Ink. I'm sorry to hear this! for friendship, you know
Our poor friend!—but I thought it would terminate so.
Our friendship is such, I'll read nothing to shock it.
You don't happen to have the Review in your pocket?
Tra. No; I left a round dozen of authors and others
(Very sorry, no doubt, since the cause is a brother's)
All scrambling and jostling, like so many imps,
And on fire with impatience to get the next glimpse.
Ink. Let us join them.
Tra.What, won't you return to the lecture?
Ink. Why the place is so crammed, there's not room for a spectre.41
Besides, our friend Scamp is to-day so absurd—[1]
Tra. How can you know that till you hear him?
Ink.I heard
Quite enough; and, to tell you the truth, my retreat
Was from his vile nonsense, no less than the heat.
Tra. I have had no great loss then?
Ink.Loss!—such a palaver!
I'd inoculate sooner my wife with the slaver
Of a dog when gone rabid, than listen two hours
To the torrent of trash which around him he pours,
Pumped up with such effort, disgorged with such labour,
That come—do not make me speak ill of one's neighbour.51
Tra. I make you!
Ink.Yes, you! I said nothing until
You compelled me, by speaking the truth
Tra.To speak ill?
Is that your deduction?
Ink.When speaking of Scamp ill,
I certainly follow, not set an example.
The fellow's a fool, an impostor, a zany.
- ↑ [It is possible that the description of Hazlitt's Lectures of 1818 is coloured by recollections of Coleridge's Lectures of 1811-1812, which Byron attended (see letter to Harness, December 6, 1811, Letters, 1898, ii. 76, note 1); but the substance of the attack is probably derived from Gifford's review of Lectures on the English Poets, delivered at the Surrey Institution (Quarterly Review, December, 1818, vol xix. pp. 424-434.]
