Where does all Sense to him and Reason shine?
Behold, in Tully's rhetoric divine!
'Tully!' Enough; high o'er the Alps he's gone,
To tread the ground that Tully trod upon;
Haply, to find his statue or his bust,
Or medal green'd with Ciceronian rust;
Perchance, the Rostrum—yea, the very wood
Whereon this elevated genius stood.
When forth on Catiline, as erst he spoke,
The thunder of 'Quousque tandem' broke.
Byrom is beginning to forget even Tully's merits as a shorthand writer. He follows Law towards the condemnation, not only of the stage, but of classical scholarship and art in general.
It does not appear, however, that Byrom ever got quite so far. Law retired to his curious hermitage at King's Cliffe, where he could abandon himself to pious meditation and the demoralisation of the neighbourhood by profuse charity. Byrom was held fast by his domestic ties; and took an interest in the local politics of Manchester. His talent for versification gave him frequent employment. He contributed a number of verses, in the nature of election squibs, to a newspaper of the period, and whenever he has an argument with a friend, he twists his logic into verse. Some of the results are quaint enough. Tempted, apparently, by Bentley's
