Stranger! behold, interred together,
The souls of learning and of leather.
Poor Joe is gone, but left his all:
You'll find his relics in a stall.
His works were neat, and often found
Well stitched, and with morocco bound.
Tread lightly—where the bard is laid—
He cannot mend the shoe he made;
Yet is he happy in his hole,
With verse immortal as his sole.
But still to business he held fast,
And stuck to Phoebus to the last.
Then who shall say so good a fellow
Was only "leather and prunella?"
For character—he did not lack it;
And if he did, 'twere shame to "Black-it."
Malta, May 16, 1811.
[First published, Lord Byron's Works, 1832, ix. 10.]
FOOTNOTES:
[17] [For Joseph Blacket (1786-1810), see Letters, 1898, i. 314, note 2; see, too, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 359, note 1, and 441-443, note 2. The Epitaph is of doubtful authenticity.]
ON MOORE'S LAST OPERATIC FARCE, OR FARCICAL OPERA.[18]
Good plays are scarce,
So Moore writes farce:
The poet's fame grows brittle[]—
We knew before
That Little's Moore,
But now't is Moore that's little.
September 14, 1811.
[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 295 (note).]
FOOTNOTES:
[] Is fame like his so brittle?—[MS.]
[18] ["On a leaf of one of his paper books I find an epigram, written at this time, which, though not perhaps particularly good, I consider myself bound to insert."—Moore, Life, p. 137, note 1. The reference is to Moore's M.P.; or, The Blue Stocking, which was played for the first time at the Lyceum Theatre, September 9, 1811. For Moore's nom de plume, "The late Thomas Little, Esq.," compare Praed's The Belle of the Ball-Room—