No More Learning

Gally i. o. i. o. , etc.

_April_ 11, 1818.
[From an autograph MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray,
now for the first time printed. ]



EPIGRAM.

FROM THE FRENCH OF RULHIERES. [108]

IF for silver, or for gold,
You could melt ten thousand pimples
Into half a dozen dimples,
Then your face we might behold,
Looking, doubtless, much more snugly,
Yet even _then_ 'twould be damned ugly.

_August_ 12, 1819.
[First published, _Letters and Journals_, 1830, ii. 235.
]

FOOTNOTES:

[108] ["Would you like an epigram--a translation? It was written on some
Frenchwoman, by Rulhieres, I believe. "--Letter to Murray, August 12,
1819, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 346.

Claude Carloman de Rulhiere (1718-1791), historian, poet, and
epigrammatist, was the author of _Anecdotes sur la revolution de Russie
en l'annee_ 1762, _Histoire de l'anarchie de Pologne_ (1807), etc. His
epigrams are included in "Poesies Diverses," which are appended to _Les
jeux de Mains_, a poem in three cantos, published in 1808, and were
collected in his _Oeuvres Posthumes_, 1819; but there is no trace of the
original of Byron's translation. Perhaps it is _after_ de Rulhiere, who
more than once epigrammatizes "Une Vieille Femme. "]



EPILOGUE. [109]

1.

THERE'S something in a stupid ass,
And something in a heavy dunce;
But never since I went to school
I heard or saw so damned a fool
As William Wordsworth is for once.

2.

And now I've seen so great a fool
As William Wordsworth is for once;
I really wish that Peter Bell
And he who wrote it were in hell,
For writing nonsense for the nonce.

3.

It saw the "light in ninety-eight,"
Sweet babe of one and twenty years! [110]
And then he gives it to the nation
And deems himself of Shakespeare's peers!

4.