[229] {182}[Botherby is, of course, Sotheby. In the _English Bards_ (line 818) he is bracketed with Gifford and Macneil _honoris causti,_ but at this time (1817-18) Byron was "against" Sotheby, under the impression that he had sent him "an anonymous note ... accompanying a copy of the _Castle of Chillon,_ etc. [_sic_]." Sotheby affirmed that he had not written the note, but Byron, while formally accepting the disclaimer, refers to the firmness of his "former persuasion," and renews the attack with increased bitterness. "As to _Beppo,_ I will not alter or suppress a syllable for any man's pleasure but my own. If there are resemblances between Botherby and Sotheby, or Sotheby and Botherby, the fault is not mine, but in the person who resembles,--or the persons who trace a resemblance. _Who_ find out this resemblance? Mr. S.'s _friends._ _Who_ go about moaning over him and laughing? Mr. S.'s _friends"_ (Letters to Murray, April 17, 23, 1818, _Letters,_ 1900, iv. 226-230). A writer of satires is of necessity satirical, and Sotheby, like "Wordswords and Co.," made excellent "copy." If he had not written the "anonymous note," he was, from Byron's point of view, ridiculous and a bore, and "ready to hand" to be tossed up in rhyme as _Botherby._ (For a brief account of Sotheby, see _Poetical Works,_ i. 362, note 2.)] [bp] {183}_Gorging the slightest slice of Flattery raw_.--[MS. in a letter to Murray, April 11, 1818, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 218.] [230] {184}[So, too, elsewhere. Wordsworth and Coleridge had depreciated Voltaire, and Byron, _en revanche_, contrasts the "tea-drinking neutrality of morals" of the _school_, i.e. the Lake poets, with "their convenient treachery in politics" (see _Letters,_ 1901, v. 600).] [231] {184}["Lady Byron," her husband wrote, "would have made an excellent wrangler at Cambridge." Compare-- "Her favourite science was the mathematical." _Don Juan,_ Canto I. stanza xii. line 1.] [232] {185}[Stanza lxxx. is not in the original MS.] [bq] {186}_Sate Laura with a kind of comic horror_.--[MS.] [233] {189}[Cap Bon, or Ras Adden, is the northernmost point of Tunis.] ODE ON VENICE ODE ON VENICE[234] I.