Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/347

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ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.
305

What then? the self-same blunder Pope has got,
And careless Dryden—"Aye, but Pye has not:"—100
Indeed!—'tis granted, faith!—but what care I?
Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye.[1]


Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days[2]

Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise,
  1. [Henry James Pye (1745-1813), M.P. for Berkshire, and afterwards Police Magistrate for Westminster, held the office of poet laureate from 1790 till his death in 1813, succeeding Thomas Warton, and succeeded by Southey. He published Farringdon Hill in 1774, The Progress of Refinement in 1783, and a translation of Bürger's Lenore in 1795. His name recurs in the Vision of Judgment, stanza xcii. Lines 97-102 were inserted in the Fifth Edition.]
  2. [The first edition of the Satire opened with this line; and Byron's original intention was to prefix the following argument, first published in Recollections, by R. C. Dallas (1824):—

    "Argument.

    "The poet considereth times past, and their poesy—makes a sudden transition to times present—is incensed against book-makers—revileth Walter Scott for cupidity and ballad-mongering, with notable remarks on Master Southey—complaineth that Master Southey had inflicted three poems, epic and otherwise, on the public—inveigheth against William Wordsworth, but laudeth Mister Coleridge and his elegy on a young ass—is disposed to vituperate Mr. Lewis—and greatly rebuketh Thomas Little (the late) and Lord Strangford—recommendeth Mr. Hayley to turn his attention to prose—and exhorteth the Moravians to glorify Mr. Grahame—sympathiseth with the Rev. [William Bowles]—and deploreth the melancholy fate of James Montgomery—breaketh out into invective against the Edinburgh Reviewers—calleth them hard names, harpies and the like—apostrophiseth Jeffrey, and prophesieth.—Episode of Jeffrey and Moore, their jeopardy and deliverance; portents on the morn of the combat; the Tweed, Tolbooth, Frith of Forth [and Arthur's Seat, MS.] severally shocked; descent of a goddess to save Jeffrey; incorporation of the bullets with his sinciput and occiput.—Edinburgh Reviews en masse.—Lord Aberdeen,