"Though he roared pretty well--this the puppy allows--
It was all, he says, borrowed--all second-hand roar;
And he vastly prefers his own little bow-wows
To the loftiest war-note the Lion could pour.
"'Tis, indeed, as good fun as a 'Cynic' could ask,
To see how this cockney-bred setter of rabbits
Takes gravely the Lord of the Forest to task,
And judges of Lions by puppy-dog habits.
"Nay, fed as he was (and this makes it a dark case)
With sops every day from the Lion's own pan,
He lifts up his leg at the noble beast's carcass,
And--does all a dog, so diminutive, can.
"However, the book's a good book, being rich in
Examples and warnings to lions high-bred,
How they suffer small mongrelly curs in their kitchen,
Who'll feed on them living, and foul them when dead.
"Exeter 'Change'.
T. PIDCOCK."
For the reply of Hunt or one of his friends, "The Giant and the Dwarf,"
see Appendix VI.]
[Footnote 3: William Sotheby (1757-1833), once a cavalry officer,
afterwards a man of letters and of fortune, published his 'Oberon' in
1798, and his 'Georgics' in 1800 (see 'English Bards, etc.', line 818,
and 'note'). The following passage from Byron's 'Detached Thoughts'
(1821) refers to him:
"Sotheby is a good man; rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore. He
seizes you by the button. One night of a rout, at Mrs. Hope's, he had
fastened upon me (something about Agamemnon or Orestes--or some of his
plays), notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress, (for I was
in love and had just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor
husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was
beautiful as the Statues of the Gallery where we stood at the time).
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