The works of Lord Byron :: :: University of Virginia Library

The works of Lord Byron

A new, revised and enlarged edition, with illustrations. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge and R. E. Prothero

Byron, George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

Vol. I. HOURS OF IDLENESS AND OTHER EARLY POEMS.

II.

III.

IV.

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Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons,
Expert in science, more expert at puns?
Shall these approach the Muse? ah, no! she flies,
Even from the tempting ore of Seaton's prize;
Though Printers condescend the press to soil
With rhyme by Hoare, and epic blank by Hoyle:

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Not him whose page, if still upheld by whist,
Requires no sacred theme to bid us list.
Ye! who in Granta's honours would surpass,
Must mount her Pegasus, a full-grown ass;
A foal well worthy of her ancient Dam,
Whose Helicon is duller than her Cam.

The Games of Hoyle, well known to the votaries of Whist, Chess, etc., are not to be superseded by the vagaries of his poetical namesake whose poem comprised, as expressly stated in the advertisement, all the “Plagues of Egypt.”