Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

6.

indfold he runs groping for fame, And hardly knows where he will find her:

e don't seem to take to the name Of Gally i.o. the Grinder. Gally i.o. i.o., etc.

7.

et the Critics have been very kind, And Mamma and his friends have been kinder;

ut the greatest of Glory's behind For Gally i.o. the Grinder. Gally i.o. i.o.

April 11, 1818. [First published, 1903.]

EPIGRAM.

ROM THE FRENCH OF RULHIÈRES.1

F for silver, or for gold,

You could melt ten thousand pimples Into half a dozen dimples, Then your face we might behold, Looking, doubtless, much more snugly,

Yet even then 'twould be damned ugly. August 12, 1819. [First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 235.]

EPILOGUE.?

I.

THERE'S Something in a stupid ass, And something in a heavy dunce; But never since I went to school

I heard or saw so damned a fool As William Wordsworth 3 is for once.

[Claude Carloman de Rulhière (1718-1701), historian, poet and epigrammatist. His epigrams which were appended to Les jeux de Mains (1808), were collected in his Euvres Posthumes, 1819. His published works do not contain the original of Byron's translation.]

[The MS. of the "Epilogue" is inscribed on the margin of a copy of Wordsworth's Peter Bell (1819), inserted in a set of Byron's Works presented by John Murray to George W. Childs, and by him, in turn, presented to the Drexel Institute.]

3 [So, too, in a letter to Moore, Jan. 22, 1821,

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

How came you in Hob's pound to cool,
My boy Hobbie O?
Because I bade the people pull

The House into the Lobby O.

I [Cobbett, as an atonement for youthful vituperation exhumed Tom Paine's bones from their first resting-place at New Rochelle, and brought them to Liverpool on his return to England in 1810.]

[John Cam Hobhouse was committed to Newgate in December, 1810, for certain passages in a pamphlet entitled, A Trifling Mistake in Thomas Lord Erskine's recent Preface, which were voted (December 10) a breach of privilege. He remained in prison till the dissolution on the king's death. February 20, 1820, when he stood

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

WHAT matter the pangs of a husband and father,

If his sorrows in exile be great or be small,

So the Pharisee's glories around her she gather,

And the saint patronises her "Charity
Ball"!

What matters - a heart which, though faulty, was feeling,

Be driven to excesses which once could appal

That the Sinner should suffer is only fair dealing,

As the Saint keeps her charity back for "the Ball"!

December 10, 1820. [First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 540.]

[Written on seeing the following paragraph in a newspaper: "Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual Charity Ball, given at the Town Hall, at Hinckley, Leicestershire. "Life, p. 535.]

[blocks in formation]

MARTIAL, LIB. I. EPIG. I.

"Hic est, quem legis, ille, quem requiris,
Toto notus in orbe Martialis," etc.

HE, unto whom thou art so partial,
Oh, reader! is the well-known Martial,
The Epigrammatist: while living,

[In a letter to Moore, dated January 22. 1821, he gives another version

"Through Life's road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing except thirty-three."

-Life, p. 229.]

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

In that Gown (like the Skin
With no Lion within)

[Napoleon bequeathed to Lady Holland a snuff-box which had been given to him by the Pope for his clemency in sparing Rome. Lord Carlisle wrote eight stanzas, urging her, as Byron told Medwin, to decline the gift, "for fear that horror and murder should jump out of the lid every time it is opened.". Conversations, 1824, p. 362. The first stanza of Lord Carlisle's verses, which Byron parodied, runs thus "Lady, reject the gift! 'tis tinged with gore!

Those crimson spots a dreadful tale relate; It has been grasp'd by an infernal Power; And by that hand which seal'd young Enghien's fate."]

[George Frederick Nott (1767-1841), critic and divine. When he was acting as Chaplain at Pisa, he attacked the Satanic school, and denounced Cain as blasphemous. Hence the rejoinder.]

[Nott was sub-preceptor to the Princess Charlotte, and the story goes that on being rebuked by her grandmother, the Queen, for dis playing an ardent and undue interest in persons in low life, "persons" being intended to include Dr Nott, she threatened to sign a will in his favour.]

« PoprzedniaDalej »