The Works of Lord Byron Volume VII Part 18

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'--'lordship 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 Ladyship from taking snuff!

1821.

[First published, _Conversations of Lord Byron_, 1824, p. 235.]

FOOTNOTES: