[16] ["The English Consul ... forced a physician upon me, and in three days vomited and glystered me to the last gasp. In this state I made my epitaph--take it."--Letter to Hodgson, October 3, 1810, _Letters_, 1898, i. 298.] SUBSTITUTE FOR AN EPITAPH. KIND Reader! take your choice to cry or laugh; Here HAROLD lies--but where's his Epitaph? If such you seek, try Westminster, and view Ten thousand just as fit for him as you. Athens, 1810. [First published, _Lord Byron's Works_, 1832, ix. 4.] EPITAPH FOR JOSEPH BLACKET, LATE POET AND SHOEMAKER.[17] STRANGER! behold, interred together, The _souls_ of learning and of leather. Poor Joe is gone, but left his _all_: You'll find his relics in a _stall_. His works were neat, and often found Well stitched, and with _morocco_ bound. Tread lightly--where the bard is laid-- He cannot mend the shoe he made; Yet is he happy in his hole, With verse immortal as his _sole_. But still to business he held fast, And stuck to Phoebus to the _last_. Then who shall say so good a fellow Was only "leather and prunella?" For character--he did not lack it; And if he did, 'twere shame to "Black-it." Malta, _May_ 16, 1811. [First published, _Lord Byron's Works_, 1832, ix. 10.] FOOTNOTES: [17] [For Joseph Blacket (1786-1810), see _Letters_, 1898, i. 314, _note_ 2; see, too, _Poetical Works_, 1898, i. 359, _note_ 1, and 441-443, _note_ 2. The _Epitaph_ is of doubtful authenticity.] ON MOORE'S LAST OPERATIC FARCE, OR FARCICAL OPERA.[18] GOOD plays are scarce, So Moore writes _farce_: The poet's fame grows brittle[i]-- We knew before That _Little_'s Moore, But now't is Moore that's _little_. _September_ 14, 1811. [First published, _Letters and Journals_, 1830, i. 295 (_note_).] FOOTNOTES: [i] _Is fame like his so brittle_?--[_MS_.] [18] ["On a leaf of one of his paper books I find an epigram, written at this time, which, though not perhaps particularly good, I consider myself bound to insert."--Moore, _Life_, p. 137, _note_ 1. The reference is to Moore's _M.P.; or, The Blue Stocking_, which was played for the first time at the Lyceum Theatre, September 9, 1811. For Moore's _nom de plume_, "The late Thomas Little, Esq.," compare Praed's _The Belle of the Ball-Room_-- "If those bright lips had quoted Locke, I might have thought they murmured Little."] [R.C. DALLAS.][19]