers has an unfortunately sensitive temper. We nearly quarrelled at Florence. I asked the officer of the Dogana (who had trouble enough with all my live and dead stock), in consequence of his civilities, to dine with me at Schneider’s; but Rogers happened to be in one of his ill humours, and abused the Italians.

“He is coming to visit me on his return from Rome, and will be annoyed when he finds I have any English comforts about me. He told a person the other day that one of my new tragedies was intended for the stage, when he knew neither of them was. I suppose he wanted to get another of them damned. O Samuel, Samuel! But,” added he, after a pause, “these things are, as Lord Kenyon said of Erskine, ‘mere spots in the sun.’ He has good qualities to counterbalance these littlenesses in his character.

“Rogers is the only man I know who can write epigrams, and sharp bone-cutters too, in two lines; for