ROBINSON, HENRY CRABB (1775-1867).—­Diarist, b. at Bury St. Edmunds, was articled to an attorney in Colchester.  Between 1800 and 1805 he studied at various places in Germany, and became acquainted with nearly all the great men of letters there, including Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland, etc.  Thereafter he became war correspondent to the Times in the Peninsula.  On his return to London he studied for the Bar, to which he was called in 1813, and became leader of the Eastern Circuit.  Fifteen years later he retired, and by virtue of his great conversational powers and other qualities, became a leader in society, going everywhere and knowing everybody worth knowing.  He d. unmarried, aged 91, and his Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence, which stands in the forefront of its class, was pub. in 1869.

ROCHESTER, JOHN WILMOT (2ND EARL OF) (1647-1680).—­Poet, s. of the 1st Earl, b. at Ditchley in Oxfordshire, and ed. at Oxf., saw some naval service when he showed conspicuous bravery.  He became one of the most dissolute of the courtiers of Charles II., and wore himself out at 33 by his wild life.  He was handsome, and witty, and possessed a singular charm of manner.  He wrote a number of light, graceful poems, many of them extremely gross.  Bishop Burnet, who attended him on his deathbed, believed him to have been sincerely repentant.  In addition to his short pieces he wrote a Satyr against Mankind, and a tragedy, Valentinian, adapted from Beaumont and Fletcher.

ROGERS, HENRY (1806-1877).—­Critic and theologian, was a minister of the Congregationalist Church, and ultimately Prof. of English Literature in Univ.  Coll., London.  He was a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, and is best known by his Eclipse of Faith (1852), a reply to F.W.  Newman’s Phases of Faith.  This work, which displays remarkable acuteness and logical power, had great popularity.

ROGERS, SAMUEL (1763-1855).—­Poet, s. of a banker in London, received a careful private education, and entered the bank, of which, on his father’s death, he became the principal partner.  From his early youth he showed a marked taste for literature and the fine arts, which his wealth enabled him to gratify; and in his later years he was a well-known leader in society and a munificent patron of artists and men of letters, his breakfasts, at which he delighted to assemble celebrities in all departments, being famous.  He was the author of the following poems:  The Pleasures of Memory (1792), Columbus (1810), Jacqueline (1814), Human Life (1819), and Italy (1822).  R. was emphatically the poet of taste, and his writings, while full of allusion and finished description, rarely show passion or intensity of feeling; but are rather the reflections and memory-pictures of a man of high culture and refinement expressed in polished verse.  He had considerable powers of conversation and sarcasm.  He was offered, but declined, the laureateship.