During the Gordon riots on the 7th of January, 1780, Lord Mansfield’s house in Bloomsbury Square was burnt, and in the flames perished his valuable library, which he commenced collecting when a lad at school. It included many valuable volumes and materials for memoirs of his times. Cowper thus wrote on the subject:—
“So then—the Vandals of our isle,
Sworn foes of sense and law,
Have burnt to dust a nobler pile
Than ever Roman saw!
And Murray sighs o’er Pope and Swift,
And many a treasure more,
The well-judged purchase, and the gift
That graced his letter’d store.
Their pages mangled, burnt, and torn,
The loss was his alone;
But ages yet to come shall mourn
The burning of his own.”
A pleasing and playful epigram on Robert Bloomfield, the author of “The Farmer’s Boy,” was written by Henry Kirke White:—
“Bloomfield, thy happy omen’d name
Ensures continuance of thy fame;
Both sense and truth this verdict give,
While fields shall bloom thy name shall live.”
The residences of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge near the English Lakes suggested the title of lake poets, and of their works the Rev. Henry Townshend wrote:—
“They come from the lakes—an appropriate quarter
For poems diluted with plenty of water.”
Surely Lord Holland was a little wide of the mark when he penned the following epigram, complaining that Southey did not write sufficient laureate poems; the fact is, he wrote too many to sustain his reputation as a poet:—
“Our Laureate Bob defrauds the King—
He takes his cash and will not sing;
Yet on he goes, I know not why,
Singing for us who do not buy.”
In the Diary of Thomas Moore, under date of September 4, 1825, it is stated: “Lord H. full of an epigram he had just written on Southey, which we all twisted and turned into various shapes; he is as happy as a boy during the operation. He suggests the following as the last couplet:—
“And for us, who will not buy,
Goes singing on eternally.”