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I suppose that to-night you 're engaged with some codgers,

And for Sotheby's Blues have deserted Sam Rogers;

And I, though with cold I have nearly my death got,

Must put on my breeches, and wait on the Heathcote.

But to-morrow at four, we will both play the Scurra,

And you'll be Catullus, the Regent Mamurra.

'WHEN THURLOW THIS DAMN'D NONSENSE SENT'

[To Thomas Moore, June, 1813. Byron and Moore were supping with Rogers on bread and cheese when their host brought forth Lord Thurlow's Poems on Several Occasions (1813). In vain did Mr. Rogers (to whom a copy of the work had been presented),' says Moore in his Life, 'in justice to the author, endeavour to direct our attention to some of the beauties of the work. One of the poems was a warm and, I need not add, well-deserved panegyric on himself. The opening line of the poem was, as well as I can recollect,

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till even Mr. Rogers himself, with all his feeling of our injustice, found it impossible not to join us; and had the author himself been of the party, I question much whether he could have resisted the infection.' A day or two later Byron sent the following verses in a letter to Moore.]

WHEN Thurlow this damn'd nonsense sent (I hope I am not violent),

Nor men nor gods knew what he meant.
And since not even our Rogers' praise
To common
sense his thoughts could

raise

Why would they let him print his lays?

To me, divine Apollo, grant-0! Hermilda's first and second canto, I'm fitting up a new portmanteau;

FRAGMENT OF AN EPISTLE TO THOMAS MOORE

And thus to furnish decent lining,

My own and others' bays I'm twining So, gentle Thurlow, throw me thine in.

TO LORD THURLOW

I lay my branch of laurel down:
Then thus to form Apollo's crown,
Let every other bring his own.'

Lord Thurlow's lines to Mr. Rogers.

[On the same day with the preceding Byron sent to Moore the following stanzas on Lord Thurlow's lines.]

'I LAY my branch of laurel down.' Thou lay thy branch of laurel down!' Why, what thou 'st stole is not enow; And, were it lawfully thine own,

Does Rogers want it most, or thou? Keep to thyself thy wither'd bough,

Or send it back to Doctor Donne: Were justice done to both, I trow, He'd have but little, and thou

none.

'Then thus to form Apollo's crown.' A crown! why, twist it how you will, Thy chaplet must be foolscap still. When next you visit Delphi's town,

Inquire amongst your fellow-lodgers, They'll tell you Phoebus gave his crown, Some years before your birth, to Rogers.

'Let every other bring his own.' When coals to Newcastle are carried,

And owls sent to Athens, as wonders, From his spouse when the Regent's unmarried,

Or Liverpool weeps o'er his blunders; When Tories and Whigs cease to quarrel, When Castlereagh's wife has an heir, Then Rogers shall ask us for laurel,

And thou shalt have plenty to spare.

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I'm your man' of all measures,' dear Tom, so here goes!

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Here goes, for a swim on the stream of old Time,

On those buoyant supporters, the bladders of rhyme.

If our weight breaks them down and we sink in the flood,

We are smother'd, at least, in respectable mud,

Where the Divers of Bathos lie drown'd in a heap,

And Southey's last Pæan has pillow'd his sleep;

That 'Felo de se' who, half drunk with his malmsey,

Walk'd out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea,

Singing 'Glory to God' in a spick and span stanza,

The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked)

never man saw.

The papers have told you, no doubt, of the fusses,

The fêtes and the gapings to get at these Russes,

Of his Majesty's suite, up from coachman to Hetman,

And what dignity decks the flat face of the great man.

I saw him, last week, at two balls and a

party,

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IN THIS BELOVED MARBLE

VIEW'

[To John Murray, Venice, November 25, 1816. The Helen of Canova (a bust which is in the house of Madame the Countess d'Albrizzi, whom I know) is, without exception, to my mind, the most perfectly beautiful of human conceptions, and far beyond my ideas of human execution.')

IN this beloved marble view

Above the works and thoughts of Man,
What Nature could, but would not, do,
And Beauty and Canova can!
Beyond Imagination's power,
Beyond the Bard's defeated art,
With Immortality her dower,

Behold the Helen of the heart!

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the destruction of machinery which was supposed to have occasioned the scarcity of labor.]

As the Liberty lads o'er the sea Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,

So we, boys, we

Will die fighting, or live free;

And down with all kings but King Ludd!

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