A crown! why, twist it how you will,

Thy chaplet must be foolscap still.

When next you visit Delphi's town,

Enquire amongst your fellow-lodgers,

They'll tell you Phoebus gave his crown,

Some years before your birth, to Rogers.

3.

"Let every other bring his own."

When coals to Newcastle are carried,

And owls sent to Athens, as wonders,

From his spouse when the Regent's unmarried,

Or Liverpool weeps o'er his blunders;

When Tories and Whigs cease to quarrel,

When Castlereagh's wife has an heir,

Then Rogers shall ask us for laurel,

And thou shalt have plenty to spare.

[First published, Letters and Journals, 1830, i. 397.]

FOOTNOTES:

[32] ["On the same day I received from him the following additional scraps ['To Lord Thurlow']. The lines in Italics are from the eulogy that provoked his waggish comments."—Life, p. 181. The last stanza of Thurlow's poem supplied the text— 

[32]

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