Fool on, as fluent as an Orpheus' head!
Damn'd all their days, they posthumously thrive,
Dug up from dust, though buried when alive!
Reviews record this epidemic crime,
Those books of martyrs to the rage for rhyme
Alas! woe worth the scribbler, often seen
In Morning Post or Monthly Magazine!
There lurk his earlier lays, but soon, hot-press'd,
Behold a quarto!--tarts must tell the rest!
Then leave, ye wise, the lyre's precarious chords
To muse-mad baronets or madder lords,
Or country Crispins, now grown somewhat stale,
Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale!
Hark to those notes, narcotically soft,
The cobbler-laureates sing to Capel Lofft!"[12]

From these select specimens, which comprise, altogether, little more
than an eighth of the whole poem, the reader may be enabled to form some
notion of the remainder, which is, for the most part, of a very inferior
quality, and, in some parts, descending to the depths of doggerel. Who,
for instance, could trace the hand of Byron in such "prose, fringed with
rhyme," as the following?--

"Peace to Swift's faults! his wit hath made them pass
Unmatch'd by all, save matchless Hudibras,
Whose author is perhaps the first we meet
Who from our couplet lopp'd two final feet;
Nor less in merit than the longer line
This measure moves, a favourite of the Nine.