Samuel Rogers
Captain Medwin, in his “Life of Shelley,” copies the following verses on the poet-banker Rogers, which he attributes, whether justly or not, to Byron:
“Nose and chin would shame a knocker,
Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker,
Mouth which marks the envious scorner,
With a scorpion at the corner,
Turning its quick tail to sting you,
In the place that most may wring you;
Eyes of lead-like hue and gummy,
Carcase picked up from some mummy,
Bowels—but they were forgotten,
Save the liver and that’s rotten;
Skin all sallow, flesh all sodden,
From the devil would frighten Godwin.
Is’t a corpse set up for show?
Galvanized at times to go?
With the Scripture in connection,
New proof of the resurrection?
Vampire! ghost! or goat, what is it?
I would walk ten miles to miss it.”
“The author of the ‘Pleasures of Memory,’” remarks William Howitt, “has never met with that species of Mohawk criticism, that scalping and scarifying literary assault and battery, which so many of his contemporaries have had to undergo.” Nevertheless, it would be hard to find in the wide range of Satanic literature a scarification as intense and as sweeping as that in the lines above quoted.