Epilogue

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Title:     Epilogue
Author: Lord Byron [More Titles by Byron]

Epilogue.[1]

1.

THERE'S something in a stupid ass,
And something in a heavy dunce;
But never since I went to school
I heard or saw so damned a fool
As William Wordsworth is for once.

2.

And now I've seen so great a fool
As William Wordsworth is for once;
I really wish that Peter Bell
And he who wrote it were in hell,
For writing nonsense for the nonce.

3.

It saw the "light in ninety-eight,"
Sweet babe of one and twenty years![2]
And then he gives it to the nation
And deems himself of Shakespeare's peers!

4.

He gives the perfect work to light!
Will Wordsworth, if I might advise,
Content you with the praise you get
From Sir George Beaumont, Baronet,
And with your place in the Excise!

1819.
[First published, _Philadelphia Record_, December 28, 1891.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] [The MS. of the "Epilogue" is inscribed on the margin of a copy of Wordsworth's _Peter Bell_, inserted in a set of Byron's _Works_ presented by George W. Childs to the Drexel Institute. (From information kindly supplied by Mr. John H. Bewley, of Buffalo, New York.)

The first edition of _Peter Bell_ appeared early in 1819, and a second edition followed in May, 1819. In Byron's Dedication of _Marino Faliero_, "To Baron Goethe," dated October 20, 1820 (_Poetical Works_, 1891, iv. 341), the same allusions to Sir George Beaumont, to Wordsworth's "place in the Excise," and to his admission that _Peter Bell_ had been withheld "for one and twenty years," occur in an omitted paragraph first published, _Letters_, 1891, v. 101. So close a correspondence of an unpublished fragment with a genuine document leaves little doubt as to the composition of the "Epilogue."]

[2] [The missing line may be, "To _permanently_ fill a station," see Preface to _Peter Bell_.]

[The end]
Lord Byron's poem: Epilogue

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