Who still frisk on with feats so lewdly low,[1]
'Tis strange Benvolio[2] suffers such a show;
Suppressing peer! to whom each vice gives place,[3]
Oaths, boxing, begging—all, save rout and race.
Farce followed Comedy, and reached her prime,
- ↑
Who yet squeaks on nor fears to be forgot
If good Earl Grosvenor supersede them not.—[MS. L. (a).]
Who still frisk on with feats so vastly low
'Tis strange Earl Grosvenor suffers such a show.—[MS. M.] - ↑ Benvolio [Lord Grosvenor, MS. L. (b)] does not bet; but every man who maintains racehorses is a promoter of all the concomitant evils of the turf. Avoiding to bet is a little Pharisaical. Is it an exculpation? I think not. I never yet heard a bawd praised for chastity, because she herself did not commit fornication.
[Robert, second Earl Grosvenor (1767-1845), was created Marquis of Westminster in 1831. Like his father, Gifford's patron, the first Earl Grosvenor, he was a breeder of racehorses, and a patron of the turf. As Lord Belgrave, he brought forward a motion for the suppression of Sunday newspapers, June 11, 1799, denouncing them in a violent speech. The motion was lost; but many years after, in a speech delivered in the House of Lords, January 2, 1807, he returned to the charge. (See Parl. Hist., 34. 1006, 1010; and Parl. Deb., 8. 286.) (For a skit on Lord Belgrave's sabbatarian views, see Peter Pindar, Works (1812), iv. 519.)]
- ↑
Suppressing Peer! to whom all vice gives place,
Save Gambling—for his Lordship loves a Race.—[MS. L. (a).] - ↑ [Samuel Foote (1720-1777), actor and playwright. His solo entertainments, in The Dish of Tea, An Auction of Pictures, 1747-8 (see his comedy Taste), were the precursors of Mathews at Home, and a long line of successors. His farces and curtain-pieces were often "spiced-up" with more or less malicious character-sketches of living persons. Among his better known pieces are The Minor (1760), ridiculing Whitefield and the Methodists, and The Mayor of Garratt (1763), in which he played the part of Sturgeon (Byron used this piece, for an illustration in his speech on the Frame-workers Bill, February 27, 1812). The Lyar, first played at Covent
