sion that he had sent him "an anonymous note ... accompanying a
copy of the _Castle of Chillon,_ etc. [_sic_]." Sotheby affirmed that he
had not written the note, but Byron, while formally accepting the
disclaimer, refers to the firmness of his "former persuasion," and
renews the attack with increased bitterness. "As to _Beppo,_ I will not
alter or suppress a syllable for any man's pleasure but my own. If there
are resemblances between Botherby and Sotheby, or Sotheby and Botherby,
the fault is not mine, but in the person who resembles,--or the persons
who trace a resemblance. _Who_ find out this resemblance? Mr. S.'s
_friends._ _Who_ go about moaning over him and laughing? Mr. S.'s
_friends"_ (Letters to Murray, April 17, 23, 1818, _Letters,_ 1900, iv.
226-230). A writer of satires is of necessity satirical, and Sotheby,
like "Wordswords and Co.," made excellent "copy." If he had not written
the "anonymous note," he was, from Byron's point of view, ridiculous and
a bore, and "ready to hand" to be tossed up in rhyme as _Botherby._ (For
a brief account of Sotheby, see _Poetical Works,_ i. 362, note 2.)]

[bp] {183}_Gorging the slightest slice of Flattery raw_.--[MS. in a
letter to Murray, April 11, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 218.]

[230] {184}[So, too, elsewhere. Wordsworth and Coleridge had depreciated
Voltaire, and Byron, _en revanche_, contrasts the "tea-drinking
neutrality of morals" of the _school_, i.e. the Lake poets, with "their
convenient treachery in politics" (see _Letters,_ 1901, v. 600).]

[231] {184}["Lady Byron," her husband wrote, "would have made an
excellent wrangler at Cambridge." Compare--

"Her favourite science was the mathematical."

_Don Juan,_ Canto I. stanza xii. line 1.]

[232] {185}[Stanza lxxx. is not in the original MS.]

[bq] {186}_Sate Laura with a kind of comic horror_.--[MS.]

[233] {189}[Cap Bon, or Ras Adden, is the northernmost point of Tunis.]

ODE ON VENICE

ODE ON VENICE[234]

I.

Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do?--anything but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.
In contrast with their fathers--as the