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ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.
Yet kind to youth, this expiation o'er,
She bids thee "mend thy line, and sin no more."[1]
For thee, translator of the tinsel song,
To whom such glittering ornaments belong,
Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue,[2]
And boasted locks of red or auburn hue,
Whose plaintive strain each love-sick Miss admires,
And o'er harmonious fustian half expires,"[3]300
Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author's sense,
Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence.
Think'st thou to gain thy verse a higher place,
By dressing Camoëns[4] in a suit of lace?
Mend, Strangford! mend thy morals and thy taste;
- ↑ Mend thy life, and sin no more.—[MS.]
- ↑ The reader, who may wish for an explanation of this, may refer to "Strangford's Camoëns," p. 127, note to p. 56, or to the last page of the Edinburgh Review of Strangford's Camoëns. [Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, sixth Viscount Strangford (1780-1855), published Translations from the Portuguese by Luis de Camoens in 1803. The note to which Byron refers is on the canzonet Naō sei quem assella, "Thou hast an eye of tender blue." It runs thus: "Locks of auburn and eyes of blue have ever been dear to the sons of song.... Sterne even considers them as indicative of qualities the most amiable.... The Translator does not wish to deem ... this unfounded. He is, however, aware of the danger to which such a confession exposes him—but he flies for protection to the temple of Aurea Venus." It may be added that Byron's own locks were auburn, and his eyes a greyish-blue.]
- ↑ And o'er harmonious nonsense.—[MS. First Edition.]
- ↑ It is also to be remarked, that the things given to the public as poems of Camoëns are no more to be found in the original Portuguese, than in the Song of Solomon.
