finding it more bitter on himself, flung it
down on the floor in a passion, and would read no more.' _Journal of the
Reign of George III_, i. 187.

[368] They were published in 1773 in a pamphlet of 16 pages, and, with
the good fortune that attends a muse in the peerage, reached a third
edition in the year. To this same earl the second edition of Byron's
_Hours of Idleness_ was 'dedicated by his obliged ward and affectionate
kinsman, the author.' In _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, he is
abused in the passage which begins:--

'No muse will cheer with renovating smile,
The paralytic puling of Carlisle.'

In a note Byron adds:--'The Earl of Carlisle has lately published an
eighteen-penny pamphlet on the state of the stage, and offers his plan
for building a new theatre. It is to be hoped his lordship will be
permitted to bring forward anything for the stage--except his own
tragedies.' In the third canto of _Childe Harold_ Byron makes amends. In
writing of the death of Lord Carlisle's youngest son at Waterloo,
he says:--

'Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine;
Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
Partly because they blend me with his line,
And partly that I did his Sire some wrong.'

For his lordship's tragedy see _post_, under Nov. 19, 1783.

[369] Men of rank and fortune, however, should be pretty well assured of
having a real claim to the approbation of the publick, as writers,
before they venture to stand forth. Dryden, in his preface to _All for
Love_, thus expresses himself:--

'Men of pleasant conversation (at least esteemed so) and endued with a
trifling kind of fancy, perhaps helped out by [with] a smattering of
Latin, are ambitious to distinguish themselves from the herd of
gentlemen, by their poetry:

_"Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in ilia
Fortuna,"----[Juvenal_, viii. 73.]

And is not this a wretched affectation, not to be contented with what
fortune has done for them, and sit down quietly with their estates, but
they must call their wits in question, and needlessly expose their
nakedness to publick view? Not considering that they are not to expect
the same approbation from sober men, which they have found from their
flatterers after the third bottle: If a little glittering in discourse
has passed them on us for witty men, where was the necessity of
undeceiving the world? Would a man who has an ill title to an estate