But the assertions of Lord BYRON are
as false as they are audacious. What was the "Sire's Disgrace" to be
thus bewept? He preferred the independence of the Crown to the arrogant
dictation of a haughty Aristocracy, who desired to hold him in
Leading-strings. It was then, amid a "Realm's (fancied) decay," because
this Faction were not admitted to supreme power, that his Royal
Highness's early friends drunk his health in contemptuous silence, while
their more vulgar partizans "at the lower end of the Hall" hissed and
hooted the royal name. But mark the reverse since March, 1812, a reverse
which it might have been thought would have induced the Noble Lord, from
prudent motives, to have withheld this ill-timed publication! How is his
Royal Highness's health toasted 'now'? With universal shouts and
acclamations. Treason itself dare not interpose a single discordant
sound save in its own private orgies! Where is 'now' the realm's decay?
oh short-sighted prognosticators of the prophecies! look around, and
dread the fate of the speakers of falsehood among the Jews of old, who
were stoned to death by the people! The wide world furnishes the answer
to your selfish croakings, and tells Lord BYRON that he is destitute of
at least one of the qualities of an inspired Bard.
Perhaps we might add another, viz. honesty in acknowledging his
plagiarisms, one of which (as we have already said more than his silly
verse above quoted deserves, except from the rank of its author) we
shall take the liberty of stating to the Public.
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