When Stratford Canning showed his poem on the “Downfall of Bonaparte” to his gifted cousin, Mr. Canning said: “The verses are very well, but I wish, before writing them, that you had recollected our good Eton rule, never to strike your adversary when he is down. I, in my time, struck Bony pretty often, in prose and verse, and some of my blows were thought to be hard and telling, but that was debout, when he was up and full of fight. You hit him when he is prostrate.” Sir Stratford told me this in London, in 1835, as he was giving me a MS. copy of his verses, which have been praised a great deal more than they deserve, for they do not ascend higher than respectable mediocrity.
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