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Saucy Tom!"
CAMPBELL.
"WHY, how now, Billy Bowles?
Sure the priest is maudlin!
(_To the public_) How can you, d--n your souls!
Listen to his twaddling?
_Billy Bowles_!"
_February 22, 1821._ [First published, _The Liberal_, 1823, No. II. p. 398.]
FOOTNOTES:
[121] [Compare the Beggar's Opera, act ii. sc. 2--
Air, "Good morrow, Gossip Joan."
"Polly. _Why, how now, Madam Flirt?
If you thus must chatter, And are for flinging dirt, Let's try who best can spatter, Madam Flirt_!
"Lucy. _Why, how now, saucy jade?
Sure the wench is tipsy!
How can you see me made The scoff of such a gipsy_? [To him.]
_Saucy jade_!" [To her.]
Bowles replied to Campbell's Introductory Essay to his _Specimens of the English Poets_, 7 vols., 1819, by _The Invariable Principles of Poetry_, in a letter addressed to Thomas Campbell. For Byron's two essays, the "Letter to.... [John Murray]" and "Observations upon Observations," see _Letters_, 1901, v. Appendix III. pp. 536-592.]
ELEGY.
BEHOLD the blessings of a lucky lot!
My play is _d.a.m.ned_, and Lady Noel _not_.
_May 25, 1821._ [First published, Medwin's _Conversations_, 1824, p. 121.]
JOHN KEATS.[122]
WHO killed John Keats?
"I," says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly; "'T was one of my feats."
Who shot the arrow?
"The poet-priest Milman (So ready to kill man) "Or Southey, or Barrow."
_July 30, 1821._ [First published, _Letters and Journals_, 1830, ii. 506.]
FOOTNOTES:
[122] [For Croker's "article" on Keats's _Endymion_ (_Quarterly Review_, April, 1818, vol. xix. pp. 204-208), see _Don Juan_, Canto XI. stanza lx. line 1, _Poetical Works_, 1902, vi. 445, _note_ 4.]
FROM THE FRENCH.
aeGLE, beauty and poet, has two little crimes; She makes her own face, and does not make her rhymes.
_Aug. 2, 1821._ [First published, _The Liberal_, 1823, No. II. p. 396.]
TO MR. MURRAY.
1.
FOR Orford[123] and for Waldegrave[124]
You give much more than me you _gave_; Which is not fairly to behave, My Murray!
2.
Because if a live dog, 't is said, Be worth a lion fairly sped, A live lord must be worth _two_ dead, My Murray!
3.
And if, as the opinion goes, Verse hath a better sale than prose,-- Certes, I should have more than those, My Murray!
4.
But now this sheet is nearly crammed, So, if _you will_, _I_ shan't be shammed, And if you _won't_,--_you_ may be d.a.m.ned, My Murray![125]
_August 23, 1821._ [First published, _Letters and Journals_, 1830, ii. 517.]
FOOTNOTES:
[123] [Horace Walpole's _Memoirs of the Last Nine Years of the Reign of George II._ ]
[124] [_Memoirs_ by James Earl Waldegrave, Governor of George III. when Prince of Wales.]
[125] ["Can't accept your courteous offer [_i.e._ 2000 for three cantos of _Don Juan, Sardanapalus_, and _The Two Foscari_.] These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. He is my trustee, and a man of honour. To him you can state all your mercantile reasons, which you might not like to state to me personally, such as 'heavy season'--'flat public'--'don't go off'--'lords.h.i.+p writes too much'--'won't take advice'--'declining popularity'--'deductions for the trade'--'make very little'--'generally lose by him'--'pirated edition'--'foreign edition'--'severe criticisms,' etc., with other hints and howls for an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer."--Letter to Murray, August 23, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 348.]
[NAPOLEON'S SNUFF-BOX.][126]
LADY, accept the box a hero wore, In spite of all this elegiac stuff: Let not seven stanzas written by a bore, Prevent your Ladys.h.i.+p from taking snuff!
1821.
[First published, _Conversations of Lord Byron_, 1824, p. 235.]
FOOTNOTES:
