And 'tis some praise in peers to write at all.
Yet did or taste or reason sway the times,
Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes.
Roscommon! Sheffield! with your spirits fled,
No future laurels deck a noble head;
No muse will cheer, with renovating smile
The paralytic puling of Carlisle.

In prose he adds, "If, before I escaped from my teens, I said anything in
favour of his lordship's paper-books, it was in the way of dutiful
dedication, and more from the advice of others than my own judgment; and I
seize the first opportunity of pronouncing my sincere recantation." As was
frequently the case with him, he recanted again. In a letter of 1814 he
expressed to Rogers his regret for his sarcasms; and in his reference to
the death of the Hon. Frederick Howard, in the third canto of _Childe
Harold_, he tried to make amends in the lines--

Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
Partly because they blend me with his line,
And partly that I did his sire some wrong.

This is all of any interest we know regarding the fitful connection of the
guardian and ward.

Towards Dr. Drury the poet continued through life to cherish sentiments of
gratitude, and always spoke of him with veneration. "He was," he says,
"the best, the kindest (and yet strict too) friend I ever had; and I look
on him still as a father, whose warnings I have remembered but too well,
though too late, when I have erred, and whose counsel I have but followed
when I have done well or wisely."