152 Byron's Memoirs. [FEB. 



" Strahan, Tonson, Lintot of the times ! 

 Patron and publisher of rhymes ! 

 For thee the bard up Piridus climbs 

 My Murray ! 



To thee, with hope and terror dumb, 

 The unfledged MS. authors come ; 

 Thou printest all, and sellest some 



My Murray ! 



Upon thy table's baize so green, 

 The last new f Quarterly' is seen ; 

 But where is thy new Magazine ? 



My Murray ! 



Along thy sprucest book-shelves shine 

 The works thou deemest most divine, 

 ' The Art of Cookery and Wine' 



My Murray ! 



Tours, Travels, Essays too, I wist, 

 And Sermons to thy mill bring grist ; 

 And then thou hast the ' Navy List' 

 My Murray ! 



And Heaven forbid I should conclude 

 Without the ( Board of Longitude !' 

 Although this narrow paper would 



My Murray !" 



Mr. Moore then inserts a bitter letter upon the author of " Rimini," 

 which he says he had originally suppressed 



f{ but the tone of that gentleman's books having, as far as himself is con- 

 cerned, released me from all the scruples which prompted the suppression, I 

 have considered myself at liberty to restore the passage." 



Byron then proceeds : 



ee Hunt's letter is probably the exact piece of vulgar coxcombry you might 

 expect from his situation. He believes his trash of vulgar phrases tortured 

 into compound barbarisms to be old English. And we may say of it as Aim- 

 well says of Captain Gibbett's regiment, when the captain calls it an ' old 

 corps.' ' The oldest in Europe, if I may judge by your uniform.' He sent 

 out his ' Foliage' by Percy Shelley, and of all the ineffable Centaurs that were 

 ever begotten by Self-love upon a night-mare, I think this monstrous Sagittary 



the most prodigious. Did you read his skimble-skamble about being 



at the head of his own profession, in the eyes of those who followed it ? I 

 thought that poetry was an art, or an attribute, and not a profession but be 



it one, is that at the head of your profession in your eyes. I'll be 



curst if he is of mine, or ever shall be. But Leigh Hunt is a good man and a 

 good father, see his Odes to all the Masters Hunt ; a good husband, see his 

 sonnet to Mrs. Hunt ; a good friend, see his epistles to different people ; and 

 a great coxcomb, and a very vulgar person in every thing about him. But 

 that's not his fault, but of circumstances." 



Some hints follow on the " Life of Sheridan," on which Mr. Moore 

 was then engaged, and which he might have advantageously adopted 



" I do not know any good model for a life of Sheridan, but that of Savage. 

 The whigs abuse him ; however, he never left them ; and such blunderers 

 deserve neither credit nor compassion. As to his creditors, remember Sheridan 

 never had a shilling, and was thrown, with great powers and passions, into the 



