But Managers, for once, cried 'hold, enough,'
Nor drugg'd their audience with the tragic stuff.
Yet at their judgment let his Lordship laugh,
And case his volumes in _congenial calf_:
Yes! doff that covering where Morocco shines,
And hang a calf-skin on those recreant lines."
And in explanation of this affectionate effusion, our lordly dedicator
subjoins a note to inform us that Lord CARLISLE'S works are splendidly
bound, but that "the rest is all but leather and prunella," and a little
after, in a very laborious note, in which he endeavours to defend his
consistency, he out-Herods Herod, or to speak more forcibly, out-Byrons
Byron, in the virulence of his invective against "his guardian and
relative, to whom he dedicated his volume of puerile poems." Lord
CARLISLE has, it seems, if we are to believe his word, for a series of
years, beguiled "the public with reams of most orthodox, imperial
_nonsense_," and Lord BYRON concludes by asking,
"What can ennoble knaves, or _fools_, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards."
"So says POPE," adds Lord BYRON. But POPE does not say so; the words
"_knaves and fools_," are not in POPE, but interpolated by Lord BYRON,
in favour of his "guardian and relative." Now, all this might have slept
in oblivion with Lord CARLISLE'S Dramas, and Lord BYRON'S Poems; but if
this young Gentleman chooses to erect himself into a spokesman of the
public opinion, it becomes worth while to consider to what notice he is
entitled; when he affects a tone of criticism and an air of candour, he
obliges us to enquire whether he has any just pretensions to either, and
when he arrogates the high functions of public praise and public
censure, we may fairly inquire what the praise or censure of such a
being is worth:
"Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind.
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