nser's
teaching how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by its
mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.

'Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,
Hye you there apace;
Let none come there but that virgins been
To adorn her grace:
And when you come, whereas she in place,
See that your rudeness do not you disgrace;
Bind your fillets fast,
And gird in your waste,
For more fineness, with a taudry lace.'

'Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine
With gylliflowers;
Bring coronations, and sops in wine,
Worn of paramours;
Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies
And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;
The pretty paunce
And the chevisaunce
Shall match with the fair flowre-delice.'[192]

Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to test
all by.

(2) 'No more, no more, since thou art dead,
Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,
No more, at yearly festivals,
We cowslip balls
Or chains of columbines shall make,
For this or that occasion's sake.
No, no! our maiden pleasures be
Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.'[193]

(3) 'Death is now the phoenix rest,
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest.
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:
Truth and beauty buried be.'[194]

If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you turn to
Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him to give means
of exact comparison, you will, or should, recognise these following
kinds of mischief in him. First, if any one offends him--as for instance
Mr. Southey, or Lord Elgin--'his manners have not that repose that marks
the caste,' &c. _This_ defect in his Lordship's style, being myself
scrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of vituperative
language, I need not say how deeply I deplore.[195]

Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work there is
yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange taint;
and indefinable--evening flavour of Covent Garden, as it were;--not to
say, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it proclaims
itself--London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll,
things would of course have been different. But