No More Learning

The Devil (but 't was over) had been vastly glad
To see the new Drury Lane,
And yet he might have been rather mad
To see it rebuilt in vain;
And had he beheld their "Nourjahad,"[51]
Would never have gone again: 230
And Satan had taken it much amiss,
They should fasten such a piece on a friend of his--
Though he knew that his works were somewhat sad,
He never had found them _quite_ so bad:
For this was "the book" which, of yore, Job, sorely smitten,
Said, "Oh that _mine_ enemy, _mine_ enemy had written"!

27.

Then he found sixty scribblers in separate cells,[52]
And marvelled what they were doing,
For they looked like little fiends in their own little hells,
Damnation for others brewing-- 240
Though their paper seemed to shrink, from the heat of their ink,
They were only _coolly_ reviewing!
And as one of them wrote down the pronoun "_We_,"
"That Plural"--says Satan--"means _him_ and _me_,
With the Editor added to make up the three
Of an Athanasian Trinity,
And render the believers in our 'Articles' sensible,
How many must combine to form _one_ Incomprehensible"!

_December_ 9, 1813.
[Stanzas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, first published,
_Letters and Journals_, 1830, i. 471-474: stanzas 6, 7,
9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19-27, now published for the first time from
an autograph MS. in the possession of the Earl of Ilchester. ]

FOOTNOTES:

[ii] The Devil's Drive. _A Sequel to Porson's_ Devil's Walk. --[MS. H. ]

[34] ["I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody,
called 'The Devil's Drive,' the notion of which I took from Porson's
_Devil's Walk_. "--_Journal_, December 17, 18, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii.
378.
"Though with a good deal of vigour and imagination, it is," says
Moore, "for the most part rather clumsily executed, wanting the point
and condensation of those clever verses of Coleridge and Southey, which
Lord Byron, adopting a notion long prevalent, has attributed to Porson. "
The _Devil's Walk_ was published in the _Morning Post_, September 6,
1799. It has been published under Porson's name (1830, ed. H. Montague,
illustrated by Cruikshank). (See _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 30, _note_
1. )]

[35] [Lord Yarmouth, nicknamed "Red Herrings," the eldest son of the
Regent's elderly favourite, the Marchioness of Hertford (the "Marchesa"
of the _Twopenny Post-Bag_), lived at No. 7, Seamore Place, Mayfair.
Compare Moore's "Epigram:" "'I want the Court Guide,' said my lady, 'to
look If the House, Seymour Place, be at 30 or 20,'" etc. --_Poetical
Works_, 1850, p. 165. ]

[36] [The allusion may be to a case which was before the courts, the
Attorney-General _v_. William Carver and Brownlow Bishop of Winchester
(see _Morning Chronicle_, November 17, 1813). Carver held certain
premises under the Bishop of Winchester, at the entrance of Portsmouth
Harbour, which obstructed the efflux and reflux of the tide. "The fact,"
said Mr.