What better men have been in better times.

Here let me cease, for why should I prolong

My notes, and vex a Singer with a Song?

Oh thou with pen perpetual in thy fist!

Dubbed for thy sins a stark Miscellanist,

So pleased the printer's orders to perform

For Messrs. Longman, Hurst and Rees and Orme.

Go—Get thee hence to Paternoster Row,

Thy patrons wave a duodecimo!

(Best form for letters from a distant land,

It fits the pocket, nor fatigues the hand.)

Then go, once more the joyous work commence[14]

With stores of anecdote, and grains of sense,[10]

[10]

Oh may Mammas relent, and Sires forgive!

And scribbling Sons grow dutiful and live!

                        Constantinople, June 7th, 1810. [First published, Murray's Magazine, 1887, vol. i. pp. 290, 291.] 

FOOTNOTES:

[8] [For John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869), afterwards Lord Broughton de Gyfford, see Letters, 1898, i. 163, note i.]

[8]

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