" Of Rosa Matilda (v. 738.) he
tells us, "She has since married the Morning Post,--an exceeding good
match." To the verses, "When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall,"
&c., he has appended the following interesting note:--"This was meant
at poor Blackett, who was then patronised by A.I.B.[104];--but _that_
I did not know, or this would not have been written; at least I think
not."
Farther on, where Mr. Campbell and other poets are mentioned, the
following gingle on the names of their respective poems is
scribbled:--
"Pretty Miss Jacqueline
Had a nose aquiline;
And would assert rude
Things of Miss Gertrude;
While Mr. Marmion
Led a great army on,
Making Kehama look
Like a fierce Mamaluke."
Opposite the paragraph in praise of Mr. Crabbe he has written, "I
consider Crabbe and Coleridge as the first of these times in point of
power and genius." On his own line, in a subsequent paragraph, "And
glory, like the phoenix mid her fires," he says, comically, "The devil
take that phoenix--how came it there?" and his concluding remark on
the whole poem is as follows:--
"The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been
written; not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical
and some of the personal part of it, but the tone and temper are such
as I cannot approve.
BYRON."
"Diodata, Geneva, July 14. 1816."
While engaged in preparing his new edition for the press, he was also
gaily dispensing the hospitalities of Newstead to a party of young
college friends, whom, with the prospect of so long an absence from
England, he had assembled round him at the Abbey, for a sort of
festive farewell.
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