The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 7/On the Birth of John William Rizzo Hoppner
ON THE BIRTH OF JOHN WILLIAM RIZZO HOPPNER.[1]
His father's sense, his mother's grace,
In him, I hope, will always fit so;
With—still to keep him in good case—
The health and appetite of Rizzo.
February 20, 1818.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, ii. 134.]
- ↑ [Richard Belgrave Hoppner (1786-1872), second son of John Hoppner, R.A., was appointed English Consul at Venice, October, 1814. (See Letters, 1900, iv. 83, note 1.) The quatrain was translated (see the following poem) into eleven different languages—Greek, Latin, Italian (also the Venetian dialect), German, French, Spanish, Illyrian, Hebrew, Armenian, and Samaritan, and printed "in a small neat volume in the seminary of Padua." For nine of these translations see Works, 1832, xi. pp. 324-326, and 1891, p. 571. Rizzo was a Venetian surname. See W. Stewart Rose's verses to Byron, "Grinanis, Mocenijas, Baltis, Rizzi, Compassionate our cruel case," etc., Letters, iv. 212.]