"From Princes I descend to the Nobility: In former times all persons of high stations, Lords, Baronets, and Persons of gentility, Paid twenty guineas for the dedications; This practice was attended with utility; The patrons lived to future generations, The poets lived by their industrious earning,-- So men alive and dead could live by Learning. "Then twenty guineas was a little fortune; Now, we must starve unless the times should mend: Our poets now-a-days are deemed importune If their addresses are diffusely penned; Most fashionable authors make a short one To their own wife, or child, or private friend, To show their independence, I suppose; And that may do for Gentlemen like those. "Lastly, the common people I beseech-- Dear People! if you think my verses clever, Preserve with care your noble parts of speech, And take it as a maxim to endeavour To talk as your good mothers used to teach, And then these lines of mine may last for ever; And don't confound the language of the nation With long-tailed words in _osity_ and _ation_." Canto I. stanzas i.-vi.] [193] {156}[For some admirable stanzas in the metre and style of _Beppo_, by W.S. Rose, who passed the winter of 1817-18 in Venice, and who sent them to Byron from Albaro in the spring of 1818, see _Letters_, 1900 iv. 211-214, note 1.] [194] {159}[The MS. of _Beppo_, in Byron's handwriting, is now in the possession of Captain the Hon. F. L. King Noel. It is dated October 10, 1817.] [195] [The use of "persuasion" as a synonime for "religion," is, perhaps, of American descent. Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address as President of U.S.A., speaks "of whatever state or persuasion, political or religious." At the beginning of the nineteenth century theological niceties were not regarded, and the great gulph between a religion and a sect or party was imperfectly discerned. Hence the solecism.] [196] [Compare the lines which Byron enclosed in a letter to Moore, dated December 24, 1816 (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 30)-- "But the Carnival's coming, Oh Thomas Moore, * * * * * Masking and humming, Fifing and drumming, Guitarring and strumming, Oh Thomas Moore."] [197] {160}[Monmouth Street, now absorbed in Shaftesbury Avenue (west side), was noted throughout the eighteenth century for the sale of second-hand clothes. Compare-- "Thames Street gives cheeses, Covent Garden fruits, Moorfields old books, and Monmouth Street old suits." Gay's _Trivia_, ii. 547, 548. Rag Fair or Rosemary Lane, now Royal Mint Street, was the Monmouth Street of the City. Compare-- "Where wave the tattered ensigns of Rag Fair."