Till he finds some trait for satire;
Hunts your weak point out, then shows it
When it injures to disclose it,
In the mode that's most invidious,
Adding every trait that's hideous,
From the bile, whose blackening river
Rushes through his Stygian liver.
Then he thinks himself a lover:—
Why I really can't discover
In his mind, age, face, or figure:
Viper-broth might give him vigour:
Let him keep the cauldron steady,
He the venom has already.
For his faults, he has but one—
'Tis but envy when all's done.
He but pays the pain he suffers,
Clipping, like a pair of snuffers.
Lights which ought to burn the brighter
For this temporary blighter.
He's the cancer of his species,
And will eat himself to pieces:
Plague personified and famine;
Devil, whose sole delight is damning!
"For his merits, would you know 'em?
Once he wrote a pretty poem!"
These bitter lines were written in 1818. They are said to have been in Moore's hands; but he suppressed them, probably because their publication would have excluded him from Rogers's breakfasts; and they first appeared, with annotations, "supplied by the great literary characters who annotate the new edition of Lord Byron," in Fraser's Magazine, No. xxxvii. p. 81. It is of these that Maginn elsewhere (Dub. Univ. Mag., Jan., 1844, p. 86) says that they "are well worth five dozen 'Parasinas' and 'Prisoners of Chillon.' " The satire is indeed a literary curiosity of the highest interest, exceeding in cool and concentrated venom everything that has appeared since the days of Swift, except perhaps Gifford's truculent Epistle to Peter Pindar. "I would give a trifle," in no creditable spirit said Maginn, "to have seen Sam's face the morning that satire was published." The victim, we are told, thought of buying up all the copies of the magazine, but he was dissuaded by a cooler friend, who convinced him of the futility of such a step. Crabb Robinson called it in his "Diary," a vile lampoon, and tells on the authority of W. S. Landor and Lady Blessington, of the heartless glee with which Byron boasted that he made Rogers sit down on the very cushion beneath which the doggrel catilinary was written,—"never," said he to Lady Blessington, "in the whole course of my existence did I feel more exquisite satisfaction than when I saw the ugly creature sitting upon my satire."[1]
Rogers took no ostensible revenge; but we can fancy that a sad feeling of desecrated friendship was in his heart when he penned in a copy of "Byron" the following lines, which saw the light for the first time in the Dublin University Magazine, for May, 1857:—
- ↑ MS. letter from Rev. Alexander Dyce to Sir Egerton Brydges; the writer gives the anecdote on the authority of the poet, Campbell, who had it from Lady Blessington.
