cases declined, and moreover
about this time a slight coolness had sprung up between him and Byron.
When Hobhouse was standing for Westminster with Sir Francis Burdett,
Lord Byron sent a song about him in a letter to Mr. Murray. It ran to
the tune of "My Boy Tammy? O!"

"Who are now the People's men?
My boy Hobby O!
Yourself and Burdett, Gentlemen,
And Blackguard Hunt and Cobby O!

"When to the mob you make a speech,
My boy Hobby O!
How do you keep without their reach
The watch without your fobby O?"
[Footnote: The rest of the song is printed in _Murray's Magazine_, No. 3.]

Lord Byron asked Murray to show the song not only to some of his
friends--who got it by heart and had it printed in the newspapers--but
also to Hobhouse himself. "I know," said his Lordship, "that he will
never forgive me, but I really have no patience with him for letting
himself be put in quod by such a set of ragamuffins." Mr. Hobhouse,
however, was angry with Byron for his lampoon and with Murray for
showing it to his friends. He accordingly wrote the following letter,
which contains some interesting particulars of the Whig Club at
Cambridge in Byron's University days:

_Mr. Hobhouse to John Murray_.

2, HANOVER SQUARE, _November_, 1820.

I have received your letter, and return to you Lord Byron's. I shall
tell you very frankly, because I think it much better to speak a little
of a man to his face than to say a great deal about him behind his back,
that I think you have not treated me as I deserved, nor as might have
been expected from that friendly intercourse which has subsisted between
us for so many years. Had Lord Byron transmitted to me a lampoon on you,
I should, if I know myself at all, either have put it into the fire
without delivery, or should have sent it at once to you. I should not
have given it a circulation for the gratification of all the small wits
at the great and little houses, where no treat is so agreeable as to
find a man laughing at his friend. In this case, the whole coterie of
the very shabbiest party that ever disgraced and divided a nation--I
mean the Whigs--are, I know, chuckling over that silly charge made by
Mr. Lamb on the hustings, and now confirmed by Lord Byron, of my having
belonged to a Whig club at Cambridge. Such a Whig as I then was, I am
now. I had no notion that the name implied selfishness and subserviency,
and desertion of the most important principles for the sake of the least
impor