No More Learning

4.

You hate the house--_why_ canvass, then?
My boy Hobbie O?
Because I would reform the den
As member for the Mobby O.

5.

Wherefore do you hate the Whigs,
My boy Hobbie O?
Because they want to run their rigs,
As under Walpole Bobby O.

6.

But when we at Cambridge were
My boy Hobbie O,
If my memory don't err
You founded a Whig Clubbie O.

7.

When to the mob you make a speech,
My boy Hobbie O,
How do you keep without their reach
The watch within your fobby O?

8.

But never mind such petty things,
My boy Hobbie O;
God save the people--damn all Kings,
So let us Crown the Mobby O!

Yours truly,

(Signed) _INFIDUS SCURRA_.

_March 23d_, 1820.
[First published _Murray's Magazine_, March, 1887,
vol. i. pp. 292, 293. ]

FOOTNOTES:

[113] [John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869) (see _Letters_, 1898, i. 163,
_note_ 1) was committed to Newgate in December, 1819, for certain
passages in a pamphlet entitled, _A Trifling Mistake in Thomas Lord
Erskine's recent Preface_, which were voted (December 10) a breach of
privilege. He remained in prison till the dissolution on the king's
death, February 20, 1820, when he stood and was returned for
Westminster. Byron's Liberalism was intermittent, and he felt, or, as
Hobhouse thought, pretended to feel, as a Whig and an aristocrat with
regard to the free lances of the Radical party. The sole charge in this
"filthy ballad," which annoyed Hobhouse, was that he had founded a Whig
Club when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge. He assured Murray (see
his letter, November, 1820, _Letters_, vol. iv. Appendix XI. pp.
498-500) that he was not the founder of the club, and that Byron himself
was a member. "As for his Lordship's vulgar notions about the _mob_" he
adds, "they are very fit for the Poet of the _Morning Post_, and for
nobody else. " There is no reason to suppose that Byron was in any way
responsible for the version as sent to the _Morning Post_.