Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/616

574 There's Vamp, Scamp, and Mouthy, and Wordswords and Co.

With their damnable

Whom you speak to?

You're an author—a poet—

Can stand tamely in silence, to hear you decry

The Muses?

To the Nine; though the number who make some pretence

To their favours is such but the subject to drop,

I am just piping hot from a publisher's shop,

(Next door to the pastry-cook's; so that when I

Cannot find the new volume I wanted to buy

On the bibliopole's shelves, it is only two paces,

As one finds every author in one of those places:)

Where I just had been skimming a charming critique,

So studded with wit, and so sprinkled with Greek!

Where your friend—you know who—has just got such a threshing,

That it is, as the phrase goes, extremely "refreshing."

What a beautiful word!

And so cooling—they use it a little too oft;

And the papers have got it at last—but no matter.

So they've cut up our friend then?

Not a rag of his present or past reputotion,

Which they call a disgrace to the age, and the nation.