"The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit. Indeed we do not recollect to have seen a quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction for that exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level than if they were so much stagnant water. . . We desire to counsel him that he forthwith abandon poetry and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his opportunities, which are great, to better account.* So his profanity in the "Vision of Judgment," was in answer to Southey's poem of that name, the introduction of which contained strictures against him. him. Accused of being Satanic, he replies with some profanity, and with that humour which he principally shows in such retorts "Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate, ; His keys wore rusty, and the lock was dull, At sea-which drew most souls another way. "The angels all were singing out of tune, * Byron showed his love of humour even in some of these early effusions, speaking of his college he says: "Our choir would scarcely be excused, Even as a band of raw beginners: All mercy, now, must be refused To such a set of croaking sinners. If David, when his toils were ended Had heard these blockheads sing before him, To us his psalms had ne'er descended; In furious mood, he would have tore 'em." Byron's Acerbity. Or curb a runaway young star or two, 187 The effect of Southey reading his “Vision of Judgment" is thus given : "Those grand heroics acted as a spell, The angels stopped their ears, and plied their pinions, The devils ran howling deafened down to hell, The ghosts fled gibbering, for their own dominions." His poem on a lady who maligned him to his wife, seems to show that he did not well distinguish where the humorous ends and the ludicrous begins. He represents her "With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown No one suffered more than Byron from his humour being misapprehended. His letters abound with jests and jeux d'esprit, which were often taken seriously as admissions of an immoral character. We gladly turn to something pleasanter-to some of the few humorous pieces he wrote in a genial tone EPIGRAM. The world is a bundle of hay Lines to Mr. Hodgson (afterwards Provost of Eton) written on board the packet for Lisbon, "Huzza! Hodgson, we are going, Men and women, Gemmen, ladies, servants, tacks; All are wrangling, Stuck together close as wax, Such the general noise and racket Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you? In Beppo there is much gay carnival merriment and some humour-a style well suited to Italian revelry. When Laura's husband, Beppo, returns, and is seen in a new guise at a ball, we read "He was a Turk the colour of mahogany And Laura saw him, and at first was glad, On being assured that he is her husband, she exclaims 66 'Beppo. And are you really truly, now a Turk? Saw a man grown so yellow! How's your liver ?" More than half the poem is taken up with digressions, more or less amusing, such as— “Oh, mirth and innocence! Oh milk and water! His thirst with such pure beverage. No matter, Meantime I drink to your return in brandy." We may observe that there is humour in the rhymes in the above stanzas. He often used absurd terminations to his lines as "For bating Covent garden, I can hit on No place that's called Piazza in Great Britain." People going to Italy, are to take with them 66 Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar and Harvey, Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye.” We are here reminded of the endings of some of Butler's lines. Such rhymes were then regarded as poetical, but in our improved taste we only use them for humour. Lamb considered them to be a kind of punning, but in one case the same position, in the other the same signification is given to words of the same sound. The following couplet was written humorously by Swift for a dog's collar "Pray steal me not: I'm Mrs. Dingley's Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies." "Worth makes the man and want of it the fellow, Miss Sinclair also, in her description of the Queen's visit to Scotland, has adopted these irregular terminations with good effect "Our Queen looks far better in Scotland than England The tailors with frantic speed, day and night cut on, |