His curling-irons breaks, and snaps his combs:
Ah! doom’d to shut their mouths as well as shops;
For dead is Custom, ’mid the world of crops.”
Wolcot, as a defender of Mrs Fitzherbert, thought no words too strong in which to express his opinion of those who attacked her, and when John Rolle introduced the question of her marriage to the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons, he fell foul of him, and of Pitt, who supported him:
“Sick at the name of Rolle (to thee tho’ dear),
The name abhorr’d by Honour’s shrinking ear,
I draw reluctant from thy venal throng,
And give it mention, though it blacks my song.
How could’st thou bid that Rolle, despised by all,
On helpless beauty, like a mastiff fall;