The cutting and slashing critiques that the wretched papers write?
I have known it; when you were amused in the stalls the first night of a play,
And chattered and gossipped together, and forgot it the very next day.
"Nay, but it's kind of you, William, to gild my declining life,
And make me a peer, a baron, above all this petty strife;
But I haven't left off scribbling, and shall not—no, not I;
But I'll write whenever I will, for the public's sure to buy.
"I whipt Miss Bulwer for jeering, and gave it him, slightly riled,
For mocking at me, or my poems, has always driven me wild.
To be idle—I couldn't be idle—I do not write for a whim,