"O! Crimini, Crimini! What a mimini, pimini, Story of Rimini!"
This you will say was sufficiently cut-one-to-the-heartish, but this was little compared with what follows. Among other things, I found the MS. of the Twelfth Canto of Don Juan, which will shortly appear. By the way, it is rather unfair in him, to say no less of it, to throw "Cockney" in my teeth at every turn, considering that I have now quite given up talking of Highgate and Primrose Hill, ever since I have seen the Apennines--and to a friend, too! But it is my friend Byron's way; he calls and uncalls all his friends round, once in every four or five years, or so. But to my extract from his next canto:--
"Filthy scum! These Hunts, Hones, Despards, Thistlewoods, and Ings! These worms with which we politicians angle, We leave at last on Ketch's line to dangle.
Poor drivelling dupes! and can they think that we By birth ennobled, and no little proud Of our nobility, would stoop to be Companion'd with the base, plebeian crowd; Or that the crack-brain'd Bysshe, or Cockney Leigh, Or Gentle Johnny[51] e'er had been allow'd To sicken us with their familiarity, Forgetful of their distance and disparity, But that we turn'd them to our dirty uses?
My tool I've lately placed upon the shelf, So patronize my Cockney now who chooses; I've ta'en to do my dirty work myself. I find, too, that in fashion my abuse is, And brings--not that I value it--the pelf; But, let me hint, there's need of cash to victual ye E'en in this cheapest of all countries--Italy.
I've turn'd him off! He's gone! I've made the ninny stir His stumps! For on my stomach his pathetic, His Cockney rurals, drivellings, phrases sinister, And affectations act as an emetic. Besides, he thinks he's fit to be prime minister! The whimpering, simpering, Horsemonger ascetic![52] And there, he's grown so horribly familiar, And paws and 'dears' one so--I vow 'twould kill you."
There, my dear friend--and this is from one radical to another!--the root of all this is, that I did once hint to him that I thought myself a better poet than he; more antique and to-the-heartish, giving my verses an Italian twang, and so forth. As to his allusion to my thinking myself fit to be prime minister, I merely threw out an idea that way, once when we were re-modelling. No. V. of our Liberal Magazine shortly. Let tyrants tremble!--Yours ever.