Dosed[1] with vile drams on Sunday he was found,
Or got a child on consecrated ground!
And hence is haunted with a rhyming rage—
Feared like a bear just bursting from his cage.
If free, all fly his versifying fit,
Fatal at once to Simpleton or Wit:840
But him, unhappy! whom he seizes,—him
He flays with Recitation limb by limb;
Probes to the quick where'er he makes his breach,
And gorges like a Lawyer—or a Leech.
[The last page of MS. M. is dated—
Byron,
Capuchin Convent,
The following memorandum, in Byron's handwriting, is also inscribed on the last page: "722 lines, and 4 inserted after and now counted, in all 726.—B. Since this several lines are added.—B. June 14th, 1811.
"Copied fair at Malta, May 3rd, 1811.—B."
Byron,
March 11th and 12th,
Athens. 1811.—[MS. L. (a).]
Byron, March 14th, 1811.
- ↑ If "dosed with," etc. be censured as low, I beg leave to refer to the original for something still lower; and if any reader will translate "Minxerit in patrios cineres," etc. into a decent couplet, I will insert said couplet in lieu of the present.
go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.'"—Boswell's Life of Johnson (1886), p. 281.]
